> Symptoms of what?
If you're looking for root causes, the place to look is human nature. What do people naturally do, without even thinking?
You get cities because people need things from other people, so there's value in living close together. Cities overstrain the environment because, well, you packed in a ton of people all doing things in close proximity.
You get inequality of wealth and power because of network effects. Why do people form networks? Would it really be better without these networks?
> And poverty breeds overpopulation which again breeds more poverty...
Yet many nations got out of that cycle, so it's not that simple. And poverty is consistently on the decline globally, so doing nothing is a great strategy at the moment.
> You want to solve tax theft or thousands of other government problems?
Tax avoidance is easy: lower the rates to what people will actually pay. Even when you can charge high rates, you still quickly hit a point where it's counterproductive. Governments, like all kinds of organizations, work best when they limit themselves to a well defined mission rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Why are we stuck with governments? Again, it's human nature. It used to be that people were stuck with a dictator running their life: you'd work all day and send a portion of it to the dictator, who used that to bribe his lieutenants to support him, and they'd make sure some other invader didn't take over.
Democracy simply means that instead of having a dictator confiscate our wealth, we elect representatives who take our money to bribe our neighbors so they can stay in power.
We live with this protection racket of taxation because, fundamentally, power struggles are inherent to human nature. The best we've been able to manage is to set various groups at odds with each other so no one has too much power.