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Paying directly for something is better than paying indirectly. Because you consider the cost of a resource before you use it. If we all paid a hotel tax inst
by stretchwithme 11y ago
Paying directly for something is better than paying indirectly. Because you consider the cost of a resource before you use it.
If we all paid a hotel tax instead of paying for hotel rooms, a lot more people would be staying in hotels and there would be no way to allocate scarce resources when demand is high, other than first come, first served.
That would mean chronic hotel shortages and ever-increasing amounts of public money being spent to build new capacity so that nobody goes without when demand is high.
And that's exactly what many people face at rush hour: a shortage of available road. Except we've been conditioned to think this is somehow normal and unsolvable, when its actually artificial.
In Singapore, they have demand pricing and a lot less congestion at rush hour.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago> Paying directly for something is better than paying indirectly. Because you consider the cost of a resource before you use it. That does not work because it disadvantages the areas which are underdeveloped. > In Singapore, they have demand pricing and a lot less congestion at rush hour. But Singapore is tiny and quote homogenous. If there were no legal requirements for USPS for instance to operate all over the country then Alaska would not have a mail service at all. There are areas too sparsely populated / too poor to afford infrastructure and (federal) taxes are necessary to finance it.
- rayiner 11y ago> If there were no legal requirements for USPS for instance to operate all over the country then Alaska would not have a mail service at all. There are areas too sparsely populated / too poor to afford infrastructure and (federal) taxes are necessary to finance it. Isn't that just the market saying it's too inefficient for anyone to live in Alaska?
- DrScump 11y agoNot taxes; other USPS ratepayers.
- harryh 11y agoFedEx operates in Alaska without any legal requirement to do so. That doesn't count as mail service?
- stretchwithme 11y agoWhat does homogeneity have to do with it? Does it make you more likely to favor mass transit over sitting in traffic for long periods?