2 highlights
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Mancur Olson (1932-1998) was a great economist who came up with a very useful analogy to help explain the behavior of many governments. He pointed out that a “roving bandit” has an incentive to maximize short-run plunder by stealing everything from victims (i.e. a 100 percent tax rate), whereas a “stationary bandit” has an incentive to maximize long-run plunder by stealing just a portion of what victims produce every year (i.e., the revenue-maximizing tax rate).
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Since we’re looking at tax competition, Europe, and bandits, keep in mind there’s considerable academic work showing that Europe became a rich continent precisely because there were many small nations that competed with each other. Those jurisdictions felt pressure to adopt good policy because the various leaders wanted lots of economic activity to tax. All of which helps to explain why modern statists are so hostile to decentralization and federalism.