What does government do? Austrian economists fear that government simply serves to protect incumbents. In a long, informative review of a book by Hans Herman-Hoppe, Andy Duncan writes,

ask yourself if there are many large corporations in the US or large farming concerns, which would still be in business if not supported through subsidy, taxation, and regulation, by your various levels of government? Or if you may be developing families of elites who hand garnered privileges on from one generation to the next? Give it a couple of hundred more years and I think the European feudalism you escaped from may finally catch up with you

For Discussion. Can the United States maintain a balance between paternalism and capitalism, or is only one extreme or the other a stable equilibrium?