“I know I’m channeling a little Lysander Spooner, but I’m genuinely curious what the arguments are by the statists that I AM subject to their unilateral, arbitrary and typically destructive laws.”
It boils down to force. You may not have agreed, but they outnumber & outforce you (us). Might doesn’t make right, but it does make might. I mean, I’m as happy to sound off in forums like this as anyone, and pat myself on the back for being bold, but I didn’t scrawl a Spoonerish statement on my tax form and send that in instead of a faithfully-filled out form.
My guess is most of the people here did that as well including the faculty. My guess is Rothbard obeyed all the tax & other laws all his life, not because he agreed with them but because he had to and because he did not want to give them an excuse to toss him into prison.
Of course none of that makes this whole edifice legitimate, but it does make it a brute fact of life: as a matter of fact (not as a matter of right) they have power over our lives and we need to persuade enough people and/or the right people that this is wrong.