We Need It; They Don't

Brian Doherty at Reason gets it half right:

What’s wrong with cutting back big government that mostly exists to serve the interests of big corporations?

Here's why in a nutshell. Big corporations don't need government in order to screw us. But we need government if we're going to keep them from doing it.

The BP disaster is the perfect example. Without government, BP would have gone right ahead and done exactly what it did.* With a shitty government, like the one we have, it made no difference.

The only thing that can help us is good government. Can we get it? I don't know, but I know that not having any government at all is not necessarily any better than having bad government.

*Actually, they would have done it long ago, and even more often.