You misunderstand. The government didn't shut down Lavabit. They (allegedly) ordered them to insert a backdoor. Not doing so could have caused the principles to face personal criminal charges. I love my customers, but I'm probably not going to go to federal prison for them.
Yes I know what happened at Lavabit. And seeing the Google/Yahoo execs going to prison to protect their users was exactly what I had in mind. I'm not saying I expect them to do it, but it would be admirable. We could get into hypotheticals about in which scenarios would this even help... and I admit that in many scenarios it would be futile, but for some scenarios, it would be an option, even though it would come at great cost.
