Who would spend money to buy shit? Probably no one. Some people even paid others to clean up such filth.
But what if it was fertilizer?
Georgiana had still underestimated the advantages of centralization. During a famine, land taxes could no longer be collected, but transit taxes could still be paid fairly normally. Once collected, transit taxes remained in the local area, and they had been mentioned in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.
Unlike indirect taxes, this tax was not levied in proportion to consumption. It was charged according to the quantity and weight of goods at highways, bridges, canals, and locks, supposedly for maintaining those facilities.
Though transporters paid it, they were merely advancing the money. In the end, the cost was passed on to consumers. How much freight, customs duty, and transit tax did a vase shipped from Malaya require? Usually, no one outside the transport trade knew. Merchants simply quoted a total price. If the customer accepted it, they paid; if not, the merchant moved on to the next person.
Once transit taxes had been collected, they did not necessarily have to be used for maintenance. Lords could use them to support their private troops instead. Letting roads become full of potholes was even useful for defense. Since King John II of France, every king had attempted to reduce the types of transit taxes, abolish internal customs barriers, or at least simplify customs duties.
Agriculture required fertilizer. Before the French Revolution, a volcanic eruption had destroyed the pastureland, forcing farmers and herders to slaughter their livestock. Without the fertilizer made from their dung, grain yields fell. Yet no one had thought of using the mountains of excrement outside Paris to make fertilizer.
Oh, food grown with human waste was disgusting.
People were about to starve to