In response to a Ron Paul defender: (btw check out this article on ron paul as well)

having no EPA wouldnt mean there would be no pollution enforcement any more than doing away with the NEA would mean there are no more schools.

right but people's power to "care" is directly proportional to economic power. So poor people have to do this thing call "work" during the day won't have the same economic power that the wealthy have to stay home or pay someone to educate their children. Likewise environmentalist can never match resources of corporations that profit from that same environmental degradation. The idea that you can just point at government flaws and then promptly do away with any collective democratic control over social responsibility of individuals will quickly lead to massive civil violence. As people lacking economic power will exert the power in the only dimension in which they can affect change ie violence. This has happened dozens of times throughout history and would happen again if the likes of Ron Paul where to be elected. You can't possibly expect people to respect others rights to pay slave wages, and fuck the environment however they please.

meanwhile we all go to sleep thinking the big daddy has solved all of our problems for us.

Thats silly, everyone knows that any real social change comes from grass root massive campaigns to shift systems of control of concentrated power back into the hands of the people affected. The "government" is often that very system of control that you are fighting with. The government never helps in positive social change rather is forced to by the people. As a centralized power of course government favors more centralization of power, but it exists as a more malleable structure than the non-representational vertically integrated tyranny of corporate control.
The idea that things would be better off letting capital even more directly dictate our freedoms is a very natural ideological divined on the billions invested into free-market think tanks over the past 30 years. But if you actually look at societies that fully embraced free market ideology you find a rapid decline and quick embrace of fascism just to keep things running. Naomi Klein's shock doctrine offers an good overview.