Maybe I'm just being dim, but it doesn't seem at all like that to me. Permitting people to breathe is I suppose technically a function performed by every entity in the world, from my town government to theater companies to the Federated Apostolic Church of Southeast Nauru, but it really doesn't exemplify the typical activity of government.
OTOH, voting to increase the hotel tax and direct the proceeds to the schools is pretty typical government behavior and is all about this. As a community, by electing representatives who negotiated among themselves the level of taxation and the proportions of the budget to spend on police vs. schools vs. road maintenance vs. waffles, we determined that we wanted a certain level of education funding; if the conclusions were radically different from the will of the median voter, some representatives would probably get replaced in a way that brought the policy position closer to the "best" one for the electorate. A non-democratic form of government doesn't reliably represent the "will of the people" as accurately.
Simultaneously, however, a question arises as to how we're going to cover some unexpected shortfall in property tax revenue. We could cut education spending, or increase property taxes, but it's politically easier to pick a minority interest like the hotels and just extract the extra from them. The purpose of the money is a "good" one, the result of a process of determining what people want their government to do. But the power we gave our government, while necessary to accomplish this desirable goal, also allows them to just pick on someone and take some of their money. We have instituted certain restrictions on their power, such that they can't simply seize the money from an individual -- they have to designate a broader revenue base than "Joe Smith", like "hotels", but they inevitably retain enough flexibility to whimsically select hotels as the victims while not imposing equal tax burdens on taco stands or tire dealerships or canine obedience schools.
I agree with you that giving governments enough power to do the things we benefit from governments doing also involves giving them enough power -- or at least, allowing the possibility that they will take enough power without being stopped -- to do things we don't benefit from, or do things that actively harm us.
Not least of which because it's not always clear which is which, and because there's lots of different "us"es.
OTOH, voting to increase the hotel tax and direct the proceeds to the schools is pretty typical government behavior and is all about this. As a community, by electing representatives who negotiated among themselves the level of taxation and the proportions of the budget to spend on police vs. schools vs. road maintenance vs. waffles, we determined that we wanted a certain level of education funding; if the conclusions were radically different from the will of the median voter, some representatives would probably get replaced in a way that brought the policy position closer to the "best" one for the electorate. A non-democratic form of government doesn't reliably represent the "will of the people" as accurately.
Simultaneously, however, a question arises as to how we're going to cover some unexpected shortfall in property tax revenue. We could cut education spending, or increase property taxes, but it's politically easier to pick a minority interest like the hotels and just extract the extra from them. The purpose of the money is a "good" one, the result of a process of determining what people want their government to do. But the power we gave our government, while necessary to accomplish this desirable goal, also allows them to just pick on someone and take some of their money. We have instituted certain restrictions on their power, such that they can't simply seize the money from an individual -- they have to designate a broader revenue base than "Joe Smith", like "hotels", but they inevitably retain enough flexibility to whimsically select hotels as the victims while not imposing equal tax burdens on taco stands or tire dealerships or canine obedience schools.
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Not least of which because it's not always clear which is which, and because there's lots of different "us"es.
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