Except the government of the United States of America before 1930 can you give me an example of this! Hopefully one that did not eventually turn sour as our government has been doing for at least the last seventy years?
Keeping in mind, of course, that the government of the United State prior to 1930 permitted horrific atrocities to occur in factories and industries across the nation, allowing such extremes of wealth disparity to occur that the massive stagflation that was the Great Depression was the only possible result, and when it occurred did nothing to alleviate the situation. That prior to the late 1800s, the legal apparatus and enforcement mechanisms necessary for indefinite incorporation and liability protection didn't even exist, mechanisms which make the private enterprise of today, which you seem to hold in such high regard, possible. The government that for nearly 100 years permitted the violent enslavement of others, an atrocity which was only abolished, and could only have been abolished through such a massive intervention of the Federal Government as the Civil War.

Here are some things that government can do, and that our government has largely succeeded in doing, since 1930. Through regulation and tax incentives, it has cleaned up the particulate pollution which was clouding the skies over our cities and poisoning the landscape of our rural areas. Through a judicious compromise on payroll taxes, it has secured a social safety net which preserves dignity in old age and ensured that the poorest among us can have access to basic medical care. It has put American children in schools instead of in sweatshops. It has substantially reduced workplace accidents and deaths. It leveled the income gap between the richest and the poorest (though since the advent of Reagan conservatism, this gap has returned with a vengeance). It has stabilized food prices at an affordable level through the application of farm subsidies. It has built an interstate highway system. It has preserved millions of acres of wilderness for the appreciation of future generations. It built electrical generation and distribution infrastructure that reaches even the most remote parts of our country. It has funded research into the most arcane, and to the layman, seemingly ludicrous ideas, ideas that no private investor would ever have the courage to risk his personal fortune on and which few investors would even have the wealth to fund, and which have resulted in innovations from atomic energy to various pharmaceuticals to transistors and plastics. On the just plain cool side, it has built a space program that has been so successful that to this day, ours is the only nation to have ever put human beings on the moon. And for the most part, it has done all these things without diminishing the personal freedoms and liberties enjoyed by its citizens.

And despite the fact that conservatives have been systematically attempting to undermine these achievements or restrict the benefits that come from them to the wealthy few, these accomplishments remain and continue to make all our lives better, cleaner, safer and more free. What they have succeeded in doing in attempting to turn back the clock to the days of the robber barons is leave us with an economy riddled with debt, not just in the government but in the average household as well, and on the verge of collapse. With their eyes only on short term profits, they have sold off our manufacturing base and sold out the American people.

I won't pretend that the accomplishments of our government since the 1930s have been perfect. The national spirit of a common cause and a common destiny, on which many of these accomplishments depend for political support, lost focus soon after FDR, and rather than focusing on achieving results, we began to build bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, and since that also goes hand in hand with corruption, waste and frustrating interactions with those it is meant to serve, Americans rightly became disillusioned with their government. In truth, it was not government per se that was at fault, but the way in which we were attempting to wield our government to solve the problems we needed it to solve. Rather like getting the angle wrong with your straight. And it's not a matter of getting government out of the way so that private enterprise can fulfill these needs. If private enterprise were capable of fulfilling them, they would already be doing so. But this doesn't mean that it's an either/or choice between government or private enterprise. Government provides the framework for the solution of problems, and only actually does the work when it is absolutely impossible for private enterprise to meet the need. We have public police and fire departments, because relying solely on private police and fire departments simply don't meet the social needs. Even then, it still typically allows the contribution of private enterprise in order to promote the benefits of competition and innovation. There are still private security companies and private fire departments.