Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government — in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.

For modern philosophers, the government’s function is rather to contribute to the maximisation of individual interests and facilitate trade between nations. [...] Today, however, in a world of finite resources, where human activity threatens the ecological equilibrium, this conception is obsolete…

A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist.

None of this means that government does not have a very real function. Indeed, the tragedy is that because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly. The basic functions of government are to defend the nation against foreign enemies, to prevent coercion of some individuals by others within the country, to provide a means of deciding on our rules, and to adjudicate disputes.3

The proper function of government does not include government's intrusion into economic activities;..it should

Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

The task of Government is that of application and encouragement. A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives. Our common life under our various agencies of Government, our laws and our basic Constitution, exist primarily to protect the individual, to cherish his rights and to make clear his just principles.

The role of government just considered is to do something that the market cannot do for itself, namely, to determine, arbitrate, and enforce the rules of the game.

It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.

Let us be clear at the outset that the liberty of individuals to carry on their business should not be abrogated unless the larger interests of the many are concerned. It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved. These are the principals which must be remembered in any consideration of this question. This, I take it, is sound government-not politics.

The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?

Good government is a prerequisite for a thriving market economy. At the same time, the coercive powers of government can be put to use in ways that serve narrow organized interests, including the government employees themselves. One of the most important tasks for policy analysts is determining when, where, and how government ought to involve itself (or not involve itself) in a modern economy.

Most Rightist reactionaries have as a part of their platform the belief and the statement that "big government" is an evil by itself and has to be done away with. Neo-Republicans and Neo-Democrats alike are of the conviction that the purpose of Government is merely to serve as caretaker over affairs of business, property, and defense. We disagree with them all. Commander Rockwell stated that the question is not one of "how much" government but "how good" a government... In our view, the function of government is as the leader of its people, not merely caretaker or arbiter. Hitler said that the leading forces make the society and the nation what it is and what it will become. This means taking the youth firmly in hand raising them up in the manner that our ideology commands so as to achieve the ever-moreperfect Race and State in the shortest possible time. Only a centralized government can accomplish this. So-called "rights" and "freedom" all take distant back seats to this highest goal. The task must be accomplished without petty interference from any quarter.