Free the Airwaves; or, Pump Up the Volume, SDMB

Great Debates
21

I’m not sure I agree. I agree $250 mill is a lot of money overall, but pld makes it seem like that money is a cross we bear. It simply isn’t. Buying a cup off coffee once a month is more money than we put forward for FCC regulation. It is about as free as we can get for the average American. What is median income, about 25-27K? Let’s put a not-so-modest 35% federal tax bracket on them, and all income is taxed—no deductions. This puts the tax they pay to be 9450 smackers per year. Of that, 0.025% goes to the FCC… or about $2.40 a year. That, quite simply, is not a lot of money. In fact, I bet we lose more out of our pockets into greedy couches and dropped change than we pay to the FCC. I say we hunt down pant makers. :wink:

This isn’t a problem any more than police are a problem, opportunity-cost wise. I have yet to see what people would do with public broadcasting that doesn’t involve entertainment. If radio could be put to a more efficient use I might start paying better attention, but as it stands, I have detractors who are upset with what is essentially a free service that isn’t entertaining them like they want it to. Hey, I’d love roller coasters in national parks, too—the view would be breathtaking—but I’m not about to lobby over it.

Radio, as far as I can see, is simply the private use of a finite, divisible good which is not necessary for bare survival(like clean water), and certianly isn’t necessary to be a functioning member of society(like education). As such, it quickly (to me) avoids the issue of common property and public goods. I’m having a hard time seeing the other side.

Quite frankly, I don’t enjoy that right. I don’t own a pirate radio set-up, and so even if the airwaves are free I wouldn’t utilize them anyway. What I would like to see is a demonstration that using a limited, divisible good not necessary for survival as a public good or common property in any way benefits the market, or benefits society from a political view. I’m not even going to require that it does both; just one or the other.

The cry is for “better programming.” Whose better programming? Who gets to decide? And if that was such a good idea, wouldn’t it make sense that any radio station who tried it would dominate the market and be swamped with listeners? Certinaly we’ve seen a demonstration of such a crushing absorbtion of listeners: America’s own Howard Stern.

Oh, but that programming was considered garbage, wasn’t it? Interesting. (that may have been mentioned in the other thread if not here, and I wouldn’t presume that all detractors of my view would consider him garbage)

What choice? There is still something fundamental I am missing. Why are you assuming you should be able to make that choice in the first place? Again we return to the issue that the public deserves to have radio. Why? Why? Why? I simply do not understand.

This is true. I, as a non-radio listener, do not directly affect the money made by the radio station as it would if they simply made t-shirts. My voice is essentially removed from directly affecting the radio station. Instead it affects it only indirectly: inasmuch as the advertisers get an accurate sampling of the number of people listening to the broadcast.

So, the business model we have for radio broadcasting oepration is currently not geared to follow suit with price (almost 0 dollars) reflecting consent to the product. Should we pay for broadcasting, then, to gather a more accurate business model? Understand that the situation is very middle of the road now (as far as this debate goes). We could lean towards more direct privatization—where consumers pay for the radio they listen to directly instead of pitiful amounts of tax dollars and the “cost” (in time) of listening to advertisements— or we could lean more toward greater socialization—where the FCC becomes more of a consumer advocates group and polls people in some sort of voting scheme to determine programming across several different bands of radio. Can anyone else present a third path which will work towards supporting their desires for radio? Why do you feel yours is better?

Well, I don’t care much about the outcome, really. I care about not paying for something I won’t use. The more radio is privatized and compensates for the free-rider issue, the more it fits within the market place. The more it is made public through government appropriation the more I pay for it like I pay for national defense. In either case I won’t use it. In one scenario not using it is free(other than the cost of protecting property rights through a governmetn agency), and it means something to not use it. in the other—well, lets just say I don’t see how anyone is more empowered than they are now simply by calling advertisers or the station ond complaining about content. We can organize unions to try and keep companies honest, but radio seems to be an exception to just about every rule of the market place. It seems that making broadcasting public we lose power.

Well, I certainly don’t think you should give up your cause or anything. This is hardly that dichotomous, but it certianly seems to be clear to me. Entertainment is a product we buy based on both what style of entertainment we are looking for and how well it lives up to our expectations. The radio broadcast is bought by turning on the knob. Don’t turn on the knob. My interests are very unique and no broadcasting agency could ever meet it. I will never again listen to radio for entertainment. Why are you so adamant that I pay for it?

