Unfortunately, in the US the alternative to government power is corporate power.
There are countries with little to no government intervention, and countries with lots. The latter are objectively much better places.
How did the countries with lots of government get where they are ("objectively much better places" according to you)? Did the USA always have a government that took such a massive percentage of total output? Only by extracting the wealth of capitalism can the socialist/progressive agenda even exist. We have so much prosperity in market economies that we can contemplate things like basic income.
Two words: New Deal.
Most of the US' prosperity since has been as a result of this. Then in the 1980's it was rolled back and guess what? Things are going to shit again. Maybe not in NY and California, but large swaths of the US are mired in poverty, poor employment prospects, crumbling infrastructure and shitty education.
How about Europe? Here's a bunch of tiny states with different languages, pretty much zero resources, very little land, who accept unprecedented amounts of immigration (partially to their detriment), who are still able to provide their citizens with the highest standards of living in the world.
Show me a single large, prosperous, libertarian state. Not a city-state that cannibalises their neighbours' resources and acts like a tax haven (Monaco, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Singapore, etc...) - but a large, prosperous, diverse state that is libertarian. The problem is, there are none.
I don't consider my state that rich, but we're 4 places above Germany.
https://www.aei.org/publication/us-gdp-per-capita-by-state-v...
There's plenty of indexes that offer better insight.
http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.js...
https://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/04/these-countries-h...
Even indexes that do rate the US highly, generally weight income highly. In life expectancy, health, education, and metrics which don't take into account income, the US doesn't do great.
What's the alternative elsewhere? Warlord power?
Ideally in a functioning democracy you can replace the government for one which represents the people, but in the US the 'establishment' controls them anyway.
Simply put, better to demand a guaranteed income from the government, then to put it off for fear of them abusing power, only to cede control to entities who are worse...