This is actually why I support-- in principle at least-- welfare programs. I don't think of it as useless people being paid for nothing, I think of it as useless people being paid to stay out of my way while I'm working. I have problems with current welfare programs because they undermine work ethics and family values, to the extent that I'm afraid they do so intentionally, but the principle of the government taking some of my money to ensure that non-producers can still be consumers does not bother me. It is essential in an industrialized society to keep a certain percentage of the population permanently unemployed-- or non-productively employed-- in order to maintain a functional balance between the demand for labor and the demand for manufactured goods. In general, the better this system channels more talented people into productive employment and less talented people into welfare, the better the system is going to work for everyone-- especially the more talented.
You have to understand, I don't. I don't trust the Congress any better than I trust the invisible hand to sufficiently allocate taxes. The only entity that I trust to allocate taxes in a fashion that is beneficial to society is me. The difference between the Congress and the market isn't a matter of competence so much as it is a matter that-- as relatively powerless as I am-- the Congress is the force that I have more control over. If you offered me the choice between Congress and an agency that I could wield even more control over, I would choose the latter, and so forth between any two possible agencies until I ultimately had the option of choosing myself.
Also, I never concern myself with the "most efficient" allocation of resources any more than I worry about perfection in any other endeavor. I only concern myself with whether the current solution is good enough for right now and whether or not it can be improved upon in the future. Not only is it impossible for the Pareto optimal to ever be achieved, societies and economic systems change too fast for any solution to remain the Pareto optimal for very long. There is always room for improvement, and so as long as we have the capacity to improve something we have a moral imperative to do so.
The problem with economics is that it is effectively a sub-discipline of biology that has deluded itself into thinking it is a sub-discipline of mathematics. A biologist would never theorize that excessive production of white blood cells is harmful, merely because those resources could have been used to build muscles or nerves instead, unless the surplus of white blood cells was damaging in itself. The allocation of resources does not need to be efficient, especially when those resources are abundant, as long as the allocation of resources is sufficient to keep the economic system functioning.
The beautiful thing about using force is that it means you don't need to win the argument. If the government can not ever convince you to allow them to take your money, by all means try to stop them. If you win the fight, you will have proven your point, and if you lose we'll just continue taking your money anyway.
I'm not being flippant here, either. If you are right and it is possible to maintain a functional system of government without coercive taxation, the only way you will ever be able to prove it is by actually doing it-- and you'll never be able to prove the efficacy of non-coercion within a coercive system. I do not agree with you morally or practically, but I would be fascinated to see how your experiment would play out on large enough scale to matter.
No, but if the number of people using the site without paying starts discouraging donors from doing so, the site will be forced to shut down to the detriment of paying and non-paying users alike. That's the essence of the the free rider problem, which is essentially a form of the tragedy of the commons.
It could be argued that this is a good thing, since the 1% essentially have a better understanding of what our society needs to continue functioning and have a larger vested interest in seeing that it does. Not to mention that if paying more taxes gave you a bigger say in how our tax dollars were spent, we would have people generally being far more willing to pay more in taxes. One might even argue that the wealthy are at least somewhat intellectually and morally superior to the poor, since they have managed to avoid the personal failings that are most often responsible for downward mobility and generational poverty.
I wouldn't make this argument myself, given the demonstrable moral myopia of the business and political elite in this country, but there is still some truth to it.
Why? Why should anyone be allowed to vote, for that matter? Remember, every dime of unearned wealth and unaccountable power that the extremely wealthy and the multinational corporations have in this country was either given to them or enabled by the very same government that we the people elected time and time again. If we are going to vote consistently for less and less democracy, what is the point of trying to preserve it?