These conventions can be explained by what is arguably the greatest weakness of big government sympathizers: a lack of reasoned thought and creativity that is the result of their inability to look beyond the status quo. In other words, because government does it, they have a hard time envisioning how it could be done without government.

Being against so-called “gun control” means that I want a world where people launch rockets at their neighbors. Being against drug prohibition means that I want a world filled with violent drug-dealers and abusers in psychotic rages. Because I am against government schooling, I am against education and I want the world to be illiterate. Because I am against the government taking my money and inefficiently giving it to the poor, I loathe poor people. Being against the FDA means that I think it acceptable that companies would poison their customers. Wanting to eliminate the FCC is tantamount to championing porn on every television channel. Because I am against government-run health care, I want children to die in the streets. Being against the warfare state means I’m an isolationist who wants us to be defenseless. An argument against farm subsidies is an argument to let the world go hungry. Because I’m against the minimum wage, I am pro-slavery. Advocating against public parks means I hate trees. Because of what I believe, no one would ever build a road, pick up garbage, police the streets, put out fires, patrol our coasts, or protect us from evil corporations, slumlords, and insurance agents.

So every argument usually ends up becoming a defense of what’s possible when government is not there to provide a good or perform a service (poorly and inefficiently).

But the salient point in my consistent position against government overreach is: no one could really know how something may best be done once free people are able to utilize the market’s ingenuity-incentivizing system of supply, demand, competition, cooperation, and comparative advantage to create efficient alternatives.

The mutually beneficial trade of a free, decentralized market is far superior to central planning, and, as I touched upon in my Case Against the TSA, the results of which are essentially unknowable for two fundamental reasons. First, to paraphrase Hayek, there’s no way to imagine what can be designed by millions of people acting freely; and second, to paraphrase Mises, it would be impossible to implement any scheme properly or efficiently even if planned by intelligent, well-meaning angels.