At the same time, though, the state makes things that are naturally free or cheap artificially expensive
-What are some specific examples of this? cliffelam, this seems like something that would be in your wheelhouse.
Some examples off the cuff, IP privileges that socialize costs and privatize profits like sanctioning generic drug manufacturing and raising access costs to technologies. Perpetual war also bids up prices on first order goods as well as preferences corporate firms of cooperative ventures. Energy and transportation subsidies also preference one set of infrastructural design priorities over others. The long-haul vs short-haul differentials kill larger extended firms while leaner smaller ones flourish. That is until the state steps in to preference one - the more legible ones - over the others.
Huh? Generally people like to talk about "pricing externalities" but they generally mean they want to price YOUR externalities and not theirs. For example, they will say: you don't pay enough for gas due to blah blah blah. But then they don't have a replacement number of kids and would freak if you upped their social security contribution. I think you can make arguments, though, for free bus service to avoid building new roads, to cite an example of something that is not free but seems to be. Did I understand the question? -XC
I understood the statement to mean that the state takes things that would otherwise be free and adds barriers of entry to the use of them. I was looking for an example of this. I could have misunderstood the statement too.
Oh, well, professional licensing for most things is a state supported barrier to entry. Do you really need "barbershop inspectors?" I think you can have a good rousing discussion of private licensing (think Underwriter's Lab's) versus government licensing on most thing. -XC