Government's role should be to support the nation's various economies.
People always refer to a nation as having 1 economy: the national economy, and that it should be the government's role to somehow keep it in good shape.
Decisions on how to keep the economy strong are always done with vast decisions like meddling with interest rates or something, thinking that it'll benefit the economy as a whole.
I call bullshit. A nation is comprised of thousands of economies. An economy is a community, which unlike a neighbourhood, which is dictated by where people live, is dictated by what people decide to spend their money on. The auto industry economy is a cycle comprising of people who spend money on cars and who earn money by producing cars; the poker economy is comprised of people who like playing poker; the football economy is comprised of people who like play/promote/watch football.
People can be a part of various economies, and when a given item or culture is popular, the economy thrives. For example, when lots of people are playing poker, the poker economy is strong; when lots of people are taking drugs, the drug economy is strong, etc ,etc.
Now, the problem is that the government tend to favour various economies, such as the banking economy or economies which involve some kind of big business. This is because either the big businesses have a lot of influence and can manipulate government, or because they contribute lots of tax. In the process, some economies are allowed to grow indefinitely, and naturally, other economies lose out in the process. The supernormal profits which some banks turn over is money which has been drained out of the population and which could have been used to fuel economies which are struggling. For example, fishing or something. The US taxpayers paid however much money to support the various big businesses, and as a result these billions of pounds can't be spent on other economies: the government has shown bias and negatively effected society as a whole.
But it's not just to do with spending, but it's also legislation which is important here. When government legislates AGAINST a certain economy, the given economy will suffer, and as a result, people will lose their jobs and people will lose their hobbies. Typically, the money which would have been spend on supporting local economies goes towards the bigger businesses. As an example, when the US government legislated against online poker sites, the online poker community suffered greatly. The online poker community is one which does not use up much resources compared to other industries, and thus is beneficial to society in the long run if it is allowed to thrive. It's the same with drugs: with all the other millions of reasons aside, making them illegal has meant that instead of people engaging in activities which waste very little resources, people are now more inclined to want to watch TV and be forcefed by adverts and want to buy new clothes and other useless shit every week.
The point is, the government's role should be to support every single one of it's nation's economies so it can compete as well as possible in the global scale. It's not upto the government to discriminate against what is right and what is wrong, a sound education policy should mean the population know this.
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