HES: Re: DISC--Taxing land and other things

[Deirdre McCloskey]

Dear David and Tony and Pat and All,

Giving unvoted revenue sources to a government is like giving whiskey to 
teenage boys.  It's Ship Money.  In fact, giving voted sources is not 
much different.

That's my Public-Choicey point here: we need to be construing the 
government we actually have, not an imagined group of philosopher kings 
who have read Ricardo and Henry George with critical care.  Even sweet 
and good Canada doesn't have such a government, eh?

If I wanted to get fancy about it I'd add that we'd do better to take 
Second Best a little more seriously.  That we do not live in a world in 
which margins are equalized in all other directions has always struck me 
as a devastating criticism of proposals for delicately 
Pigovian-Samuelsonian social engineering, as my heroes Knight, Buchanan, 
Coase have said.  Let's stick with a robust mythology of private 
property, which has served us well---after all, here we are, the 
descendants of peasants every one, discoursing learnedly, as a result of 
that good mythology!

Regards,

Deirdre McCloskey