22

Well, yes and no. First, these issues apply to a lot more than radio. TV, the internet, parts of the natural and built environment, political discourse, knowledge producton and dissemination generally. Trying to find how markets work under various conditions and looking at the efficacy of property rights and regulatory approaches is part of getting a handle on the way society works and the appropriate role of government. Maybe radio in particular isn’t a huge deal, but it’s interesting anyway. And a nice specific thread like this tends to be better for discussing these matters than your average “capitalism is tops” / “markets are anti-people” type thread.

Secondly, you could say “it’s not a big deal” about almost any part of the economy, but they do add up. Even big items - or government as a whole - should not hold your interest for a second if it is just the effect on your pocket-book in which you are interested in. You have a trivial effect on the political process, so a selfish rational person should remain uninformed and apathetic. But perhaps we have a duty to be informed and concerned. For many people, politics is in their blood. For me, economic policy is my job as well.

Thirdly, it is false to say that $2.40 represents your real interest in this matter. Radio licences are worth huge sums. The lobbying that goes on to protect existing property rights and the political patronage that goes along with it affects what politicians do, what news you hear and what governments you get. Add up the total resources used by the radio industry - the capital, the people etc - and you get billions in the US I expect. These resources could be doing other things. They could be producing more stuff - some of which you might like.

I’m a bit taken aback by this. People value entertainment. I don’t see why it not being necessary for survival makes it a trivial matter. I would have thought that the reason clean water etc is important is so we can get our jollies out of things we happen to like.

No, I’m advocating that the spectrum resources be organised in such a way as to get the most value out of it for society. And that for reasons related to the technical characteristics of the good - joint consumption, ill-defined property rights - neither a market based on the recognition of decentralised property rights nor a market based on centralised property rights sold off without condition to private interests is going to do that.

No, for the reasons outlined in my second-most recent post (the Billy Joel bit).

Well, this is the thing isn’t it? You want to fit radio into your notion of the market and declare that to be the solution. Pldennison seems to want the market to be an outcome of voluntary exchange. And I want to know how well our tool the market - which does well for lots of things - will in this instance serve the various interests of members of society. Three people who as a rule like markets, three different reasons.

To return to the top of the page: Christian Slater is just a blanded-out caricature of a docile public’s memory of Jack Nicholson. Radio has a tendency toward imitative mediocrity. That’s not always what I want, and I’m willing to pay - but the market has nowhere for me to register my (minority but not unique) preferences. And so, politics.

23

Could you explain that a little better?

Inherently, or within the market structure we currently have for them?

Well, the second someone says “It’s private property” is the second I say “Then it is being used as best as it can for its owner.” I don’t think much more about it.

Yes, those resources could be doing other things. But you know darn well that those billions of dollars are as relative as relative can be. If we change the way radio is handled we could turn a well into a dry hole in the ground. Of course, it could turn it into a goldmine, too. But those things come true after you already decide “No one owns anything. We just let them borrow it from the public.” I suppose you are welcome to take that view, but I don’t think you would appreciate that phrasing.

Trivial? How about: private.

It is, and I agree that water, a necessity for survival in our current society is and should be a public good. If it so ends that everyone lives inside virtual reality computers in the future then electricity will become a public good (it almost already is, IMO). Material entertainment is not necessary to function in society. I don’t want the government to make boards games, or tell me what should be playing in my radio or what I should read in my books.

Some would consider that a worthy goal. I find that its achievement comes at the cost of private property rights.

One word: cable television.

Then the “billions of dollars” you seek to “use more efficiently” will dry up quite a bit by forcing a program which you say wouldn’t make economic sense. Looks like the resource bag you want to use more effectively will be a bit smaller than you had hoped.

Actually, thinks have been in the works for some time to make a “cable” version of radio. I haven’t heard anything about it for a few years, though. I’ll see if I can hunt up some better information.

I see the situation as a somewhat simple fact: if we change radio, it will be more expensive for the consumer. In one aspect, we cover it in taxes by creating a larger, broader (or perhaps a subsection of the) FCC and people who don’t use the product still pay for it, unlike—say—national defense, for which I get the benefits automatically (which I conider to be a good gauge of a public good for starters). The other is that we send radio into cable-tv land and make it more expensive for the people who will consume it, but the cost to people who wouldn’t consume it isn’t really changed.

