I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, I think the debate we having sucks because neither of us can prove the case, governments have a monopoly on money, and where the money goes until we have competition for setups. So I could make the greatest case for no free services but its all pie in the sky since we can't run it in practice, the fact that we don't have that optionality to me is already an issue, and limiting of freedoms

Nothing is free, you're either paying for it through taxes or inflation, and I think that governments don't NEED to be the distributor of income, it can be done better by people now that we have better money.

I would love to see different countries, states/provinces, regions, and even towns having variations of this and see what works best for different scales. For example a small town, people could have a monthly payment for IE firefighting services, whereas a big city taxes are a better option

Small towns can have treasuries, from bonds issued on a local level to pay for certain things the town needs like roads, since the money is managed and collected locally, you know whose house you need to knock on if funds aren't going where they should.

Once your towns infrastructure is based on the towns ability to generate income, there will be far less mooching and you'll see how cheap these services should actually be