Our governments are empires that have had democracy patched into them. Yes taxes pay for security and infrastructure, but this isn't why taxes are collected, ta

Our governments are empires that have had democracy patched into them. Yes taxes pay for security and infrastructure, but this isn't why taxes are collected, taxes are collected because government is a self sustaining system largely populated by self serving individuals drawn to power. Unlike my anarchist and libertarian friends, I don't think there is a better strategy than iterating on what we have, so we really don't have a better alternative that continuing to fix what we have, but that doesn't require us to pretend that our current systems are the benevolent commonwealths we would like the to be. (let's see how mars works out)