> these policies are paternalistic and violate consent.

Like I said, if you don't like living in a society where the rules aren't to your liking, you can go live by yourself in the woods where there's no one to violate your consent.

What if the majority of voters in that society vote for "I got mine" policies? That's what we're arguing here; this isn't a situation about a handful of malcontents.

The person deciding is ostensibly the person elected to do the deciding.

> What makes you the person who gets to decide for them what they should or shouldn’t spend their money on?

I don't know who is qualified to be that person, but somebody has to if you want to avoid tyranny-of-the-majority. "You can do any goddamn thing you want as long as you can convince 51 voters out of 100 to back you" is not sustainable. (See e.g. unpunished lynchings in the post-Civil War South.)

It might not be sustainable in your opinion, but it is literally what democracy is. Do you support democracy or not?