Don't you see the built-in contradiction there? 1) Value is determined by voluntary exchange. 2) Governments circumvent the voluntary exchange mechanism to provide public services to people.

I agree that every modern society is leaning toward socialism, but wouldn't you agree that nearly every country is in insurmountable debt because of this? Is every single government in the world terrible at spending money or is there a basic principle that makes it inevitable for them to bankrupt society?

It is pretty fruitless to argue this stuff on a macro scale, but we can easily perform basic economic experiments on single people or small groups of people. It is obvious, for example, that humans will use a resource differently when it is free than when they pay for it. People on food subsidy programs are extremely likely to spend their entire stipend in one sitting at the grocery store on things that they don't particularly need. They have very little incentive to be frugal, use coupons, choose non-name brand products, or conserve in any way. (anecdote alert) My aunt spends her food stamp card buying like four 24 packs of monster energy drink for her kids. Would she do this if she were spending her own money?

So we can pretty much take for granted the concept that people spend other people's money poorly on themselves. The incentives are very clear cut. If I spend 20 dollars on a gift for you, I am pretty likely to put some thought into that gift. If I give you 20 dollars to buy something for yourself, you're going to spend that money a lot differently (on average) than you spend the 20 dollars that was already in your pocket.

These negative incentives are amplified when you're spending someone else's money on someone else. If I give you 20 dollars to buy something for your friend's birthday, you're less likely to spend that money thoughtfully than if it were your own money. If I write you a blank check to get that gift, the negative incentives are even greater. You are in no way accountable for the results of this gift. You have no need to be frugal, to try to get a good deal. You have no need to even really care if the other person liked the gift, as he can just return it and pocket the money. These are all core problems with the collectivist model. Can you tell me in similarly simple terms how voluntary exchange can cause such harm to the exchangers?

While collectivism held sway, the global GDP was a stagnant horizontal line for the first 199,850 years since homo sapiens emerged, and then a sharp nearly vertical spike for the last 150 thanks to a sudden injection of individual rights and free enterprise. This unbelievable progress is met with nothing but skepticism and scorn by most scholars. Scholars with the brass-plated balls to state that we consume too much, that our standard of living is too high, that money shouldn't determine everything, and that free trade exploits poor people and children. Scholars who would do well to reacquaint themselves with the default state of humanity: abject poverty, hunger, and a miserable struggle to acquire the absolute basics of life support.