Why are private companies needed? Why can't the government control everything?

Roles in the society

A private corporation worries about making money, while the government (should) worry about making sure they make money the right way and the society benefits from their actions. These two objectives are often in conflict and they are on opposite sides of a tug of war.

How did Switzerland never participate in any world wars?

As others mentioned Switzerland was involved in wars until the 19th century. During both the World Wars, many European nations remained neutral - Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal among the most important. During WW-II, Turkey and Ireland, Greece, Netherlands were also neutral. 

Why doesn't any country in the world have a 100% employment rate?

In economics, there are 3 main types of unemployment:

1. Structural unemployment - this is caused due to changes in technology, markets, customer interests etc. We don't need a lot of typists and stenos any longer, for instance. Every year millions of jobs get obsolete and we replace them with newer ones. The people who are trained only for the old ones will face unemployment until they learn another skill.

The US (defense budget - $612B) spends more on millitary than the next ten highest spending countries combined. Why?

Who are the greatest politicians in different countries around the world over the last 50 years & why?

Asia Pacific

1. Lee Kuan Yew - Showed that a tiny Asian slum of Singapore can become the world's most advanced nation without the need of armies, natural resources or exploitation of people. Amazing leader by any metric.
2. Deng Xiaoping - Can you change the future of 1 million people? How about 100 million? How about 1.5 billion people?

What is OpenSSL? Is it true the organization developing OpenSSL is in a bad economic situation because OpenSSL is totally free?

What is OpenSSL?

Imagine this. You want to send a message to John. You don't know where he is or what his other contact details are. You pass the message to Jane, who knows someone who knows John. The message then is sent to Jane,

Why has every superpower tried to conquer Afghanistan, even though the country has nothing special like oil, coal, natural gas or valuable minerals?

Real estate agents say that the 3 most important things in a real estate investment are location, location and location. You could say the same about geopolitics.