ABSTRACT
The chapter "The Sickness of Government" provided the basic concepts for the policy that, between 1970 and 1980 made Japan the world's second economic world power—or so Japan's then prime minister asserted. These political responses were, to a large extent, accidents of timing. For more than fifty years—from the end of World War I until around 1970—it was believed all but universally that a government is more effective the bigger it is and the more it does. During these fifty years the entire world—and especially the developed countries—were mesmerized by government and believed that any social task is already accomplished the moment it is handed over to government. By the end of the 1960s, enough evidence of the incompetence of government as a doer had accumulated to create receptivity for a discussion of the limits of government—the subject of the chapter on "The Sickness of Government".
