alt Hacker News> The market efficiency it presumes is that an appeal to value is actually a rational actionable appeal to the government actor. That seems to be the whole point of the question (paraphrased) "can't you see the value of the thing we're losing" and speaking that to someone who stands to capture the value via tax receipts.
Ah, no, but at least this puts our difference in stark relief. One can rationally appeal to government (as a democratic institution with a goal of furthering lofty ideals, like society and the economy in general) without necessarily appealing to government (as a selfish entity) desire to collect more tax receipts. If you must, think of it as appealing to individuals who may or may not support the government, and the government optimizing for that support rather than optimizing for mere tax dollars (which it can always print more of).
So you're back to to "fallacy" of market efficiency, expecting private actors to advocate to foot taxes with an expected ROI from capturing the value delivered by government implementation of the program. Yes you can appeal to the government without appealing to tax receipts, but under a value proposition premise we have here it's conditional upon the market being 'efficient' enough that either the private actors realize the tax / inflation paid is worth the ROI and/or the government finds it worth the tax receipts -- a value proposition doesn't make sense if none of the actors expect to realize it.
It seems your thesis here contradicts your prior argument. You're merely flip-flopping -- the private actors are acting with "efficiency" when one argues about government efficiency and the government is the one acting with efficiency when you're arguing the private actors aren't.
>Ah, no, but at least this puts our difference in stark relief.
It does nothing of the sort.
The reason why I introduce the notion of tax receipts is in part because some arguments presented appeared to dismiss the "efficiency" of private actors while still asking me to answer the question of how a private actor might "capture" the value of generating the data themselves even in the face of private buyers not buying it (one answer is: foreign governments or those they represent might be "efficient" enough to buy it). You've grasped onto that notion as if it's a "gotcha" presenting some stark difference. In fact it creates no obligation for the government to act solely on tax receipts, it's merely one more value proposition for a non-private actor to buy the data.
Not much point going much further down this "heads I win, tails you lose" flip-flop reasoning you're presenting, but good luck with that. You've created a logical contradiction at this point no matter which side you try to flip back to.