Thought money didn't motivate you
It doesn't per se; I see money as a means, not as an end. But that doesn't mean that I will accept less for my work than it's worth to my employer. You see, money to me is a token that represents my best effort and which others are willing to accept in exchange for their best effort.
That's quite a simplistic look at the situation.
It is simple, but not simplistic; there is a difference. If starting tomorrow I get taxed more, thus reducing my take-home pay, I am, in essence, doing the same work for less pay. How is this
wrong?
How does having more money but brutal roads sound, or how about no police force, my analogy is equally ludricis and lacking depth as yours.
I believe that there are appropriate and inappropriate functions for a government, and therefore, appropriate and inappropriate uses of taxes. Since policing is a proper function of Government (at some level) taxes towards that end are also proper and ones which a
rational person would
want to pay. Courts and military also fall in that same category. That the Government wastes the money it takes in from taxes to provide me those services, spending it instead on nonsense doesn't mean that I should pay more to them so that they may, then, provide me with what they should be providing me with to begin with.
Would you go to a restaurant where the server ate half your soup on the way to the table and then, to add insult to injury, charged you for a second helping? If you wouldn't tolerate this behavior at a restaurant why do you tolerate it from a government?
As for roads: I don't think the Government should have a monopoly on roads, and wouldn't mind private roads; I concede that building a private highway from Las Vegas to Los Angeles or Las Vegas to Phoenix would be both expensive and exceedingly difficult; perhaps prohibitively so for private individuals or even corporations. Additionally, the Federal Government has Constitutional authority to build post roads; these two things together,
for me are enough to make me be in favor of taxes that go towards the building and maintenance of roadways and related infrastructure.
As for whether the roads are brutal or not my answer is simple: if the Government proved incapable of providing me with roads of a quality I found acceptable, I would not rely on roads to go from point A to point B. Of course, even in that case, I would be
forced to pay for those brutal roads anyways.
Altruism doesn't motivate you at all?
Not really, no. Altruism demands that I place the good of others above my own. I have no desire to do so.
