--- Pat Gunning wrote: > If a tax on oil was anticipated, it would reduce the > incentive to search for oil. > Surely George did not have in mind taxing desert > land. H. George did not address this question, to my knowledge. To him subsoil hydrocarbons and minerals were just another form of pay dirt yielding rent. His critics in his day made much of soil erosion, and Walras chastened them for their unbalanced treatment. Hotelling wrote one of his classic articles on how to value depletion. So, BTW, did Herbert Hoover, and it is a good article, whatever we may think of his Presidency. L.C. Gray, and Herbert Davenport, also wrote about soil erosion, Gray minimizing its economic value, and Davenport first crying alarm, and later calling himself a single taxer of the lesser persuasion, or some such qualifying phrase. Some latter-day Georgists have addressed mineral economics more fully. I assembled a good group of them in *Extractive Resources and Taxation*, 1967. I can cite other sources for whoever might ask: some Georgist, some not. Considering the extensive history of thought on the subject, some quite sophisticated,there is no need now to go back to square one. Mason Gaffney