News that the Spitzer administration is rethinking the plan to renovate and expand the Javits Center reminded us of what Charles Brunie, in a recent article for City Journal, describes as one of Milton Friedman’s “choicest epigrams.” Mr. Brunie recalls the epigram being quoted by Friedman of his good friend Armen Alchian, a professor at UCLA: “The one thing you can be most sure of in this life is that everyone will spend someone else’s money more liberally than they will spend their own.”

What an apt thought in the wake of the editorial, “On Rethinking the Javits Center,” issued by the New York Times on Sunday. It boldly came out for the proposition that “the Spitzer people should try to make any new Javits Center better than just mediocre.” It would seem on its face that with billions of taxpayer funds being spent, New York can do better than aiming merely to avoid mediocrity.

Before any more taxpayer money is poured into the Javits site, let the governor pre-empt all this. He could do this by following what a number of New Yorkers, including this newspaper, recommended the last time there was talk of a big convention center on the West Side — that time it was as part of a Jets/Olympic stadium plan. The call was for an open, transparent bidding process to put the land to the most productive economic use, without the artificial constraints of zoning limitations.

“If there is so much unmet demand for convention space in New York City, one wonders why private capital doesn’t rise to the task,” we wrote then. As it is, many of the largest conventions are held in privately owned hotels in Las Vegas. The Mandalay Bay convention center there, owned and operated by MGM Mirage, says it has nearly 1.5 million square feet of meeting space, which is more than an expanded Javits Center could boast.

We’ve noted in the past that there are plenty of other uses to which West Side land could be put: “Anyone trying to rent or buy an apartment in New York these days knows that there is enormous demand for housing. Retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, and Ikea are seeking sites for their stores. Plenty of New Yorkers with cars now head off to the suburbs on the weekends to shop at the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets or Stew Leonard’s supermarket. What if those stores were in Manhattan?”

It’s not for us or for Governor Spitzer or Mayor Bloomberg to dictate the best use of this land — doing so amounts to spending someone else’s money, the taxpayers’. Rather than trying to perfect or expand Javits with taxpayer funds, why not sell it? If a convention center operator thinks the existing Javits can be profitably expanded, the value of the existing building will be priced into his bid for the site. If the existing convention center is worth more as a vacant lot ready to build housing or office space upon, that, too, would be reflected in the price. Let the market, rather than the government, decide the use of the land.