At some point in your life, you've probably heard somebody recite this thoughtless phrase:
"Taxation is the price we pay to live in a civilized society."
A more backwards statement has never been spouted. Any post-industrial society would, irrefutably, very quickly advance into a more civilized society, if the market demands of protection and justice were left to the competitive, patronage-funded private sector. Free enterprise is confined only to the infinite market ingenuity of mankind. When your options are market-based, you choose whatever you want.
The alternative, the government version of "service", is in fact, simply a theft-funded monopoly, comprised of the same class of sociopaths responsible for more violence than the rest of humanity combined; the almighty government class. When your options are dictated by an enormously powerful aggressor that forces you to fund their own version of a given service, the factor of choice is subtracted from the quality of service that can be provided to you.
Let's ignore for a minute the fact that private companies are tangibly motivated to satisfy customers, whereas individuals in government are only tangibly motivated to satisfy cronyists.
Let's break the concept of tax-funded service down to an equation.
Which is greater: 1 or ∞?
Hopefully, you said ∞ > 1. The value of 1 is confined, whereas the value of ∞ is limitless.
The number of options the people have access to, for any service provided by a free market industry, is ∞. In the absence of systematic economic coercion, such as taxation and forced regulation, there is no limit to the number of products & services people can imagine, and capitalize on, by serving others to get paid.
The number of options for any service monopolized by the ruling class, is 1: the government version. Even when the ruling class doesn't effectively prohibit competition outright, most people can't afford to pay for alternative versions of services they're already robbed to fund "free" versions of. By cornering most of any market via taxation, the state greatly inhibits and limits the number of private alternatives. This causes private alternatives (such as private schools) to require higher prices to sustain operation, and additionally gives them the leverage of scarcity, sending prices even higher, and excluding even more of the people from these alternative options. The remaining private alternatives raise the value of the formula to 1 + (∞ - X), with X being the number of options subtracted by the factor of the state.
So, which option has a greater chance of meeting your preferences in quality & price:
The option of 1 + [∞ - X], or the option of ∞ ?
If you can begin to imagine a rough quantification of the limiting impact of the state, you would've said ∞.
It stands to reason that safety and civility are things you seek and value, as per human instinct. If your number of avenues to receiving safety & civility are greater, you're more likely to receive optimal safety & civility. To virtually monopolize this industry requires culturally tolerated aggression (a factor almost exclusive to government). This monopoly only inhibits the safety of the people, by reducing the likelihood of the consumers from receiving their preferred service of safety.
We have been using the wrong formula for the safety and security of society. Look at any news channel, a history book, the streets, or a war museum, and you can see the result; a chaotic world of constant and catastrophic fighting and struggling.
Look to Atlantic Station or Disney World, and you can see the harmonious civility of a demand for security met by private, voluntary enterprise providing safety without robbing anybody of their earnings.
Taxation is the price we pay to live in a less civilized society.