"""It is not the government's job" conservative line of thinking is used to justify undermining main function of our government - that is combine society's resources and then distribute them in most effective way. How can an individual engage in "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" if they are sick, starving and have no way out of their predicaments?""

This really points out where we diverge.

It is absolutely not a governments job to take my resources and distribute them to others in a manner it finds politically expedient.

Any top down society like you describe is nothing but tyranny, now matter how enlightened or just the motives of the people seeking to implement it.

No matter how you spin it, in the end all that type of system equates to is the people at the top using brute force to take from some and give to others based on their own judgements of value, which, history tells us, usually has nothing to do with any type of objective value.

It just cant work. Do you not understand or acknowledge at all, the types of and magnitude of problems that occur when peoples choices are taken from them and put in the hands of the ruling elite? Which is what, btw, govt officials become in the types of society you describe. Even the much touted by Socialists Nordic countries have been rotting from within, and they have massive resource exports per capita to prop up their fallacy.

I really wish you would read Human Action, and Socialism sometime. It would open your eyes, or at least help you evolve better arguments.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)