Government is what creates the economy. You earn money so you can spend it again, but you could achieve this also without money. What you cannot do without money is paying your taxes, which you are forced to with ultimately the threat of violence of throwing you into jail or worse.
People create the economy. The government is supposed enforce the agreed upon property rights that the economy is built on. The government was once funded by tariffs on import and export essentially a tax on the success of the nation. Since the income tax was imposed the government has taken a shortcut to the wealth of the people. This saps wealth from the populous that slows and diminishes the wealth and growth of the nation as a whole. It also changes the incentives of the government.
You are correct that with an income tax the government is incentivized to have as many people working as it can so it can squeeze some blood from us. It is an abusive and destructive incentive and the only way to require it is by force. The original way had much better incentives for government behaviours that are beneficial to the people and ultimately the nation.
Government being about enforcement of property rights is a libertarian property-extremist pipe-dream. Governments used to be the only way for large groups of people to work toward a common goal, before private companies were allowed to form.
I fully agree that income tax is a drag on actual performers, and would much prefer property taxes.
The US government exists solely to deal with international matters and to protect state and individual rights. The powers given to the government by the states are pursuant to those needs.
That is not libertarian extremism. That is historical fact.
If the states thought their way of life was secure from violence perpetrated by other states or nations none of them would have ratified the Constitution. A central government was seen as a necessary evil to prevent foreign invasion. Even then it took considerable effort to convince states a central government was necessary.
Government, as in social regulation, like manners, rules both implicit and explicit emerge in any count of humans greater than one. Thus it can be conferred that government is an endemic quality of humans. This can be, and has granted the conception of property and property rights in various forms. It needs no funding, nor formal institution, only public assent. Markets form naturally without the state: barter, debt, and spontaneous exchange (think of ideas, techniques) occur independently and ultimately have very little to do with property rights.
Then there's the "state" (frankly a disingenuous term) which holds a monopoly on violence. With that monopoly they can enforce property concepts of a wide variety. The state maintains power with assent from a power plurality. Of course with that very same power the state government can control a much wider gamut of human interaction. For example they can mandate education at the threat of either jailing a parent for charges of neglect, or assuming the child as the liability of the state government. They can also fund and direct the curriculum taught in schools.
Graeber, in his book Debt speaks on the emergence of money (which itself can emerge independently) this is typified by accepting only one medium to reconcile taxes, specie, which itself is state government issued. The logical consequence of this is that the specie would be necessary to everyone within the authority of the state, and so it assumes the nature of universality. Of course with the position of authority the state government assumes they can mint and debase currency. He also argues that this system was put into action to simplify military campaigns. The predominating mode of exchange previously being debt between trusted parties, otherwise neighbors. Remuneration from a strange soldier who could abscond or die is a risky proposition.
But we can have one without the other. The state itself is predicated on a virulent, and thus, circular fiction, and we've actually got very little in the way of a true impression of precisely how it emerged. One common interpretation is mutual defense. In the fashion of a circular argument it self-amplifies. A neighbor becomes a state, upregulates a military, and so the reasonable course of action is to tit-for-tat and form a state government, upregulating a military. And so forth. Likewise the same can be said of capitalism and acquisitive behavior in general, which are favored by the state and business which also form another amplifying system.
>Governments used to be the only way for large groups of people to work toward a common goal, before private companies were allowed to form.
All the above considered, yes, but only the loosest sense of government, which can be dictated by family, culture, religion, or even business, which itself can operate without a formalized state government.
