possibly staying up too late and thinking too much
I wonder what "free market" government would look like, if we all voted with our wallets by directly allocating our taxes in the way we wished them to be spent. Elected representatives would suggest a funding plan (presumably not all officials would recommend the same plan), and then citizens could tweak the budget by funding each area in the way they felt was most appropriate. People would campaign for their favorite government services around tax time. Government agencies would then have to make do with whatever the citizens alloted them that budget year. Would education come out ahead or behind? What about the military? (Sorry, we're going to have to skip this war in Gabloonistan - no budget for it!) How would our roads look? Would some vital services wind up hardly being funded at all... and how much would people miss them? Just how awful of an idea would this be? I can't help but wonder.