It is often times said among the Right Wing that government is a "necessary evil." I've found this term to be useful in the past, but these days I'm not so sure.
For one thing, the whole idea of evil being necessary is to admit defeat in the battle between good versus evil. I understand that sometimes you have to work with otherwise evil people in order to get things done, but that usually means you have boundaries that protect you. When it comes to an entity that has a monopoly on legal force, there are sufficient boundaries that can exist.
So what is the solution to this problem of government being evil? Even if we were to fill it with the holiest among us, it would still abuse its citizens. King David committed grave sins despite being a man after God's own heart. If such a man can succumb to his own sinful nature and use his power for evil, then none of us certainly can be completely trusted with governmental authority.
Recently, I've become more sympathetic to the anarchists, more specifically anarcho-capitalists (there is a fundamental difference between the two with regards to property). Their solution is that there should be no government at all, that everything is provided through a system of voluntary transactions. No entity has a monopoly on force and no one can say that they are deprived of their natural rights because of the government. I admit, however, that I have not read a whole lot on this ideology, so if I misrepresent it in anyway, I don't mean to.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that a state of no government seems to assume that people will behave in a rational manner. This seems to be the arguments put forth by the Austrian economists, the majority of whom happen to be anarchists as well. The trouble is, the whole point of having no government usually means that we don't trust those with the power to behave rationally, we assume that those same people would when they lack authority.
As a Christian, I believe that mankind is prone to sin and therefore act irrationally much more frequently than what would be expected. No rational person would go deeply into debt each month just to buy crap he or she can't afford. Sure the numbers look good, but good mathematics does not necessarily constitute good sense. The fact is, there will be people who will steal and harm others for no good reason (is there ever one?) and they do so without hesitation. I am sure that anarchists have a solution for this that would work in theory, however, in practice I'm not so sure.
I guess what I am saying is that there are times when we may need some kind of governmental authority to manage affairs of justice. But this authority is not needed all the time either. In this case, government ceases to be a necessary evil, but more so a representation of managing disputes and conflicts that threaten people's property. And while property should never be taken from individuals by force, when they take other people's property through force, they should have to compensate their victims. There will be a need, in this case, for force to be initiated in order to maintain some sense of social order because irrational people rarely have regard for other people's property and will fight tooth and nail to keep their own.
I suppose the solution is a kind of optional government system where people will have to appoint leaders when the situation calls for it, but remove said leaders when the problem is resolved. While this is tedious, it provides the benefit of leaving individuals free from government force and forming such entities only when they wish to do so. In other words, government becomes voluntary and it cannot hurt others who do wish to live under it's 'protection'.
The solution is no more ideal than any others. The trouble with any governmental system is that you are dealing with selfish individuals, many of whom will get their jollies from bullying others. I am willing to bet that if the Founding Fathers had seen what would eventually become of the United States, they would have gone home content with the Articles of Confederation, except for maybe Alexander Hamilton, the token Statist of the convention.
Managing people is a tough job. I suppose the only way any system of government works well is one whose subjects are keenly aware of other people's property and have a healthy respect for it. That kind of system would require much less government as a result because such people will manage their own affairs appropriately. Unfortunately, this is probably a pipe dream considering the idiocy that most people exhibit on a daily basis.