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This is simultaneously obviously true core of the dispute. Having said "fuck you I'm leaving" what consideration do the latter owe the former other than their enmity. Go away, we don't want you. We will not die in that man's company, that fears to die with us.
The latter doesn't owe the former anything.
Taxes were used in exchange or welfare/infrastructure/protection. Those are the concrete things that are being traded, anything else is abstract.
It might be a very useful narrative if the citizens of a nation do believe that they owe something more to a nation than what they already pay in taxes, some kind of loyalty. It might even be good for the individuals because it forces the group to stay around and improve things other than leaving.
But some countries are so far gone, and an individuals life is so short relative to institutional change that I can't in good faith suggest to anyone "just stay and make your country better bro".
If my friend laments to me that this country sucks, I won't tell him to stay around and potentially waste half of his life just voting and campaigning harder, I'd suggest him to leave to somewhere that better fits his values.
Much like marriages, some of them are better when fixed through perseverance and some of them are better when dissolved, I'm not going to ask a battered wife of a drunkard just to stay around and make the marriage better, I'll tell her to leave.
Precisely, and so I ask you the same question I asked @hustlegrinder. If the only governing principle is "what's in it for me" and all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't they just take your stuff?
Because that's something you can only get away with so many times before no more stuff is being made? I'm sure this is not the steelman of your question, but I think my answer to that is already embedded in my previous comment.
Answer me this? What option is better if a country truly royally sucks? Or what would you tell a friend who finds his country unbearable. Don't imagine he lives in the US, or Canada or Germany. Imagine he lives in cartel territory in Mexico.
My ideal allows those who love their countries and those who don't an option. Just because you have the option to leave doesn't mean you need to exercise it.
Your ideal is to treat people as interchangeable cogs in the economic machine. Components to be removed and replaced as one sees fit.
I do not share this ideal.
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