Nigeria, Oct. 26 -- Take your pick of subject. Subsidies? As part of a government's policy responses, the tension in their implementation is often between succouring consumers (potential voters, also) under pressure from rising prices (irrespective of the causes) and bleeding government coffers dry. That at least is the first level of disorder. Invariably, government interventions in an economy, by creating winners and losers, generate perverse responses. In the conversation around subsidies, the unavoidable adverse consequence is in distortions to an economy's allocative efficiency.

What about taxes? Governments slobber at the prospects of the extra revenue that higher tax rates imply. But this increase in the public spending remit is a...