I will pay for you to live—water, health concerns, education, perhaps a hint of welfare for when you cannot feed yourself. From there, man, you’re on your own. Don’t ask me for money so you can listen to music you like when there’s record stores all over America selling just what you’re looking for. You already have the option to pay for it. So go pay for it. No?

24

Gotta sleep, I’ll reply properly later.

Quick comment though. Water is not a public good! There may be other problems involved, but it is separate in consumption and price excludable. Something does not become a public good because of its importance or one’s desire to see it organised in a particular way.

25

Hmmmm. I think I’ll wait for your full reply before discussing this.

26

Popular Science has a multi-page article detainling new radio beamed from geosynchronous satellites.

You can pay $9.95 or $12.95 depending on the level of commercials you want (obviously, the more expensive one has less commercial—none, if the article is to be believed).

It will serve as an interesting experiement. Now that the broadcasts will be excludable, what sort of content regulations will apply, if any?

27

But…wait! You’ve got this backward. The people who get granted licenses to use the airwaves should be paying us for this privilege. That’s the whole point. Why are we giving them this monopoly on a range of the allowed spectrum virtually for free?!?! Basically, we have just given stuff away to these people. Don’t we have a freaking right to expect anything in return!?!

28

But…wait! You’ve got this backward. The people who get granted licenses to use the airwaves should be paying us for this privilege. That’s the whole point. Why are we giving them this monopoly on a range of the allowed spectrum virtually for free?!?! Basically, we have just given stuff away to these people. Don’t we have a freaking right to expect anything in return!?! Or do you think that Clear Channel is “born” with an inherent right of ownership?

29

Sorry for the double-post. Is everyone else finding the SDMB to be totally freakin’ slow today? While I’ve posted twice, why not go for 3…

As a point of fact here since I am saying “virtually for free” without actually knowing the facts, does anyone know how expensive obtaining licenses to broadcast currently are and how this price is determined? Is there some sort of bidding system?

Another point, erl is that the use of the radio waves is tied into a basic right in this country…freedom of speech. At least some of us think that the idea of having freedom of speech mean that those with the largest bullhorn get to drown out everyone else is a rather narrow view. Instead, we believe that the government has some responsibility to allow for a diversity of views to have some access to a wide audience [while, of course, not favoring any view in particular].

30

First, to answer your last question, commercial radio station frequencies are auctioned off. Thus, the going rate could, presumably, be just about anything.

Because they can do something with it. I see it as not much different than the squatters’ rights style land grab when new territories were open for settlement. It is a shame that isn’t exactly how it was handled, but here we are anyway.

The land (frequencies) were available for settlement (use) and people (businesses) grabbed them. It seems rather intuitive to me to say that radio frequencies weren’t owned before such a grab, either by the public or private entities. They were simply anarchic: no rules, no ownership, just white noise (well, maybe pink, but probably white ;)), and even that was assuming someone had a radio to listen to it with, which no one did.

If you can show me why you own a portion of the radio spectrum I’d be interested in seeking what would be a justifiable compensation along with you. That’s kinda the whole point of this thread, in some ways.

[sub]yes, it has been slow for me the passed two or three days, actually[/sub]

31

I’ve had a wrestle with the search engine and at present it’s winning. So for the moment I’ll give a quick precis of the paradox of voting/ rational ignorance idea and hope to provide a link to a thread in which I did it better later. So I said

Imagine that you don’t enjoy being engaged and informed about public policy matters. What should you invest in the political process to enhance your interests, bearing in mind that becoming informed about the effects of various policy positions is costly? The expected value (let’s assume you are risk neutral) of investing some time and effort is the product of the probability you will be decisive in changing the decision from one state to another and the (dollar) difference in your valuation of the alternatives. In a representative democracy the probability of you being decisive is the probability that if you stayed home or spoiled your ballot, the election would be tied. Even in elections that are thought to be likely to be really close, this is a very small number in large number electorates. So unless the difference between party A and party B is worth billions to you personally, the expected value of voting is so close to zero that it doesn’t matter (given that voting entails some costs). In the Public Choice literature this is known as the paradox of voting, because despite this many people do vote. IIRC I previously posted some numbers on this matter wrt probabilities of tied elections.

