If I go out and wash someone's car, and they pay me 20,000 satoshis, why do I get a letter from some rando on the other side of the country demanding I pay him 1,000 satoshis?

Assuming you mean the random is the tax department the answer would be that taxes fund governments and governments determine the wealth of nations. If you wash someones car in a nation with a weak government and history of weak and corrupt government chances are you will receive less for washing someones car.

'Well if citizens are holding the CCP at gunpoint to scare them into acting in the national interest, then it isn't too much different from America's system'

The difference between the Chinese government and western 'liberal democracies' for example the US system, is that in western democracies an administration can fail to deliver for most citizens and simply gets voted out and onto their cushy retirement speaking tours and jobs with the corporate sponsors who owned them all along. In China all the politburo know that their position wealth and privilege can last a long time- but only if they continue to provide good economic results- so they do...or die!

Western governments have allowed the private bankers, who own them, to MISUSE fiat debt leveraged capital issuance and allocation- squandering our collective liquid capital and undermining our past present and future.

As long as most westerners don't wake up to how this has happened things will not be likely to improve. While Bitcoin does provide a small amount of relief by giving us an alternative SoV it has largely been captured and controlled by the sly bankers who have allowed it as a speculative KYCed and taxed commodity but largely blocked it as a MoE.