Why doesn’t the government just print money instead of charging taxes?
Discussion
I think there's another big reason: charging taxes - and only accepting fiat as payment for those taxes - is what gives any value to fiat in the first place.
e.g. Even if everyone except the U.S. government just wanted to use Bitcoin, the dollar would still have significant value as long as the U.S. government continued to demand taxes be paid in dollars.
I'm not so sure, the USD has power as a global currency, if it were only used in a single country with 300 million citizens as a tax settlement layer, it would still have value, but not much.
Stephanie Kelton mentions chartalism in her book, The Deficit Myth.
Team MMT also assert that taxation is a key mechanism to influence behaviour. Tax incentives for economic activity it approves of. High taxation to dissuade activity it dissaproves of. Of course, this all breaks down under enough scrutiny.