The person I was responding to clarified his position on taxes. Maximizing taxation is reductio ad absurdum, whereas there are quite a few examples of countries that don't rely on tax income to maintain themselves.

> "But the Saudi government—a highly autocratic regime—has historically resisted taxing its citizens for a reason: Taxes empower people to demand more from their government, and they can often be a trigger for democratization. “Taxation plays a profound role in the rise of democracy,” Sven Steinmo, a political-science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told me."[0]

[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/sa...