How is that any different than a subscription fee?
Be it some MMORPG or streaming service... it's still a large number of people putting in money for infrastructure and services and often end up with money being misappropriated against what the people want and someone somewhere making bank off it. Look at all the cancelled shows on Netflix that people loved, or shows that were given the greenlight where people are like 'what the actual fuck' (like that one pedo show)... and then flaunt money to piss of other people like with the writers strike and Netflix posting a 900K a year for some AI developer...
Taxes were the example of how to leech on the people under the guise of a protection racket. They knew with subscriptions what they were upon creation, a racket without the promise of protection. It’s getting bled by a third party, and now it’s multiple parties all hoping you’ll forget they’re slowly milking you too.
It's a little funny, but it's better to crowd source a society and pay for things up front than it is to have every single thing be a toll. Could you imagine fire fighters verifying your credit card before they come out?
Why are those the only two options? If we're free to organize ourselves and our communities how we want we could work out all sorts of innovative ways to make life suck less instead of one size fits all. Especially when that one size has a habit of impacting marginalized people more.