state interests are distinctive

[Advocate]

The state should be distinct from private interests, whether church/state or state/business, not only for the obvious reasons of maintaining equality of opportunity and low wealth disparity, but because you simply don't want your operating system working by the same rules as your apps.

[odysseus]

Advocate wrote
The state should be distinct from private interests, whether church/state or state/business, not only for the obvious reasons of maintaining equality of opportunity and low wealth disparity, but because you simply don't want your operating system working by the same rules as your apps.

Unless, that is, your apps figure into the way your operating system works. Those who design OP systems are, after all, are only as good as the apps they use in the design allows.

So: we don't want our private affairs intruded upon by government. What IS a private affair? How about if if pure luck grants me a fortune and I use this build an empire that controls another's wages? I have a LOT of power to intrude into the affairs of this other's private matters, thereby. I then make an appeal to the OP managers, that is, government, to regulate wages. OR: say I want to give my children the very best religious education entirely apart from the secularism that dominates in the public system. I don't have time for home schooling. May I complain that private affairs are intruded upon by the predominant secularism in public schools are seek relief from government?

The separation of what is private and what is public is impossible on every front because our lives are so intertwined. Not unlike the problem in Mill's Harm principle: Government should be limited to preventing those who would be harmed by others. But then, is a beggar harming others on the subway by her annoying begging?

These things are the very stuff of our need for government.