I’ve long suspected that there is a problem with the evolution of street cleaning in a free market. Imagine a shopping district which tends to become cluttered with rubbish, making the area less attractive to shoppers. Suppose that if all the shop keepers banded together and contributed to hiring street cleaning services for the area then there would be a net benefit in terms of extra visitors that would lead to extra profits that are greater than the cost of the cleaners by some small margin. Now the problem is that if one of the shop-keepers does not want to join the scheme then what can be done? The other shop keepers can not force him to join in. Now the shop keeper that won’t pay causes all sorts of problems: 1. it means that the others will have to pay more and the cost benefit equation may no longer work. 2. Other shop keepers may get angry and say “well if he’s not paying then why should I”. The system may all too easily fail or not get off the ground in the first place.
I’ve just read “Economics in one lesson” by Henry Haslitt and noted that on page 69, “street cleaners” is included in a list of “public officeholders whose services are really needed”, so maybe Mr Hazlitt agrees.
I also remember that there were examples in “The selfish gene” by Richard Dawkins where he shows how certain groups of animals behave sub-optimally (with respect to avoiding predation) because the “optimal” behavior can not evolve due to problems almost identical to the street cleaner problem.
So my question is this: Do Austrians acknowledge that there are a variety of “services” or “institutions” that are of benefit to society that will not evolve naturally from a free market that should rightly be set-up by a government? Is there a list somewhere that most austrians would agree upon? For example police? teachers? street cleaners? “a legal system”? infrastructure builders (road/rail)?
No, we don’t. What is it with this obsessive drive on the part of some people to find something for the state to do? If someone free-rides and people decide to provide the service regardless that’s a “cost-benefit” equation too. If the other shopkeepers decide they want a clean street it’s up to them to provide it. If one shopkeeper does not want to, tough luck. They can either figure out a way to make them do so (without aggressing) or provide the service anyway. Forcefully making individuals contribute to the service’s provision is never a clear “benefit” due to the subjectivity of value, and the coerced party’s perceived losses (and probably because it’ll also preclude the evolution of non-forceful means of dealing with free-rider problems.)
The same concept is applicable to roads. I have the first-hand experience given that I come from a family of Spanish farmers. At least in Castilla-La Mancha, rural roads are private, and this includes long paved highways that go from town to town (and are, most of the time, in better condition than the public highways). The way the network is set up is very interesting, given that really the roads are only meant to service part of the countryside. Specifically, they are meant to give the farmer access to his land. And so, there are “main arteries” that link multiple roads together. Sometimes farmers use public highways, othertimes they build private arteries. These large arteries, however, necessarilly link to many plots of land. It’s not necessary for every farmer to pitch in to build this artery, because regardless if one farmer wants to pay or not, all the farmers need it to communicate by tractor to their land. Some farmers will freeload, but it is subjectively valuable for the rest to allow this to happen, because the benefits are greater than the cost still.
The same can happen with minor unpaved roads that go from these arteries to the actual plots of land, but in this case it is possible for a farmer to deny access to someone who they don’t want on the road, since it is their private property.
No, being an Austrian means strictly speaking the state is merely a fact to be analysed like any other. Hazlitt might not have taken his analysis far enough on some goods, and the same goes for Mises. It is no fault of theirs, they did enough in their lives.
If we need a road we will build it. If we need it cleaned we will clean it. We don’t have to steal from people in order to accomplish this. Gunvernment consumes only. It produces nothing. Voluntary exchange accomplishes every “essential” gunvernment service.
Read Bastiat. You can get his complete works for free on this website. You can also buy a hard copy if you want.
The responsibility for keeping the roads clean belongs to the rightful owner of the road. If the shopkeepers have to join together to provide themselves this service, then clearly this is a case of government failure.
What if the government consists of people with Austrian tendencies and they deliberately don’t clean the streets because they are hoping that the free market will come up with a solution. Then my original problem still stands.
You ignored my post. There was no problem to begin with. If it is beneficial for a shopkeeper to keep a street clean, because otherwise he would get not business, then regardless of whether or not another shopkeeper would help him out financially, he would still clean the street, because the benefit is greater than the cost. It’s the same theoretically problem which comes about with private road building; but, the problem doesn’t exist.
That makes no sense at all. You can’t have government intervention in a free market, thus, in a free market, the government doesn’t own the roads, thus, your original problem doesn’t make any sense.
Well it depends how you define government. If you define it as simply the politicians then thats true. Its like saying that the directors of large companies don’t produce anything. But if you consider the government to be the superset of both politicians and government workers, then its entirely untrue. They produce roads, bridges, street lighting, policing services, teaching services, fire brigade services and in the UK they provide medical services too.
No. The people who produced the wealth in which the government stole from - those workers, those people - they produced, not the government. The government simply redistributes the wealth.
If you were made president and you had the power to run the economy (even if all you did with your power was to undo all regulations and then promptly resign) then who would end up as the owner of a busy road in a city with houses and shops all along both sides?
This question, although a dodge, actually makes sense. The roads would have to go people whose money was stolen to pay for those roads. However, how would we figure that out?
Btw, in a free market, the owner of a road would determine who would keep the road clean.