The government is the problem only in the sense that it could fix these things, but refuses to. If you waved a magic wand and disappeared zoning laws then you'd

The government is the problem only in the sense that it could fix these things, but refuses to. If you waved a magic wand and disappeared zoning laws then you'd get the other end of asinine layouts. Instead of pathologic low-density you'd have a Kowloon Walled City hodgepodge that maximizes business interests over livability. Likewise if you just stopped guaranteeing student loans you'd end up with a less educated population as people were priced out of higher learning and pushed right into trades or service work. An educated populace is a hard prerequisite for a functioning democracy, and for a developed economy. Current solutions are bad, but removing them would make things even worse unless they were replaced with better-managed city planning and some other method to guarantee access to education.