Public good from the Private
“Private profit can be for the public good.”
-- Ayn Rand
The producers charity
“The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in mans body and spirit, and bought more relief from suffering than altruist could ever conceive.”
-- Ayn Rand
General
- In efficiency total benefits > Total costs
- Cannot be caused through market system, if orange sales fall and the price fall, that is not an externality about the farmer being damaged, others get positive externality of lower prices. Hence no net externality
- Externalities only occur on unearned resources.
- Difficulty is how much damage will be done, and how much people care in order to work out the value of externality.
- Lower cleavage may cause conflicts as whether good or bad externality. Same person might have different views depending on what they are doing.
- Some externalities do not need subsidies as the benefits are so high that people will do it anyway(brushing teeth, education)
- Govt creates externalities free healthcare bank bailouts
- Offence – are they suffering or getting high on self-aggrandisement – sometimes complainers are threatening
- (Speed limit is good analogy, lower speed saves lives but we don’t ban driving and doesn’t tell us what speed limit should be.)
- Government decisions are bad, as they don’t face the trade-offs of the organisations and individuals face.
Some thoughts on externalities from KeddawAll non-state positive externalities are incidental outcomes of someone voluntarily engaging in some activity that is positive enough for them to do regardless of those positive externalities. Since you were not a party to them doing whatever they are doing the externalities are, effectively, free gifts.
Negative externalities are harms enforced on you by someone engaging in activities that are beneficial in some way for the perpetrator. Harms must be compensated for, either prior to them being imposed (and hence voluntary) or punitively after the fact (because they are not voluntary).
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