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todd8

Should first class seating on airplanes be eliminated?

Should seats to sporting events all cost the same?

Should all of us drive the same model car or should all models just be priced the same?

Should steak be priced the same as hamburger?

I observe that economic discussions here on HN are dominated by two interesting perspectives:

(1) We should have a Star Trek like economy: no one wants for anything.

(2) If smart people like us had our hands on the steering wheel we could regulate the economy into good shape—-Friedrich Hayek described this as “The Fatal Conceit” in his book with that title.

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The answer to all of your questions is no and here's the important distinction to the roads-problem: private vs. public goods / services.

The same applies to public goods/services though. E.g. if you can afford the electricity (public utility) to mine bitcoins, should we not?

The important thing is that the rules for using publicly financed goods/services are the same for everybody. If you pay for your electricity of course you are free to choose what you do with it.

This is not the same as with roads though, since they are a finite resource (whereas, arguably, electricity can be seen as infinite in this case). You can't ask people to pay for roads which they then can't use because they can't afford the tolls for it. It's already bad enough that so much tax money flows into building roads, which can only be utilized by people wealthy enough to own and maintain a car in the first place. (I'm reading the book "Happy City" at the moment, so this topic struck a chord with me)

But the rules remain the same for everyone: if you want to use the road and don’t want to carpool, you pay.

If you make $550 per day, $40 is 7% of your daily income; if you make $82 per day, it's 49%. That's not the same for everyone. Of course, there are people who make well more than $550 per day and people who make significantly less than $82 per day.

($200,000/365=$550; $30,000/365=$82)

By that logic, almost every single rule in this world is 'unfair' towards the poor, because of course things cost disproportionately more for the poor.

Public goods.

And, yes, most rules are unfair to poor people. Who do you think makes the rules?

Bitcoins? Here's a better analogy:

Say the public grid is notoriously unstable. Electricity is on maybe 50% of the day. (This is in fact true in some countries.) Now the government (who pretty much has sole domain over running utility wires) offers a "deluxe" service, with 100% availability, for the low-low price of a week's worth of food for one day of service.

Congratulations. Now you've stabilized a scenario in which everyone with money and power is sated, and the government has little reason to allocate any resources to improving the service to the remainder of the public.

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