VAT is fair because it's essentially a fee for a service. People are working on the borders to sort out illegal imports, for example. This is a service and I feel OK paying for such a service. You are not obliged to consume those services and since rich people can afford to consume more they naturally pay more taxes in the form of VAT. Income tax, on the other hand, is not fair. In fact, it is unehtical because it basically means that your wealth does not really belong to you. The government gets to get the first cut and you will get the lousy remnants.
Giving a signature empowers the rule of law, which is corrupt in its roots. Because people are unable to enforce the law in a just manner, it should be discarded as an obsolete fallacy. What is more, contracts are often abused by including small prints in them to rip people off. I think people are giving out signatures way too easily. It is not OK to have pages and pages long contracts just to form a gym membership, for example. You're right about the things forced upon you without needing you to sign them first though.
VAT is not part of the service you are buying... It's a third party (the government) ripping you both (the seller and the buyer) off.... A fee, you say, what in hell gives the government the right to add a fee to a product? Fair taxes don't exist IMO, for example what if the government decides to triple the VAT taxes, would you still find it to be fair then? or when they 10-fold it? VAT is still THEFT from our wealth!
Also VAT is in no way correlated to the people working on borders. If you feel you want to pay for people working on the borders, then buy THAT service. But don't justify VAT (which is being forced onto everyone) for that purpose. For instance, I like roads, they are partly payed via income tax, so now income tax is okay, no fucking way.
I am confused if you like government or not, it seems you like some of the services and you even approve some of their robberies of our wealth (VAT). On the other hand you don't like income tax and hate being governed.
In regards to the signature, its peoples own choice to sign stuff, if they don't read the fine prints that is their own responsibility IMO. If you don't like a gym contract with many pages of fine print, you can also decide to NOT take the service. I really don't understand your problem with signatures tbh, yes people could be more carefull, but that is not really the fault of the signatures right?