Essential government services

Here's a comment I posted this morning at a NewsOK.com column about the vote to abolish the state's income tax:

Okay, here are some questions which it is probably too late to ask since this column was posted yesterday & probably no one is paying attention anymore but I'm going to ask them anyway.

"services citizens want" What if I don't? Why should I have to pay for services I don't want? Why should I have to pay for services somebody else wants? Why should I have to pay the government for these services if I think somebody else can do a better job of providing them? Why shouldn't I have the option of being able to pay them instead of the government?

The government DOES NOT have to do everything. When it does try to do everything it ends up violating someone's rights. Some people think that's okay. I don't. A government that gets away with violating rights to provide these services will eventually end up violating MY rights.

I would rather have a government that held individual rights to life, liberty, property & the pursuit of happiness to be inviolable and let the free market take care of everything else.

This is the second comment I posted at this piece since it was published yesterday. There is a great deal more that I hope to get around to saying about this issue - the "essential government services" argument is a popular one among those who say the answer to the budget problem is to raise taxes. For now, I'll simply refer those who wish to know more to Ayn Rand's "The Nature of Government".