So if the people are naive, perhaps even to the point of completely unaware or even unconsciously supporting the state, does that constitute a legitimate government? After all, a 'legal contract' requires informed consent, but if people don't even bother to inform themselves and just follow along what others tell them to do, are we now beyond having a legitimate government and in fact live within a dictatorship or fascist state instead? Or would the legitimacy be considered valid just with our participation with it as it is up to each individual to do their due diligence and it is NOT the governments responsibility to teach people about how it works?
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Very good question and lots of food for thought. Much of it is becomes a question of individual beliefs.
For me personally, I abhor lack of full disclosure which doesn't allow for people to make their own individual, informed decision. If they insist on making everyone play their game, then it should be their FULL responsibility to inform everyone of the rules of that game, how to play it and to inform of any rule changes. However, I see why they don't, because that would lead to full scale rebellion or civil war. The alternative would be to give the option to get out of the system, which would mean that they'd have to actually make it appealing to be in the system.
So ultimately we are in a dictatorship. How can it be anything else if there is no way to opt out? You have probably reached the closest anyone can to opting out, but you are still having to play that game in the form of property taxes in order to not have them forcibly remove you from the land.
At the moment our dictatorship allows for more freedom than some and I think that is used to the government's advantage via the media as they tell us how much worse it is elsewhere. In comparison to these places we have more freedom, so people continue to believe in that freedom, despite the fact that it is dwindling at a fast pace.
Legitimacy is just a word, a concept. Are they legitimate for me? No. For others? Quite likely, but while there is a large scale belief in them, they will continue to do what they wish to do and it's not going to benefit anyone, but themselves.