A lot of people (who don't pay/file taxes) make this argument. If you don't believe in paying taxes then how would food safety be paid for, or how would national defense be paid for?
Which argument did you mean?
The IRS lists
several arguments that the Secretary has determined are frivolous. My argument is not on there, and Hendrickson's site shows refund checks and other documents from the IRS demonstrating that this argument is actually correct. Here it is:
"Taxable Income" can only mean what a person gets by exercising some kind of federal privilege, so those who exercise no such privilege are not liable for the tax.
You can find good answers to just about any rendering of the general question "If you don't believe in paying taxes then how would ____ be paid for?" I'll give you a few links for the two items you used:
Food Safety:
http://www.westonaprice.org/National Defense:
https://mises.org/etexts/defensemyth.pdfGenerally, the things that are paid for with taxes fall into two classes. The first class includes "National Defense": Problems created, invented, or imagined by governments in order to justify their publicly sanctioned privilege to violate citizens through taxation, fines, and incarceration. The second class includes food safety: People generally pay for what they need, but if someone offers it to them "for free" and does a half-decent job
at least in the beginning, then they will learn to expect it "for free" even when "for free" means "in return for being violated through taxation, fines, and incarceration," and continue in that expectation (as you seem to) even as that expectation tends to multiply the cost and diminish the quality.
You may uncover a problem that cannot be solved without a government that enforces tax laws against its citizens (in other words, steals from them under the color of law) in order to raise the revenue required to solve that problem. At that point, you have to start asking whether you consider theft to be immoral, and if you do, then decide whether you can justify immoral behavior using the goal of that immoral behavior. My answer is no, the end does not justify immorality, and therefore such a problem ought to remain unsolved until humanity finds a moral way to solve it.
Another simple answer to food safety concerns is this: Eat a little bit of anything new to see how it suits you, don't eat a lot of anything, and pay attention to your body and your health, and the reputation of the suppliers from whom you get your food.