No "spin", I'm just trying to discern whether Friedman defends Land Value Taxes the same way that he defends, say, tuition vouchers. As an anarchist he of course does not consider government vouchers "ideal", but has has argued forcefully that tuition vouchers would be a big step toward freedom in education markets. I would hope he would say something similar about replacing all income/sales taxes with local site value taxes.
I relied mostly on secondary sources (geolibertarian web sites) when I compiled my list of LVT advocates, but I can't find the information that led me to include DF. I don't think it was his 2002 posting on sci.econ that said:
DF) There are real economic arguments for taxing the site value of land, as well as practical problems with measuring site value and administering such a tax. The argument was about whether governments should be required to compensate those people who are injured by government regulations. If you think site value tax minimizes excess burden, you can use site value taxation to raise the money for compensation. (DF
However, I've found a paper by Friedman (at http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Metarules/Metarules.html) that concludes "the failure of the government to apply the simplest possible version of site value taxation does not leave me optimistic about the prospects for more elaborate versions". So I've removed him from my list at http://ecolibertarian.org/lvt-advocates, as I'm now losing hope that he would want to be listed next to his father as even an LVT sympathizer.
