Originally Posted by Xurtio

Well, we have libraries, roads, science funding, public education, military defense, and welfare programs to show it's benefiting us and we already know some gets squandered, especially with "use it or lose it" policies that funding departments use.

Whether it's "accomplishing anything" is a personal matter. I'm appreciative of roads and libraries and my incomes relies on scientific funding.

Originally Posted by Isbjørn

But if mandatory taxation was abolished, who would fund the public sector? Would people donate voluntarily?

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.