Professor Hoppe has posted a very interesting Interview on Taxation — as he notes in prefatory remarks:
A few months ago, a French journalist, Mr. Nicolas Cori, approached me with the request for an interview on the subject of taxation, to be published in the French monthly “Philosophie Magazine,” in the context of current “tax reform” debates in France.
When internecine battles of state-level tapeworms arose, I admit I used to root for the side obstensively fighting for lower taxes, less regulations, what have you. Then I read Block and everything changed.
These tell-tale signs of a dictatorship all reinforce Mises’s observation: the regime can only last if it maintains the illusion that it is beneficial to the masses. Mere physical strength is not sufficient, because it is ultimately ideas that determine which way the soldiers and police point their guns.
Cheap money, buyer tax incentives, lack of new supply, nothing seems to keep home prices elevated.
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed • James C. Scott • Yale University Press, 1998 • 445 pages.
