Is health care a right? Is free speech a right? What is a right?

[Polk]

I posed it as a question because I was interested in hearing your take. The larger issue you seem to be hitting as is that many libertarians see their ideas as ones about efficiency., without much concern for the "morality" of the action. I agree with you that the morality imposes an actual constraint (if the desire is to be consistent).

I still think the argument places too much emphasis on form over function. There doesn't seem, from my perspective, a significant difference between the following transactions.

1) taxes paid -> government provides service -> service received

2) taxes paid -> government pays service provider -> service provider provides service - service received

There are differences that have an practical impact on public policy, but that's a separate question.

What if we went to a: Taxes lowered->private citizen takes the money that would have gone to the government to purchase what they desire from the service provider->service provided. Take the government inefficiency out of it.

That's not really relevant to the question we were discussing.