> If people had to pay for Facebook as part of their income tax (which amounted to about $12 per year), then I think a lot of people would be OK with that and everyone would be better off overall.

But which Facebook would that be? Would it be the personal-page Facebook or the News Feed Facebook or the Facebook of Tomorrow? It's obvious that a State could build a Facebook clone, but is there any evidence that it could innovate well?

Granted, Facebook itself is imperfect, but it at least has to provide someone some value: Statebook would only need to give some grandees a sense of self-importance.