The Lewis Libby story shows why we need land rent

Today's top BBC story is about revealing the secret identity of a CIA officer. The story illustrates the weakness of a secrets-based policy. Apart from the fact that you can never prove that secrets work (because the information is not open to peer review), most of the examples that come to light show very little benefit. In this case we don't know what the CIA officer achieved (if anything) but we do know that her husband's discrete work was ignored, and all the evidence regarding WMD was ignored in favor of political needs.

The real power is political and this comes down to control of resources. Control of resources decides wars and policies, control of resources decides wealth and poverty, control of resources decides justice and misery, control of resources involves trillions of dollars taken from the poor and given to the rich. That is why land rent, the just allocation of resources is vastly more important than any silly games over who said what. In comparison, the whole existence of the CIA and other secretive organizations is irrelevant and probably counter productive by creating distrust.