Come on, man, this is the most basic and essential economic problem ⚠️ ↗: limited resources vs. ever-increasing demand.

(Hint: inequality alone is not an argument if all strata are improving their quality of life. Though the poorest Americans and Europeans probably are not doing so, the poorest of the Third World certainly are, so the case you have to make is not for Bill Gates and Warren Buffett but for Carlos Slim and Lakshmi Mittal.)

Firstly, inequality in the sense that you mean it is another red herring. The case I have to make is one of basic morality, and all things being equal, even the most primitive and deprived of cultures can understand it. Here is the dilemma: how can the wealthy continue to usurp more and more resources in a world where those resources are needed by more and more people (through sheer population growth alone)? I can see no way to morally reconcile these things. And I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the 'technology will extend resources indefinitely' argument. It's a complete and transparently obvious cop-out. I know you haven't made this argument; I'm just telling you ahead of time before you go there.

Yet for some strange reason, big governments have a tendency to collapse their countries way faster than small governments do. Part of it can be due to human error (whether that is from ineptitude or intentional evil - that is not the point), but since human error is a constant no matter how big the government is, some feature of big governments must explain why they fail their societies more often.

Nope. I have yet to see any countries with big gov'ts collapse within my lifetime without some sustained and deliberate effort from without. I am of course referring to the Soviet Union. But I've seen several small gov'ts (regimes) collapse, be taken over by other similar regimes, collapse again, and on and on. Small gov'ts are inherently unstable, it seems. Maybe not, but they're certainly more open to being taken over by dictators and crackpots who often destabilize not only their country but the entire region. People bitch about big gov't intruding in their lives, but wait until they have to live like the third world. You can't have it both ways.

How come Doctors Without Borders' expenditures are 15% administrative/bureaucratic/operative and 85% directly for its purpose, yet most government departments (everywhere, not just in one country, "big" and "small" governments alike) have about the opposite ratio? THAT is having no responsibility to the less fortunate. The taxpayer, rich or not, pays and no longer has any ability to control where the money is. The government departments very much have that ability.

I don't know, but I strongly question your figures here. I'm not arguing that waste isn't rampant in gov't; I certainly think there is much room for improvement there. But gov'ts should collect taxes, because, while it's nice that DWB works so well, let's not forget that people who are inclined to work for a charity already have a high probability of being moral individuals who want that NPO to work effectively. You cannot say that of people in general. If 80-90% (or even 70%) of the population volunteered for charity work, or if a similar percentage of those who could afford to do so contributed money to charities, I might have your faith in humanity's basic decency and agree that all these gov't rules and regs were unnecessary. But unfortunately, the great majority of people are selfish and greedy. If not forced to do so, they will not offer a helping hand to anyone but their own immediate circle of friends and family.