In essence: Unless you're in the woods fashioning your own clothes, tools, shelter, education, communication, transportation, health care, using only natural resources that fully replenish, you're dependent on some system. The level of dependency varies, and the nature and level of support varies, but it is present.
> which amounts to "we think you once may have benefitted from something we did without consulting you, so you owe us a share of your profits from now until the end of time".
A fairly biased-sounding interpretation, particularly the "once may have benefitted". The whole point of the argument is that there are so many assets that are not of your making: Educated workers. Healthy workers. Means of transportation. Educated customers. Healthy customers. Ways to communicate. I can see arguing if these are more/less efficient or reliable via free market vs another system, but to say "once may have benefitted" is pretty disingenuous. Heck, living to be old enough to MAKE the clever decisions, being educated enough at that time (oh, you were home schooled? How did your instructor learn what they learned?) and healthy enough (how do we know what IS healthy? One need only look at certain remedies that are still passed around today to see we can't just count on our own opinions on cause/effect) and had customers likewise, and a common currency, not to mention not having someone with enough friends and weapons take everything away from you - these didn't manifest because someone is just that awesome, they are the result of a system.
Re: Taxation, here's a libertarian-friendly argument: Let's imagine a group of people get together and agree to a set of rules. They agree on consequences for breaking those rules. Now you have a govt and taxation. "But _I_ didn't choose these!" you declare. True. I support that people should be able to revoke their citizenship and leave. "But it's not fair to have these rules forced upon me! I should be able to stay, or..." It totally isn't "fair". Or is it? How do you define "fair"? Regardless, there are number of ways to set your own rules that have been proven to work: negotiate a price in a mutually agreeable accommodation with enough people to enforce the rules you want. We call this government, and one of the rules is taxation. Most agreed-upon sets of rules define additional ways to change the rules, but with or without those changes, all governments are such systems.
I truly do support the idea that people should be able to revoke their citizenship, because being born and early childhood are a place where you have no choices - but you don't get to keep "your" land and "your" property when they ARE the result of the system you are rejecting. An investment manager doesn't get to keep all the profit they generate because THEY increased the value - a 200% return is still 0 if you start with 0. But yeah, if anyone wants to leave that isn't a criminal, I think the system should support it. They are welcome to find some place to live that isn't already under the control of a group of free-thinkers that have leveraged their natural talents to be able to enforce their rules. Good luck to them.
Outside of that, I don't understand the argument that governments are somehow inherently evil when they are the direct result of the very principles that argument is arguing in favor of.
What "system"? You don't need any "system" to negotiate with another private party for mutual benefit. I have something you want, you have something I want, we agree to trade—done. No one else can take any credit for that.
A fairly biased-sounding interpretation, particularly the "once may have benefitted".
I disagree, but it works just as well if you drop the "once may have" part and abbreviate it to "we think you benefitted from something we did without consulting you". Doing something which you think benefits someone else does not entitle you to compensation. Compensation must be negotiated and mutually agreed to in advance. If you don't have an agreement like that in place then you have effectively chosen to grant the other party a gift. You may argue that they should reciprocate (though they can reasonably disagree—what you see as beneficial to them may appear otherwise from their point of view) but you are not entitled to compensation for your unilateral action.
Let's imagine a group of people get together and agree to a set of rules. They agree on consequences for breaking those rules. Now you have a govt and taxation.
No, what you have at this point is a voluntary club with membership dues. You don't have government and taxation until you start enforcing those rules on people who never agreed to them. At that point your club turns into a criminal organization, similar to the Mafia. When your criminal organization grows a PR branch and starts claiming that it's criminal actions are "legitimate" and "for the public good", then you have become a government (but that doesn't mean you're no longer a criminal organization).
"But _I_ didn't choose these!" you declare. True. I support that people should be able to revoke their citizenship and leave.
Why should they leave? They have every right to stay. That citizenship was forced on you without your consent. You never agreed to give anything up as a condition of rejecting it.
you don't get to keep "your" land and "your" property when they ARE the result of the system you are rejecting
Your property rights are your by natural law, created by the mixing of labor and unowned land and subsequently transferred between private individuals by mutual consent, and not the result of any "system". No government has any right to take them away.
I don't understand the argument that governments are somehow inherently evil when they are the direct result of the very principles that argument is arguing in favor of.
Clearly you have no idea what principles those are, or you wouldn't have made that mistake. The one thing all governments have in common is that they employ force against people who never agreed to those rules and did not first use force against them. That is diametrically opposed to the principles that argument is in favor of—in particular the Non-Aggression Principle.
(1) Skimming Wikipedia suggests otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax