Yeah it’s inefficient, but that “deadweight loss” gives you the common infrastructure required for a modern society (roads, police, fire, et al)

In the US nearly all of your examples of what we get in return are funded by sales and property taxes

Specifically, roughly 70% of the federal budget is spent on the military, social security, medicare, and medicaid.

Not to mention a gigantic military budget including all the alphabet agencies... all funded by that inefficiency.

Perhaps there is a way to pay for these things besides taxes? Unthinkable!

Costs are deducted though, so it is only 30% of the profits.

Technically everything is a cost, though, right?

These things are precisely defined in accounting terms though. Whatever you bartered away had a cost basis, and whatever you got in exchange has a fair market value. The difference is income.

What if you live in a closed bartering community of abstract economic business entities and everything is a cost basis for something else?