a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by cliffelam
cliffelam  ·  4174 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: When What’s Costly is Cheap — and Vice Versa

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





thenewgreen  ·  4174 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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.

cliffelam  ·  4174 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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