Under this theory, why do we have any government at all? One might argue that the main purpose of government is to provide an aggregate benefit to society that

Under this theory, why do we have any government at all? One might argue that the main purpose of government is to provide an aggregate benefit to society that would otherwise not occur due to coordination, efficiency of scale (lack thereof), tragedy of the commons, and other issues. For example, in this particular case, even if consumers wanted these bikes / bike stations, it might never happen if the company relied on consumer sponsorship. Who's going to pay for such a service when there's only a handful of stations and bikes? But how is the company going to get a ton of bikes / install a bunch of stations without customers? Of course, raising money is one way, but selling to a customer that (in theory) represents the entire population (and has some of their money) is another. Not saying that in this instance, the government is not incompetent/derelict beyond all belief - all I am is saying is that you can't say a company isn't providing something people want just because they're selling to government. In order to be able to do that, you'd have to first show that the government in question is completely broken in that it never provides things that are beneficial to society, which the author has not (maybe the U.S. government is close, but I doubt many would assert that it is 100% broken).