But there's at least a pretense that it (goods purchased with tax money) will be, right? Forget about what actually happens for a moment and consider that the tax-collecting colonists didn't even seem to bother with such a pretense. The way I understand it, they just bought the goods, turned around, and sold them again (which does not align with any notion of "providing government"). Of course, I know very little about economics or history, but I just wanted to point out what I thought was a logical inconsistency in the root comment.