Tim Harford reaches a similar conclusion: HARFORD: Clearly, in a modern economy, a tremendous amount of the infrastructure that we rely on has been paid for by taxpayers and coordinated in some way by state government, local government, or by the federal government. Some of these things could be provided privately. But, as a matter of fact, they are provided by government and they seem to be provided reasonably well. freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/ He argues that the lesson we should take is different – that fixing big problems in the world takes more than any one person or government can do.