Bloody good on Norway. Now if you want Norwegian taxes or the Norwegian government, move to Norway. I'll take the American moral view on taxation, and fight taxation tooth-and-nail until I die, regardless of the pragmatics of it. It's about choice, and freedom, not the actual dollars and cents.
Come up with a scheme that moves functions currently executed by the government into a privately run, voluntary collective, and chances are I'd join it, participate, and pay as much as - or more than - I do now. But if you use the hammer of government force to mandate participation, I - for one - will never accept it as just.
Norwegian examples simply aren't applicable to the rest of the world. Here in the UK we are often compared to Norway, since we are both North Sea oil countries. Well, Norway makes 20x the oil revenue per head of the population than we do. That covers up a an awful lot. We don't have the luxury of economic inefficiencies that Norway can get away with.
For many generations the American moral view, like most everyone else's, has included taxpayer-funded programs that promote the general welfare. The only debates are about how much and which ones. Anarchists and libertarians have found negligible traction with the voters. If they want Somalia, they know where to find it.
As for "they'd pay more voluntarily", I just don't believe they'd go to all the trouble to dismantle our one crude solution to the free rider problem if none of them intend to become free riders. Usually when anyone says it's not about the money, it's about the money.
Come up with a scheme that moves functions currently executed by the government into a privately run, voluntary collective, and chances are I'd join it, participate, and pay as much as - or more than - I do now. But if you use the hammer of government force to mandate participation, I - for one - will never accept it as just.