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I think his free market ideology wasn't "the government ruins everything it touches" or "there are no market failures" but rather "anything that grows the marke
by winstonewert 7y ago
I think his free market ideology wasn't "the government ruins everything it touches" or "there are no market failures" but rather "anything that grows the market is good." He considered it to be "free market" when cities did things that contributed to economic growth even if the cities were doing it. Consequently, his point isn't about showing that there were market failures, but that you can't just assume that the choice which grew the market was the right choice.
- LyndsySimon 7y agoI agree completely. I would absolutely consider myself a "free market ideologue", but my definition of that seems to be a far cry from the author's. From the city's perspective, they have to at least cover their expenses. Infrastructure may be an acceptable place for them to have a net loss as long as it's made up somewhere else in the budget, but municipal infrastructure investment should not viewed as a means of maintaining solvency in and of itself. Considered in the author's perspective, a municipality differs from a for-profit company only in that it also has the responsibility to provide services that are not otherwise profitable; in short, they coerce their residence to pay for things - by force if necessary. If it were profitable to run a $7m (or $13m, as it turned out) infrastructure project to support a proposed airport business park, then why would the government need to do it? Why wouldn't the developer of the business park do it?
- whatshisface 7y ago>you can't just assume that the choice which grew the market was the right choice. If the wasted money was taken from taxes that were taken from the market, can we really say the market grew? It sounds like the business center project shrunk the economy overall.