The same reasoning applies to bothering to be informed about policy matters. If expected gain from being informed is Pr (I’ll be decisive on this)*(this is worth $x to me), then it is sensible to invest no effort.

I think the water issue is important here because I believe you are confused about what is positive and what is normative here and this is driving a misunderstanding of what is meant by “public good” by economists. Compare water with your example of national defence. When I drink a litre of water that litre is not available for anyone else to drink. And - regardless of current water pricing policies - I can be prevented from consuming that water if I decline to pay the price. (A previous discussion on water can be found in this thread. Look for the redoubtable Collounsbury in particular, although there are other good posts) National defence is different. If there is surveillance at the border which reduces the chance of an attack by Canadians, you can consume the increased security. But your consumption does not diminish the amount of defence available for everyone else to consume. Your consumption is not a competitor for their’s. Everyone can consume literally the same unit of the good. Further, if you refuse to pay (in whatever form - user fees, taxes) you cannot be stopped from enjoying the benefits.

Notice nothing in the preceding says anything about who should get the good or who deserves the good; whether the good is a need or a want or whether it is in the public interest that the government or the market provides the good. These are purely technological characteristics.

The next positive (i.e. explanatory, non-ethical) step is to ask what would happen in a market with particular technical characteristics. How much would be produced, who would pay what etc? It is only then that we bring in normative considerations: how well does the market perform in satisfying certain objectives (like Pareto optimality*) and what if anything is the role for government in correcting any market failure that there might be? It is not a matter of picking which goods we might like to declare to be public goods.

I don’t mean to say that you don’t understand your approach, just that you seem to be missing how others are proceeding and that it is useful to sort out whether we disagree about what’s out there or about what’s good. And I think we disagree about what’s good. To you, when something’s in the private sphere, that’s the end of the matter. To me, private property is at best a necessary evil. I am quite prepared to condone it if it yields good results, but I just don’t see its appeal absent instrumental justification. Now, to be sure, this exchange:

should be a tester. Do you really believe that it’s property rights that you’re interested in? Or do you believe that property rights as a practical means of maximising social values are under-appreciated? If the former, fine although I’m baffled as to the ethical significance of property rights as such. If the latter, you need to look at the performance of markets under various conditions and compare them on a case-by-case basis with interventionist alternatives to form a view.

Your exchange with jshore:

gets back to my earlier points that one of the things a judgement upon these matters depends is

and that neither

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t find this

very satisfying, and I’m not wholly convinced you think it’s the end of the story either.

  • [sub]A Pareto optimal situation is one where it is impossible to make one person better off whilst making no-one at all worse off. Crudely speaking, competitive markets for goods with separate consumption and costless price exclusion achieve Pareto optimality. This is important enough to be called the First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics. Combined with the Second Theorem (with such goods all Pareto optimal outcomes are competitive equilibria) this is the basis for non-libertarian economists’ enthusiasm for markets. Needless to say the market for public goods does not result in a Pareto optimal situation.[/sub]
32

Ok, I am beginning to get lost in this conversation, but I’ll do what I can here.

hawthorne, back in your first post you said the very crucial “Real world goods vary along these two dimensions.” That they do. No, water is not what anyone would consider a pure public good; neither is radio. Water supply is technically limited (which is causing some serious problems in some areas right now) and doesn’t replenish itself naturally at current use rates. none the less, water is leaning toward the public good side, IMO, because it does fall under natural monopoly bounds within given locales. The implementation of this varies from area to area, however, so it possibly isn’t the best example (unlike national defense, which is pretty clearly a pure public good).

But its use as a demonstration is very important to the point I’m trying to make. Excludability only works in the market; once the government declares something should be available to all it ceases to be excludable (consider, for example, legal representation for defense from the state). All that remains is bickering over the technicalities of whether or not we can force it to be a pure public good, and attempting to have enough of the prodcut to ensure mass consumption.

The distinction between pure public good and some lesser public goods is also very important. Holistically it will determine the cost we pay for a good as a public entity (society of taxpayers) and as a consumer of the good (water drinker, law breaker, or radio listener).

