The US ended the slave trade, that was a major source of its success & prosperity. But creating an organization with the power to tax is legitimization of theft. It doesn't matter how you dress it up, "pay me or have your stuff violently taken & be put in a cage" is just plain theft. And the expansion of that theft has brought slavery back in a different form & destroyed the country. There are only 2 ways to deal with people, you can trade & otherwise interact in a voluntary manner (offering value for value), or you can deal in threats & force. If it's voluntary it's not taxation.
Govt is a religion that also benefits from Stockholm syndrome. It has songs, symbols, statues, monuments, ritual ceremonies, sacred halls, sacred texts, black robed interpreters of said texts, violent foriegn crusades, etc. And most people think of govt as the biggest scariest thing around (which isn't an accident). If the biggest scariest thing is on your side then life is generally okay, even if they mess up once in a while. But if the biggest scariest thing is actually working exclusively for your enslavement then the world is a terrifying place, so people refuse to see out of a largely subconscious sense of self preservation. And the govt takes it a step further by manufacturing large external enemies that supposedly only they can handle. Foreign govts with no history of military aggression outside their own borders become major threats & "terrorist breeding grounds." While the US is often literally arming the terrorists & invading their lands in an effort to radicalize them. The randomness of weather gets transformed into pending climate doom. An engineered cold virus becomes an excuse for global tyranny. The threat of aliens...
A system that only works with the right people in charge & that has no way to prevent the wrong people from gaining power is a BAD system.
If Wholefoods got thousands of dollars from you every month whether they stocked anything you wanted or not, how much incentive would they have to carry anything you wanted? Would voting for a different guy every 4 years be a decent way to get more of what you wanted in the store? Now add the fear & the religious devotion to the store, does it get better at serving people or worse?
You can often feel the difference when dealing with any "service" that is funded by force or govt protected. The DMV, TSA, Post Office, your local cable or power company, the VA or Social Security office, hospitals, banks... How do you feel when a cop is behind you in traffic? Do you feel protected or afraid? With all these "services" generally the lines are longer, the interaction is more about telling you want to do than finding out what you want, they often literally give you busy work, and the service is usually just bad. "We can't help you without multiple forms of ID." "Fill out these forms for the 100th time." "We need to fingerprint you before we can cash that check." "You have to submit to body scans & searches & hand over that tiny knife on your keychain if you want to fly."
And there are still more structural problems... Generally speaking I have little reason to care what my neighbor drives, but what happens if everyone has to vote on what people are allowed to drive? If I want to drive a Honda & my neighbor prefers GM vehicles, now his preferences are a threat to me. Deciding anything politically is extremely divisive. The more important the issue (education, security, healthcare, freedom of trade, freedom of movement, etc) the more destructive to peaceful relations & overall function that voting & central management becomes. The only way to solve this is to let people trade & decide things for themselves. And if you don't want anything centrally managed or funded by theft, then why do you need a govt?
