Nigerian plane crash

Today's top BBC story is a Nigerian plane crash. Nigeria has a very bad record for plane crashes, which suggests poor safety in general. This is hardly surprising, given the BBC overview of the country:

Thousands of people have died over the past few years in communal rivalry. Separatist aspirations have been growing, prompting reminders of the bitter civil war over the breakaway Biafran republic in the late 1960s. The imposition of Islamic law in several states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and the competition for land. The government is under pressure to improve the economy, which experienced an oil boom in the 1970s, but which has been severely undermined by corruption and mismanagement.

Another BBC report places the blame for Nigeria's problems squarely on the difficulty of getting Nigerians to pay tax.

Land rent is the fairest tax, and the hardest tax to avoid. Land rent ends competition for land because everyone pays the fair price so there is no benefit in land grabs. And since resources go to those who can pay the highest price, only efficient managers can rise to the top.

Land rent: the solution to tax avoidance, poverty, land competition, incompetent government, and all of Nigeria's economic problems - including crash-prone airlines.