"How do you get people with wildly differing willingness or ability to pay to fund some common good other than through redistributive taxation?" For cases like

"How do you get people with wildly differing willingness or ability to pay to fund some common good other than through redistributive taxation?" For cases like this why would I want something other than redistributive taxation? By the way, Joel Spolsky has a very good explanation of the mechanisms behind airplane fares, including why you might not want to go this way: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...