> Neither the Military nor FEMA charge for services and also collect tax payer funds Some parts of the military charge consumers, don’t they? For example, mili

> Neither the Military nor FEMA charge for services and also collect tax payer funds Some parts of the military charge consumers, don’t they? For example, military Exchange stores charge for goods, but are also partly subsidized by direct appropriations - and the “profits” go back into military quality-of-life programs. You could decide instead to forgo this charge since as you say the military is not designed to turn a profit, but then you’d have to deal with all the perverse allocation problems and incentives that might pop up if everything in the store was suddenly “free”. Adding a cost to items helps to allocate limited supply (and helps to defray costs to the taxpayer of other military programs), even if the military as an overall organization is intended to direct taxpayer funds into achieving a purpose. Now take that same idea and apply it to “providing government funded public transportation to make a city economically viable”, or “maintain a constitutionally mandated postal service”. Taking money for services is not incompatible with being fundamentally a government-funded service that expends more taxpayer funds than it brings in.