Life & Wisdom Quote by L. Neil Smith

Abolish city governments "as a public health measure" is the kind of provocation that tells you it wants to be taken both literally and as a taunt. L. Neil Smith, a libertarian-leaning science fiction writer, folds an ideological argument into the language of epidemiology: municipal bureaucracy isn’t merely inefficient or corrupt, it’s contagious. The phrase reframes governance as a pathogen - something that spreads, debilitates, and normalizes its own presence until people stop noticing the symptoms.

The specific intent is to detonate the reader’s default assumption that city hall is the closest, most pragmatic layer of democracy. Smith flips that: the nearer the government, the more invasive it becomes. Zoning boards, permits, policing, taxation, and regulatory sprawl become the daily exposures. By choosing "ought" rather than "could", he signals moral certainty; by adding "if only", he signals impatience with debate. Even if you don’t buy the full abolitionist claim, he’s daring you to admit there’s harm being done.

The subtext is also a jab at the progressive habit of treating government programs as public-health interventions. Smith hijacks that moral high ground and points it back at the state: what if the institution selling safety is itself the hazard? In the late-20th-century American context - post-urban-crisis distrust, anti-tax revolts, and a rising skepticism of "expert" administration - the line lands as both critique and meme-ready insult. It works because it turns a political preference into a diagnosis, and diagnoses don’t ask permission.