bobevenson wrote:Outside of the free air we breathe, there's a demand, but limited availability, of everything else. Demand and supply curves intersect at the price that everything else costs. That's economics, my friends, and anybody that interferes with it in the form of things like price controls or minimum wage legislation is engaging in the misallocation of resources.
Okay, I just thought of an interesting analogue to which I'd like to see how you'd respond:
Imagine a building to which can represent a small world. This building used to be an apartment complex but was sold off as condos. The condos act as independent owners but the general spaces and upkeep requires some form of cooperation in order to provide for maintenance, etc. So imagine in this building since each condo owner has to contribute to the effort, a meeting takes place to decide upon which someone like you mentions that it would be better if each of us be allowed to sell off a part of the services (like heat, laundry, electricity, garbage disposal, etc) and a right to sell of any or all parts of our own portion of ownership of our property. To you, this is ideal as the incentive for others to own these things will encourage them to competitively do better.
Now things work out fine initially but one year the general economy is beginning to suffer and it is getting difficult to assure everyone is paying their fees (taxes). So under desperation, one owner decides to opt to sell their portion of hallway space to some janitorial company. They learn that such a company is able to hire cheap labor and would be able to do the job more efficiently than the ones at present through the coalition. It sames him the higher fees that he'd normally have to contribute. The same is sold off by this person or others with regards to the laundry services or their particular use of them. At first it works and so others envious of the money some of these people have saved begins to do the same. In time all the hallways are owned and all the services as well.
Then, the next year, the economy is still down and so even the owned up utilities and hallway companies decide to raise their charges since they can't feel it is their right to do so and they argue they need the money to hire the demand of the workers they hire to do the upkeep. At first people begin to complain but you remind them that they can handle it. Besides, everyone already sold off their rights to the hallways, except for me in the center of the complex. Then one day, as I'm leaving my suite, I begin to attempt to leave the building when I'm stopped by one of the owners of the hallway spaces in front of all the suites between me and the outside doors. They ask that since I'm still requiring to walk through their territory that they have a right to toll me for a part of the cleanup costs.
Can you see where this is going?
In this imaginary scenario, when everything is absolutely favored to be 'owned' up, this leads to inevitable abuses, a lack of solidarity to common concerns and eventually a higher, not lower, cost by the ones having just power to take advantage of the situation.
Forget the supply/demand curves. When the suppliers have the absolute power, even demand no longer applies without the representatives of such demands to actually have any power in reality. You have no social mechanism in your ideal to address the social concerns. People also pay attention only to benefits and ignore the loses. You require a government to assure that 'owners' abide to losses as much as to benefits.
Abuses happen in both large or small governments. I don't like how bureaucracy can act in bad ways either. Yet I'd still prefer having them even for the sake of at least having a hope to improve upon them. Your idea only destroys those possibilities with certainty.