To Mason and John: It occurs to me that your main interest is not in how to interpret Clark. It is in Georgism. So let me deal with that, from the entrepreneur view of course. By doing this, I can comment on what I think are your real concerns while elucidating the point of view that I have described as present in the work of Davenport, Knight and Mises but which.in my opinion, has gone largely unrecognized by historians of economic thought as well as mainstream economists. Surely, you both realize that, regarding a place to park money, land is not superior to others places. If it were, under the conditions of the market economy, the only sensible explanation would have to be that entrepreneurs had systematically undervalued land in relation to other things and actions. We would not expect them, once they found this out, to repeat their errors. It follows that to tax land in the future and to not tax the other things and actions whose market value increase would be unjust. The "parking money" argument for taxing land does not wash. (Is it possible that what you really have in mind is taxing inheritance and gifts?) Property and actions may increase in market value for reasons that are not economic. But one must assume that this fact is beside the point. since practically everyone would agree that income earned from noneconomic actions is in a different category from income earned in helping with the supply of consumer goods. In other words, if you can show that an increase in the price of land is due to something other than entrepreneurship or luck, we must shift the argument to other considerations besides economics. I might well agree with whatever conclusions you reach about taxing an increase in the price due to noneconomic considerations. One of Mason's concerns, as I interpret him, is with speculative gain. He thinks that speculative gains should be treated differently from income earned from other economic sources. To the extent that speculative gains are due to luck, I would agree. And, no doubt, more of such gains are due to luck than earnings from other activities. But speculative gains are not entirely due to luck. To the extent that they are due to the making of more accurate appraisals than others, I disagree. A person who makes a more accurate appraisal of property may also divert it to a different use. Thus an entrepreneur who anticipates that farmland is more valuable as living space can dissuade investment in irrigation or fertilization by bidding the land away from those who would improve on its use in order to farm it. Since it is not practical to distinguish entrepreneurs who plan to divert property to a different use from those who do not, an effort to tax the latter will almost certainly dampen the incentives of the former. Also, to tax speculative gains would not only reduce speculation, it would reduce hedging. In short, speculation performs an economic function. Finally, regarding luck. If it were practical to distinguish increases in market value due to luck from those due to entrepreneurship, I would agree to allowing lucky increases to be taxed. Lucky increments in wealth are unearned. However, I do not know a way to do this. Do you? Of course, governments impose heavy taxes on people who play the lottery. One might argue that this is a tax on lucky increases. On the other hand, one might argue that it is a tax on play. Whatever one calls it, it is a game run by the government and not a market economy phenomenon. So it is not directly relevant to the issue. The issue is whether a government can, practically speaking, tax gains in market interaction that are due to luck without causing consequences that are worse than the money benefits coming from the taxes. Best wishes, Pat Gunning