In reply to Mr. Gunn.

So two layers of response here. It doesn't matter whether the services are provided by government or third party. It's a question of how the resources are gathered and what decisions are made in the allocation of those resources. Whether or not a road is built by government or contractors, what matters is that its paid for by tax.

The second is to take issue with your second paragraph. There are well defined and well understood situations where testing what individuals want by asking them to allocate resources is the worst possible way to go about it. That's the problem at the heart of public good economics - precisely that rational actors will not apply resources to things that they want in a range of situations.

And my argument will be that what's being created here is a public-like good and therefore understanding its resourcing as tax (and compulsory) will be more useful than pretending its a market. My prediction is that political-economic theories of taxation burden will be more useful in analysing the costs in the system and resource allocation than a market based one (which we know to be largely useless).