The question is then, why shouldn't we only buy products and services from NGOs or the government? Seems like a sweet deal!
Because their products and services will tend to be worse, and decline over time, as they are not motivated by profits.
Discussion
Often, this is true. However, the market will not address every need. The market has largely botched US healthcare and health insurance, for example. And we certainly would not have our national, state and local parks system, or relatively clean water and air, and many other essentials, if not for government and nonprofits. Military, roads, bridges, fire and police departments, etc. So a balance is needed that restrains the market and meets needs it won’t, while not restraining it too much.
Wait... you believe market forces are what ruined healthcare and health insurance?!
Yeah, nah, I am not convinced that the government can deliver any service more efficiently than a private company can.
The only exception I can see is mounting a common defense (because the nature of violence means that it can be more important to be effective, than efficient), and I'm open to being wrong about that.
Valid. It’s an old, well trod argument I don’t care to get into right now. ✌️
People don't understand this effect, but for-profit companies have to work harder and more efficiently because they have to deliver the same products and services, often carrying the additional cost of taxation, while continuing to return a profit.
That means they have to steadily reform, refactor, and innovate. Their economic energy becomes increasingly dense, which powers the next phase in their organizational development.
Or they fail to turn a profit and leave the market, to make room for someone better.
tax is a crime tho... and usually selectively pushed on those both least able and most outside of the in-group of power
business would advance a lot faster in terms of net improvement of efficiencies without the drag of taxation
same as giving your cat worming tablets and flea treatments improves its health, the parasites bring more trouble than what they steal, they bring other thieves who take advantage of the weakness
I am not of the opinion that taxation is a crime, in every case, but I am of the opinion that onerous taxation makes economies less efficient and deters productivity, and that exempting certain companies from such taxation exacerbates that situation for the remainder.
The problem is that taxation started as a crime with royalty using the military to steal funds from its subjects to fund war.
Trying to legitimise it after that is a difficult ask.
That’s not to say that some tax is used for good things.
no, the entire concept is a crime, a punishment for profit
paying for services is paying for services
they have deliberately muddied the waters around this in order to get a special privilege to ask whatever price they want for funding their hobby horse social manipulation projects and they are therefore ... the worst kind of psychopaths, the ones who pretend to care about the masses, while pocketing a huge chunk of their wealth to pay for this so-called service
there is at least one good historical case, involving the catholic church, where a form of taxation lead to a regression of the wealth and health of a society - that of Iceland in the middle ages
they had a tax, that you had to pay to the chief, and they decided to change the rule so you could pay that tax to the chief you liked, sorta like a form of democracy-by-money
it ended centuries of vendettas and backroom deals and assassinations and war between tribes
then the catholics showed up, and pushed this "tithe" idea on everyone, this was after the Unum Sanctum (which claims that all people are the wards of the church) signed in a papal bull in ... i forget, 1308? and they became effectively the centre of a new oligarchic feudal system and it was back to "i am inigo montoya, you killed my brother, prepare to die" situation, after 300 years without it
if i cannot choose who protects me, then they will not protect me, but simply take as much of my money as i am stupid enough to give them, instead of spending that on weapons and training my guys to go take those bitches out
and that's the result of tax
war
you can't have war without tax, and you can't avoid war with tax