That all gets paid for with taxes, as you mention. You pay taxes for your parks, and if you travel to another country it's quid pro quo, each side pays for their own, each side visits (hence how tourist visa systems generally work), and of course VAT is paid wherever.

Point is, there is no national social media tax collector. There is no government funding nostr, no city council funding nostr clients based in their city.

So the costs have to come from our pockets, the users! Right now all this money is coming from somewhere not the users, and not an entity that has collected some form of tax from the users to disburse it around.

So that's not right. It's never right. This is a lesson the internet keeps learning over and over. Let's make it free to start. Oops that was a bad idea. Let's make it free to start. Oops that was a bad idea. ... One day we have to break the cycle.