The moral of the story is libertarian idealism (sans facism/authoritarianism) is simply the mirror opposite utopian extremism of communism... ever-refined balance is needed, which tends towards democratically-elected, semi-socialism: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." - James Madison
One of the most annoying cliche arguments in American political discourse is that money is the universal 100% effective solution to all problems.
We just had a nuke plant melt down? That's going to just cost a lot of money! We want to provide universal top quality free on-demand healthcare for everyone? Just quadruple spending and change absolutely nothing else! We want to colonize mars in 10 years. That will just be a few trillion. No problem! Nine women working together to have a baby in 1 month? Just a few billion in government R&D bucks and we'll have it solved in a jiffy!
Argh, that's a frustrating fallacy, often posited with sincere intentions but often disconnected from practical implementation considerations.
In general terms, effectiveness and affordability of budget outlay should be the primary concerns. Instead, budget is typically orthogonal to effectiveness of quality of problem characterization, planning, procurement, execution and follow-up. Oddly, better results can sometimes be paradoxically realized by reducing budgets where there are capital-inefficient organizations by teaching resourcefulness... many bad habits emerge when people have too much cash available to spend frivolously. There are many instances where greater outlays are cheaper TCO-wise in the long run, so the "penny wise, pound wise" mantra tends to be a good guideline.
Also, in the US, defense spending, education and social security are sacred cows for various reasons.
Question military-industrial complex spending and be prepared for accusations of unpatriotism and treason for "not supporting the troops." These are completely specious but used to guard the hen-house. Robert Gates was the most recent, effective reformer of DoD, but the honeymoon didn't last long.
Education is seen as important human right however NCBLA has foisted short-term pseudo-results upon teachers. So the problem is still seen as not enough money, usually because administration bureaucracy typically consumes a disproportionate fraction of total budget (or in extreme cases, embezzles cash outright).
Social security is a tough one because many people have no direct retirement savings, and no one humane wants to go the way of Korea, where the elderly are de-facto shunned and have nothing.
Money is all we have left. We tried "sanctity" - more or less religious purity. We tried "honor" - ( bring back dueling? ). Duty, country, sacrifice - all pretty much deprecated.
I don't have an answer here - it's the stuff of Adam Curtis films. He's hardly perfect, but has an interesting way of constructing frameworks to look at these things.
