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Only if you define "better" as having the lowest price. Free mariets don't magically remove the disconnect between individual interests and collective interests
by hannasanarion 8y ago
Only if you define "better" as having the lowest price. Free mariets don't magically remove the disconnect between individual interests and collective interests (tragedy of the commons). The economic optimum is not guaranteed to coincide with social, moral, qnd political optimums
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoWell, I don't define "better" as having the higher price. From the point of view of the economy as a whole, efficient is better than inefficient, because it can produce more outputs for the same inputs. This isn't just abstract - people can use those outputs. Tragedy of the commons is an issue, but subsidizing a coal mine doesn't seem much like a tragedy of the commons issue to me. It seems more like your last words: a "political optimum", that is, something that produced votes, because the mine owners and workers want the subsidies much more strongly than the taxpayers want to not have to pay. That may be politically optimum, but it's not morally, socially, or economically optimum.