There is an efficiency in a government that can plan and direct infrastructure in a manner that creates a self reinforcing virtuous cycle. A government for example that develops transport infrastructure than improves the marketability of its farmers and manufacturers improves their profitability and ability to pay taxes to fund further development. It is via this process whereby the government has the unique position, mandate and capacity to develop the productive potential of its jurisdiction and the ability to fund it in an ongoing way that determines which economies come to dominate and which come to be subjugated. You cannot give any examples of wealthy nations where the government has not performed this role, because it is just as nonsensical as Libertarian ideology itself is. Private enterprise can and does not ever have the mandate, incentive and ability to develop the productive economy and national security in the same manner, and it never does. As Adam Smith put it hundreds of years ago 'People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices' No much has changed and you still need a good government to regulate and manage the overall best functioning and development and security of the economy...while enabling free enterprise to thrive within that framework. It is a subtle expertise and balance - something lost on the crude black and white reasoning of Libertarians.