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We all want adequate levels of the goods that we value...right? The problem is that there are some goods, known as "public goods", that people can benefit from without paying for. This problem is known as the free-rider problem.
Why is this a problem? Who is being hurt?
Perhaps you could give a specific example?
This forum. Many posters post, only a few donate.
The forum owners could easily forbid non-donating members from posting, if that's what they wished, no?
It could, but I was merely pointing it out as an example of the free-ridership problem.
In other cases, it's not so easy to exclude folks from using public goods. Public radio would be a good example.
The forum owners could easily forbid non-donating members from posting, if that's what they wished, no?
The freerider problem is always going to exist. There is nothing you can do about it. There will ALWAYS be someone who will live off the hard work of another.
Now, I'm not saying this means we abandon the idea of accountability...but instead, we accept the idea that there will be a few who simply don't get on board with the idea, and from there, try to find a way to bring some good out of it.
Once again, though, I have no answers, nothing concrete, only a feeling about it. Which is far from constructive.
I have yet to be convinced that free riders are actually a problem. And if they are a problem, to whom are they a problem?
Free riders are a problem to the folks that AREN'T free riders, in a morale since. Imagine going to work everyday, and busting ass, only to find that there are other people at your job doing NOTHING but making the same pay as you. How would that make you feel, and how would that affect your work?
Apply that same concept to the free rider issue.
I'm still trying to understand exactly what the free rider "issue" is. What is the problem posed by free riders?
Morale. I just stated it. No one likes to work hard to provide for others, especially of those others don't even so much as provide a thank you. Again, pretend you work for a place, and that place has YOU working hard...and then there are others who don't, but they enjoy a similar quality of life as you, even though they don't work like you do to get it.
It is, and always has been, a morale issue.
I'm still trying to understand exactly what the free rider "issue" is. What is the problem posed by free riders?
For example, people like gardens and IF people could elicit the benefit that other people get from their gardens, then we would have more gardens. However, since gardens tend to be nonexcludable, then you cannot elicit payment and the incentive to provide the good decreases, therefore decreases the supply of the good.
Antiderivative, the free-rider problem is of little practical interest? Here in Los Angeles we have the LA Arboretum (a government organization) and the Huntington Botanical Garden (a non-profit organization). Do you think that just because enough voters "vote" for the LA Arboretum it definitively means that we should have the LA Arboretum? Nope. The only way we can truly know whether Los Angeles needs two botanical gardens is if taxpayers were allowed to directly allocate their taxes. This would force them to consider the opportunity costs of their tax allocation decisions. Forcing taxpayer to decide between having their cake or eating their cake is the only way we can gauge their true values.
As I explained in my original post...if you don't trust the invisible hand to efficiently allocate taxes...then please help me understand why you trust congress to efficiently allocate taxes.
That is my disagreement with the concept of the free rider problem. The market fails when compared to an impossible world in which the gardener could exclude others from enjoying his garden, and thus charge others for the enjoyment they currently receive as an externality. In such an imaginary world, we are told, there would be more incentive to have gardens. But in our current world, the real one, the gardener can't exclude others from enjoying his garden.
The so-called market failure is only that our current world doesn't match some hypothetical world imagined by economists.
Antiderivative, let me try again...would allowing taxpayers to directly allocate their taxes result in an allocation of taxes that was more efficient than the current allocation?
If you want people to have direct control over their taxation, then why tax them in the first place?
It seems that you are nitpicking the garden example and even that is not a comparison to an impossible world. The idea that we could tax people and redistribute that taxation to people who grow gardens is absurd, but certainly in the realm of possibilities. If we ever enacted such a bill, then we would have an increase supply of gardens, and correcting for the under-provision of the public good.
If you want people to have direct control over their taxation, then why tax them in the first place?
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