I have thought about the myriad ways in which money flows toward tax incentives and away from high taxes and have concluded that taxes play a profound role in shaping history. Give officials control of the tax code and they can change society, either deliberately through the wise use of incentives or, more commonly, inadvertently through a misunder

Governments might therefore need to invent entirely new taxes—perhaps an information tax, paid on information and in information rather than in dollars.