Would people prefer to pay no tax under a pure capitalism system ?

Low tax countries like the UAE have huge fiscal reserves generated by oil and gas. They invest this in central infrastructure to attract global trade. How would a Low or no tax system work when a country has no resources to trade globally- ?

Rich people don't like paying their taxes and try to avoid doing so, so I hardly think they'll willingly fully support the government as an act of charity.
What would happen to people who are too sick to work?

No, because then people would starve. And who knows if I might be one of them, should something happen to mean I couldn't work. Even if I was one of the lucky ones who could support myself, vastly unequal societies have a lot of crime so you'd have to live in a gilded cage to protect yourself from attack by those who have nothing.

Pure capitalism doesnt have to mean no tax though, does it. The profits of capitalisation can still be taxed to fund public services. The question becomes, what should be public services be. The delivery of them can be by private enterprise, paid for by taxation :)

There's an excellent book called A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear about people who actually tried this in the US a few years back. It does not end well.

Most services are more efficient when they are centralised. Too many people would refuse to contribute towards things like park and verge maintenance, road repairs, courts and prisons, environment agency testing etc. Things that people would buy like bin collections would be tricky and would likely lead to an increase in fly tipping and rubbish burning. Deprived areas would be pitch black and strewn with rubbish. Private policing would be a shit show. Private defence??

I think the NHS is not going to keep pace with the burden placed upon it by unhealthy lifestyles and needs to either cut what it provides or we will have to pay vastly more. There isn’t an easy political solution to it so I imagine we will just bumble on. I like the system, if I get cancer it’s reassuring that I won’t be bankrupted or have my insurance pulled, but have lost the social contract of - I will do my best to not need you, but if I do you will be there for me.
In terms of schools we are better as a society with an educated population but more and more is put on schools and the expectation on parents to do extraordinarily basic stuff (feed breakfast, teach dressing and toilet training) and very basic stuff (reading, ensuring homework is done, attendance) is falling away. If you cba to take your kid to school, teach them to put on their coat, and spend 10 minutes in the evening reading together then you definitely won’t be paying for it which will lead to even less social mobility. There is lower and lower expectations on physical skills - there was a thread recently about this where a swim teacher said kids are lacking the core strength to lift themselves out of swimming pools. The whole country needs a good bollocking about our collective lack of responsibility, laziness and greed, frankly. It’s not sustainable.

It's impossible. How can there be no state involvement? Who pays for the roads, police, streetlights, street-cleaning, etc? And that's just looking out my window? There's thousands of other services paid by the state that can't be replicated by other sources. Or do you really want private police forces and armies that answer to noone?

I know somebody who thinks all benefits should be paid by charities. And then people can contribute if they want to.

The government would depend on charities. So we'd still be paying for food banks and shelters but it would be voluntary.

I guess if there were no public services then why should we pay? But it would be a shit show. Loads of poor people would starve to death, the sick would get sicker. Horrible.

Exactly, I think this is the key point. Services would be in the hands of those doing it to make money, with far less or no accountability. Why would anyone want society to be run like that?

I grew up with viewing the government as benevolent and taxation being used to care for the masses and somewhat bridge the divide between rich and poor. That doesn’t exist anymore imo. However, a capitalist system with no taxation would likely mean more poverty, more unplanned pregnancies, more homelessness or several families sharing a home etc etc.
Basically the rich would get richer on the bones of the poor. As it ever was.
The post war years were probably our best when there was a drive to improve lives. Capitalism doesn’t care.

My initial thought would be to say yes, I’ve got very little from the government compared to what I’ve paid in taxes. However in reality I’d imagine it would break down into a very, very wealthy few plus the rest of us scrabbling in the dirt for scraps very quickly.

In terms of healthcare, most people would smugly feel that they'd be better off - until they are dying. The vast majority of spending is in the last two years of a person's life - so people should be feeling like they are paying in more than they are getting out, until they are "lucky enough" to be getting their money's worth by dying of a horrible disease.

This is a human thing, to only look at your life now. The same people who were showing off 20 years ago that their house had doubled in value are the same ones complaining their kids can't get a deposit together. A society needs to be making decisions with all the different viewpoints under consideration.

I'd rather pay for public services which need paying for. Problem is we're heavily taxed and nothing works anyway. That's when I begrudge it. Especially when you're financing illegal migrants and he lifestyles of freeloaders galore.

I can't see how we would manage without any public spending at all. Roads? Rubbish disposal? Parks? Flood defences? Disability benefits? To name but a few.

No.

The climate crisis is an existential threat that could make vast swathes of land uninhabitable, cause the extinction of thousands of species, and destroy the world's economy. And you think that government spending on that is wrong?

That's a rather foolish position to take

I'd be interested to learn if there are any countries that operate under this sort of arrangement, or indeed have very low taxes, and how it works for them. I think some Middle Eastern countries (possibly the UAE) work like this to some degree?

The more I think about this, the worse it seems. Private firms in an unregulated environment would have no incentives or obligations to pay well, treat their employees well, not create monopolies, provide value for money, not impose huge price hikes, etc. This is what happens in practice when companies aren't forced not to do this. Things like workers' rights were fought for, not given because employers were kind and wanted to do the right thing.

What you're describing is not "pure capitalism". Capitalism needs things like the rule of law, protection of property rights, etc. No taxes and no state would be closer to anarchism.

I'm also happy for my taxes to go towards things like public health measures and keeping waterways safe, monitoring emissions and run off from factories and so on, and I don't trust that would get done in a fully privatised system.

I think the taxation has got out of control and is spent on things that are not 'for the common good'

I am happy to pay taxes for things that make sense to 'pool together for' - i.e. it would cost me a LOT on my own to pay for these things:

Defence & Police / courts
Healthcare
Benefits for people in dire need
Fire
Bins - street lighting
Roads & infrastructure
Education
Flood defences

That is all good - but crucially it SHOULD WORK!!. What is not good is that these services generally are badly managed and wasteful when that is literally the job of the government. They really should have no other influence on our lives and should also be laser focused on spending and managing these services. It's not that deep.

Things that get my goat are - excessive civil servants and the parasite consultants, overlapping services, quangos and 'Public Bodies', the obscene amount spent on PR and influencing, and the biggie - climate spending.

I just don't think it would be practical even if it were desirable (which I don't think it is).

So for national defence, say, there is no state army and no government to make international agreements. What happens if the state next door (which has an army) decides to invade? Everyone has to phone around the "army providers" to decide which one they want to defend their house? And what about air defences? Similarly you choose which plane should defend you but not your neighbour as they are with another firm...?

Or bin collections... everyone has an arrangement with a separate bin collector, perhaps each with their own colour of bin? Imagine the drama on bin day, or if someone has put their stuff in next door's bin?!

It just makes more sense in practical terms, if nothing else, for a lot of things to be provided collectively by the government (at whatever level) paid for by everyone collectively.

Also I do believe in providing things according to need and taking according to means (broadly). But even if you think the poor should starve in the gutters, who would take away the bodies if there were no taxes to pay for the clear-up?

Street lighting
Emergency services
Children's social care
Adult social care
Disability services
Food standards
Justice system inc prisons
Defence

Just a few things off the top of my head that taxes pay for