The removal of all taxation would be the last step to implement in the transition to a free capitalist society. The costs of a proper government — with an army (engaged only in self-defense and not imperialism), a court system, and a police force — are very small, and easily paid for by voluntary financing methods, such as insurance on contracts. Other methods are used by nonprofit agencies, like churches, to raise billions of dollars. Observe how one “know nothing capitalist” Ted Turner recently gave a billion dollars to a useless, anti-capitalist organization like the United Nations.
Comments Ayn Rand in “Government Financing in a Free Society”:
Any program of voluntary government financing has to be regarded as a goal for a distant future. What the advocates of a fully free society have to know, at present, is only the principle by which that goal can be achieved.
The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing. [The Virtue of Selfishness]
