short term gain, forever pain?

Auctions by government are great short-term but long term are bad news. In the United Kingdom and Germany etc, government orthodoxy was to sell off 3G licences to the highest(?) bidder. As a consequence, there is a huge surge in income short-term for the State but near or actual bankruptcy for a number of bidders. This has benefits…others can acquire assets cheaply and introduce efficiencies as workers have already been sacked etc
Clearly governments encouraging risk-taking is probably not popular these days, as banks will tell you.
However the maths are do the short-term proceeds exceed the present value of the long term additional revenue raised by making the granting of licences etc less onerous. For instance how does increased corporation tax and arguably indirect taxes compared to losses leading to reduced or no corp. tax for a longer period?
The plundering of pension funds in the UK by subtle taxation may have saved the fund managers from being blamed for not producing good returns in the stock market. The orthodoxy of Equities investment may need to be rewritten like that of Property.