This kind of thing is often considered one of the main roles of government: funding important projects on a constant basis over a long period of time. It’s hard to fund those with charity; charity funding tends to be inconsistent over time, and people who do give to charity are likely to give to whatever cause is “popular” that year. I wouldn’t want to try to fund “maintenance of one specific bridge every year over the next 50 years” with just charitable contributions from people who use that bridge and benefit from it, because some years they might donate more then enough to maintain the bridge, but some years they might not. Taxation and a constant revenue stream are just a more efficient and consistent solution to the problem. That’s likely true in funding long-term science as well.
In fact, this is a historical theory for how the first large governments formed. In both ancient Egypt and ancient China, the large central governments were able to build massive canal systems that dramatically improved farming and therefore the quality of life of everyone. It would have been pretty unlikely to create those through just the voluntary contribution (either in money or in labor) of people; too many people would have defected to make that a practical solution, at least over the long term.
That being said, if you’re relying on governments for that, there’s always the risk that the government will decide to take your tax money and spend it on something useless (in the case of Egypt, that would be the pyramids), so some kind of auditing of the government’s spending and feedback to improve it is fairly important.
This kind of thing is often considered one of the main roles of government: funding important projects on a constant basis over a long period of time. It’s hard to fund those with charity; charity funding tends to be inconsistent over time, and people who do give to charity are likely to give to whatever cause is “popular” that year. I wouldn’t want to try to fund “maintenance of one specific bridge every year over the next 50 years” with just charitable contributions from people who use that bridge and benefit from it, because some years they might donate more then enough to maintain the bridge, but some years they might not. Taxation and a constant revenue stream are just a more efficient and consistent solution to the problem. That’s likely true in funding long-term science as well.
In fact, this is a historical theory for how the first large governments formed. In both ancient Egypt and ancient China, the large central governments were able to build massive canal systems that dramatically improved farming and therefore the quality of life of everyone. It would have been pretty unlikely to create those through just the voluntary contribution (either in money or in labor) of people; too many people would have defected to make that a practical solution, at least over the long term.
That being said, if you’re relying on governments for that, there’s always the risk that the government will decide to take your tax money and spend it on something useless (in the case of Egypt, that would be the pyramids), so some kind of auditing of the government’s spending and feedback to improve it is fairly important.