Radio, in its current form, is used as an entertainment good. The call in this thread was for that entertainment to more accurately reflect the tastes of consumers, and the complaint was that the current market set-up surrounding radio does not provide an adequate means of reflecting user tastes.

Now, I agree that radio does not directly provide a mechanism for improving broadcasting quality. I feel this is the case because of two things: one, people—for whatever reason—are listening anyway, so whatever indirect affect they could have is washed away (“it isn’t great, but it is good enough”—a classic scenario of the market providing only what is really asked for); two, radio is free from the point of broadcasters—after the consumer purchases a radio they can listen—and there is no direct reflection to content versus use.

Now, I disagree that this is a serious problem (or even a problem at all, actually). One, because radio is just an entertainment good. It is, totally and without exception, superfluous. Everything the radio offers can be gained from other sources (newspapers, magazines, music stores). Two, because there is an indirect means available to the public to shift content by calling advertisers and the station itself voicing concerns.

Your commentary on voting is interesting, but somewhat closed (just because everything has opportunity costs doesn’t mean a cost-based analysis of everything will yield a meaningful answer). Being a member of the body politic is a rational thing to do because of the impact that politics has on a person and the market he interacts in. By the same logic I should just buy whatever product because the money I would spend on a competitor alone isn’t enough to put the other company, offering inferior products, out of business. “But wait,” you say, “the person is no longer acting in his self interest then by purchasing an inferior product.” So how is voting any different? Neither purchasing a good manufactured by a compentent business nor casting a vote toward a compentent politician have any single direct effect overall. For the purchase, however, one gets a material good for use or consumption. For the voter, one gets the satisfaction of being a member of the body politic (if such a thing is pleasing to you, of course). It isn’t much of a mystery to me, and the number of people that don’t vote continue to reflect both the uselessness of one vote and the lack of politicians which people feel are even worth voting for.

How did voting get into this? :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

Hmm, I will examine the other thread, but for now I will disagree. A lot depends on the area you live in.

I remain steadfast in this opinion: we may create public goods at whim, within the contraints of physical availability (couldn’t make the hope diamond a public good, for instance, because supply is pretty limited). Legal representation is one such example. Equal opportunity employment is another declared public good, in a way. These things do not naturally fall out of the marktplace (so the claim goes, and evidence would tend to agree) but we put them there. Now they are consumed by all who would need to consume them.

If the government declares tomorrow that radio stations are now public property, operated by the FCC, and that people will vote for content instead of responding to advertisers requests or nudges, radio would magically become a viable public good. I can appreciate the normative/positive distinction you would like to make, but in the end the positive is only useful after the fact. Our entire society is built upon normative constraints.

Consider this very thread! The claim is that radio should perform a specific function. My claim is that radio does perform a specific function: whatever the market will tolerate for someone to profit from it. there is nothing that special about radio to me; it is another area where people can offer a product and make money doing so. In this case it has proven most profitable to play somewhat bland programming to reach the largest audience to attract the best advertisers to pay for air time to generate your profit. It could have gone any number of ways. There is nothing, as far as I can see, inherent in what radio is that can guide us on what it is for. It is for whatever can be done with it.

If we attempt to strike a continued positive view and posit (;)) “Let’s do this with radio; what is the result?” We sneak right back into normative territory by evaluating the result based on some standard that isn’t inherent in the product. The positive view is useful for implications, but only to a very limited degree. As you’ve amply demonstrated with voting, the positive case shows that no one should vote, really, passed a certian percentage (obviously if no one voted one vote would be worth quite a bit— there is obviously some balancing act there). And yet, once we ascribe value to the thing under evaluation (we put on our Normative Goggles™) we find results that can be completely contradictory to what the postive case showed us.

I had a discussion with my boss about economics in the positive and normative cases once over lunch (yeah, we’re exciting people:p). He mentioned what he called the “Fallacy of rational man.” Though assuming that man makes rational decisions is the clearest way to reach a positive result, man very often does not make rational decision. I’m sure it caused no end of frustration to Ayn Rand :smiley: I also agree with him completely: the rational decision maker requires perfect knowledge and flawless abilities to interact in the market correctly. Certianly neither apply to a single soul; what use, then is the positive model?

