I haven't seen Avatar. That's good. It means I can take a clearer look at the underlying policy problem.
The policy problem in Avatar is that some blue people own all of some valuable natural resource, and won't let anybody else have any.
Lloyd George, as UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressed the same policy problem in his 1909 "People's Budget". The British aristocracy owned the land, just as the blue people owned the valuable natural resource in Avatar. I don't know if the blue people in Avatar used it for hunting foxes; probably they had peculiar customs of their own.
Inheritance taxes, and taxes on undeveloped natural resources, could have solved the problem in Avatar just as well as in the UK. Wealth taxes could have worked also. The blue people would have needed to sell off some of the valuable stuff, just to pay the taxes on it.
Progressives generally support such taxes. I don't know why Hollywood made such a reactionary movie. Maybe the blue people are just cuter than the British aristocracy, so we ought to be on their side, against progressives like Lloyd George.
Why are our ethical views so ethereal? Why are we all such suckers for framing?
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Very true Nick. And also I guess that the opportunity cost placed on land would only really make a difference through the “income effect” on the land owner in the first place.
Guess it all has to be value judgments – most people prefer blue aliens to the British I guess 😉
Hey Nick, I was thinking of your Avatar/Alberta analogy this morning while reading an op-ed piece from a former Calgary Herald editor.
First the background (someone beat you to the punch, but in a different context):
‘Avatar Sands’ backers see a Canadian plot
It is the year 2154 on planet Pandora, and the Sky people are desecrating the land of the indigenous Navi population as they hunt for a buried mineral called unobtanium.
Rewind 144 years, and this movie plot is precisely the scenario playing out in Canada’s tar sands, according to a cohort of environmental groups that ran a full-page advertisement in Variety magazine yesterday.
The ad, which runs under the headline ‘Canada’s Avatar Sands,’ is an obvious reference to the Oscar-nominated Avatar, an animated film centred on the plight of the Navi people and their quest to save the sacred Hometree.
Now today’s article:
Oilsands a sitting duck for critics
An ecologist who had been mining government documents disclosed that 164 animals – including black bears, foxes and deer – had been killed over the past eight years at major oilsands’ operations. Very embarrassing news for the industry, especially in light of ongoing coverage of the trial in Edmonton where Syncrude is defending itself against charges by both federal and provincial prosecutors that were laid after 1,600 ducks drowned in the company’s tailings ponds last year. The same ducks coated in black goo that turned up on our television screens as Alberta’s deputy premier was returning home from a visit to Washington designed to calm lawmakers’ anxiety about Alberta’s so-called dirty oil.
The industry PR bandwagon suffered another hit when it was revealed that the Long Lake oilsands operation south of Fort McMurray owned by Nexen and Opti Canada plans to tap up to 17,000 cubic metres of water a day from the nearby Clearwater River – almost twice as much as it had originally proposed.
Those darn externalities!
Within a given jurisdiction, might does make right (government = monopoly on force) as long as that might is used justly (it is a simple matter to explain what ‘justly’ means, of course :), across jurisdictions we have switched over time from ‘might makes right’ to ‘mind your own business’
An example of ‘mind your own business‘
@Darren:
How is taxation imposed without your consent different than theft? I mean really, is it just that nation states are the ones doing it.
In other news, the US could end much of its trade imbalance by annexing Alberta.