Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm almost certain you're not arguing that "dollars generated per person" is the only valid measure of the success of a government Sure, it isn't the only measure of success, but if this number is very low then that is (I would argue) a measure of failure. "Dollars generated per person" = tax-revenues per person is very similar to GDP-per-capita. And a high GDP-per-capita means you can spend on healthcare, earthquake…
I'm trying to be very careful to avoid responding to things you're not actually saying. This would be more fun to discuss over some beers. Trying to tiptoe away from Godwin, I'll agree the use of moral/amoral is worth the quibble. Certainly it's people who have morals, and institutions that have, at best, ethics or principles. I'm not trying to argue that governments are moral, although they do take on responsibiliti…
Another way to express what I'm saying is this:
Individuals do lots of things that aren't directly for profit, like open source or art or helping out a friend. But over the long term they need to create more wealth (apples, chairs, computers, etc.) than they consume.
Groups of various kinds (companies, etc.) do lots of things that aren't for profit, like throwing birthday parties for their members or having their people sponsor charity runs for research. Yet they too need to have wealth creation exceed wealth consumption to survive in the long run.
Municipalities and local governments -- ditto. Municipalities provide services in exchange for property taxes, and they can/do go bankrupt. We're seeing that happen to CA cities now.
Now, a federal government is definitely special in some key ways: it can order guys with guns to your house and coordinates national defense. But you can still model this as a municipality that is competing with other national governments for your tax dollars. Immigration is in part about getting a better deal from country A and moving from country B.
This is not how we've been raised to think about government. Many on the broad political right are sort of emotional about the federal government's defense efforts; many on the broad political left are sort of emotional about the federal government's non-defense efforts. And in our current world it is kind of unpatriotic to just think of them as a service provider: "are they keeping the peace at low cost? are they pursuing the right strategy for long term health?".
There are macroeconomic arguments as well about whether the "government is or should be modeled as a company", but really you do get at a good point in that the idea that government is just a service provider cuts against the grain of American thought, both left and right.
However, it is an interesting line of analysis that is gaining in currency. See for example KP's "USA Inc.", which looks at the USA as if it was a company:
images.businessweek.com/mz/11/10/1110_mz_49meekerusainc.pdf
While physical proximity will always mean banding together for common defense (so long as we are corporeal beings!), I'd argue that the internet makes migration-to-a-better-service-provider a much more feasible option. Facebook facilitates transnationalism: your friends are sometimes nearby, sometimes on other continents, but they often aren't your neighbors. Skype and all these telecommuting tools allow you to work remotely as well.
Moving doesn't have the same cost that it used to. Making the cost of migration plummet could be very important.