Ayn Rand's position on government finance *is unusual, to say the least. Rand was not an anarchist and believed in the possibility of a legitimate state, but did not believe in taxation. This left her in the odd and almost certainly untenable position of advocating a minimal state financed voluntarily. In her essay "Government Financing in a Free Society", Rand wrote: heir interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance.
This is faintly ridiculous. From one side, the libertarian anarchist will agree that people are willing to pay for these services, but that a government monopoly in their provision will lead only to inefficiency and abuse. From the other side, the liberal statist will defend the government provision of the public goods Rand mentions, but will quite rightly argue that Rand seems not to grasp perhaps the main reason government coercion is needed, especially if one believes, as Rand does, that individuals ought to act in their rational self-interest.
It's true that we each benefit from the availability of genuinely public goods, but we benefit most if we are able to enjoy them without paying for them. A rationally self-interested individual will not voluntarily pay for public goods if she believes others will pay and she can get a free ride. But if we're all rationally self-interested, and we know we're all rationally self-interested, we know everyone else will also try to get a*free ride, in which case it is doubly irrational to voluntarily pitch in. Even if you're not inclined to ride for free, why throw good money at an enterprise bound to fail?
By threatening coercion against those who refuse to pay, the state establishes the conditions under which it would not be pointless*to pitch in—a condition in which you can be confident others will pitch in too. Tax collection solves the "assurance problem", as the game theorists call it.
Generally, Rand's moral and political philosophies run aground by failing to follow the correct but counterintuitve logic of the social contract tradition. The interests of individuals in society are best met when limits on self-interest are observed and enforced. At a sub-political level, the internalisation of moral constraints on self-interest is, seemingly paradoxically, a requirement of self-interest.
At the political level, the artful application of state coercion overcomes the conflict and mis coordination*that prevail under conditions of "natural liberty" and establishes the peaceful and prosperous conditions of "civi liberty". It's worth adding that, in my opinion, the libertarian anarchist is right that if the public-goods argument justifies the services of the night-watchman state, it also justifies much more. In my opinion, the public-goods argument goes as far as justifying a scheme of social insurance that indemnifies individuals against a certain degree of bad fortune
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/04/taxes_and_government
