Both ideological extremes, left unchecked, concentrate power and lead to authoritarianism. Unfettered capitalism creates a corporate 'king' who controls all resources, while socialism creates a state dictator. Both systems ultimately subvert individual freedom without proper checks.

The ideology of collectivism, when put into practice, inevitably leads to the non-voluntary seizure of assets from productive individuals because successful people will not willingly surrender their gains, necessitating force.

Governments originate from a collective need to organize and control violence for defense. However, this very concentration of power is predisposed to become oppressive, reflecting a cyclical pattern in human history where freedom is lost to tyranny, regained, and then threatened once again.

China's "engineering state" mindset extends beyond physical projects to social engineering. The Communist Party treats its own people as a resource to be moved or molded—whether displacing a million for a dam or enforcing the one-child policy—viewing society as just another material to achieve its objectives.

Political ideologies like socialism consistently fail because they are not stress-tested against human nature. People inherently resist ceding their individual will and autonomy, even to a system promising a perfect outcome, leading to coercion.

Love is a powerful motivator within families and small groups. However, at a societal scale, it fails. A society that expects love to scale, like communism, inevitably resorts to force when that expectation is not met. Money, via markets, is the only scalable, non-coercive alternative.

Socialism's top-down control ignores market incentives, leading to predictable failure (e.g., rent control causing building decay). When people protest these failures, proponents who believe they "know better" must resort to coercion and violence to silence dissent and maintain power, rather than admit their model is flawed.

Command economies inevitably rely on force. In a free society, disagreement is resolved through persuasion. In an authoritarian system where directives are absolute, dissent is ultimately met with force. Adopting a top-down economic model means accepting state-sanctioned violence as a necessary tool.

To define government's role, one must first define government itself. Its only unique characteristic is the legal power to apply force. Therefore, its functions should be strictly limited to things society needs but individuals cannot accomplish voluntarily, such as national defense, border control, and some basic infrastructure.