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Attempts to artificially control prices for a scarce asset in the names of protecting equality will always fail. Prices will inevitably rise to their market lev
by jasonisalive 12y ago
Attempts to artificially control prices for a scarce asset in the names of protecting equality will always fail. Prices will inevitably rise to their market level, the only difference is whether the owner of the good (the city) will reap the full benefit of the transaction, or whether the fruits will be split between (initially) secondary sellers and (later) law enforcement efforts.
The most important effect is that the incentives that might have favoured innovation to improve the efficiency of the use of the good and offer affordable alternatives are distorted in favour of incentives which favour unscrupulous competition for arbitrage gains.
- curmudgeon224 12y agoWell - ignoring the fact that city maintained street parking is a public resource - I believe you are ignoring the cost of time (of the person searching for parking) in your analysis which, in effect, creates a perfect market equilibrium....or something.
- jasonisalive 12y agoA scarce resource is a scarce resource. It doesn't matter what intentions it was made with, or what rhetoric is used to justify a clearly defective pricing strategy.
- judk 12y agotime spent looking for parking is waste, aka deadweigt lost. Better to transfer money (zero sum) than waste time (negative sum)
- taybin 12y ago[Citation Needed]