Well, don’t get me wrong, it is plenty useful. I just want to mention that though there is an accepted path for attmpting to understand a particular aspect of life doesn’t mean that it is actually the best path (perhaps only the “best path available”). I also want to mention that the “order of operation” is important to. for example, do we posit, normatively, what a market should be like and then work within that construct positively and then reapply normative values (again) to the outcome? Should we create models of interaction devoid of value (me: radio is for whatever) and then put products into certain normative constraints and look at the result?

It is certinaly my opinion that the two approaches are not guaranteed to give a similar result. All the more reason that we can simply declare something a public good (under physical constraints, still, I haven’t forgot). It is all a matter of how we look at something. Communists will tell you that about land and means of production. Anarchists will tell you that about government.

So my question, as ever, remains— why should radio be a public good? If you remain uncomfortable about the use of “public good” then I can offer, instead, why should radio be considered common property or public proprety or held in trust for the public by some entity? Hell, it is almost an IMHO opinion thread when we cut it to the chase like that, and would be there if I didn’t know ahead of time he strange paths the hijacks would take :wink:

So, hawthorne, do you:
[li]Feel that radio is owned by the public and has been taken from us?—why?[/li][li]Feel that useful radio, a product, should be freed from market concerns or should it be more directly affected by the market? (this is, of course, regardless of wheter we consider it strict private property or held-in-trust from the first question)[/li][*]Though the explanation of this is certinaly outside the scope of this conversation, I would simply like your input: do you feel that—after the multi-generation existence of a stable market—that man influences the market more than the market influences him?

33

I do think there is confusion between something being a public good and the belief that something should be run by the government for the good of the public. As you say, there are reasons why some people might advocate water being government owned. Natural monopoly in distribution is one, disease control and information problems are others. But it is important not to pretend those sorts of goods are public goods because the requirements for efficiency are different. For national defence, the efficient price is zero. For water, the efficient price is positive because you want to people to economise on the use of the stuff and indeed to allocate water to its highest valued use in the economy. Prices can play that role, and do with some goods like this that (some) governments own, like electricity and the postal service. Government ownership does not have to involve zero prices. The fact that it sometimes does is due to this confusion about public goods, as well as a lack of understanding about the allocative role of prices and beliefs about the best way to achieve distributional objectives. With water, many current problems - including very serious environmental ones like salinity in Australia - are largely the result of water being under- or even un-priced

Here is where we part company, and on two fronts. Unless they are inherently harmful to others, I wouldn’t call anyone’s desires “superfluous” no matter how whimsical or divorced from need they seem to me to be. Indeed their satisfaction is pretty much the point of economic activity. In addition, I think you need to be more careful about the “availability of substitutes” argument. I don’t think it’s very convincing to say that if there is some substitute available then a failure is unimportant. Pollution remains a problem even if residents could move to other places. Repression does not cease to be a problem merely because at some price it could be escaped. The internet’s closing would still be a problem despite the existence of carrier pigeons. And if we could organise the radio market to better reflect its characteristics so as to get more value from this resource, the existence of newspapers wouldn’t make this achievement trivial.

Wrong way around. The question is what impact you have on the body politic. Which is pretty much nothing. Me, I’m a whispering in the ears of princes. :slight_smile:

Good job I was thorough and assumed this away in my post. :wink:

It’s not the number of people who don’t vote that’s hard to explain, it’s the number that do. Which is why I agree with

Bounded rationality, altruism etc are as it happens some of my main interests in the discipline. It is not yet clear how less than fully rational behaviour affects markets. My view is that markets are only possible because of dubiously rational cooperative behaviour. Now that Akerlof has the Nobel prize (as well as Sen and North in recent years) this view is beginning to become respectable in the profession.

Now, to your questions:

I feel that there is no complete specification of property rights and I’m uncomfortable about the residual being taken from the general public, in much the same way as I’d be uncomfortable if the internet were to be carved up between Murdoch and Bill Gates. So yeah, I take the idea that spectrum is really owned by everyone seriously. If you want to be cynical, I’m a pro-market lefty, and lean towards equality if there’s a good argument. For me the burden of proof should always be on those who want departures from equality of anything.

Somewhere above Mandelstam says

To this list I would add the full privatisation option (I guess Mandelstam is arguing that you are close to this as it is). Governments can set conditions for an effective market. I’d like to see a more efficient market involving diversity, regulation and club-like provision. What that would actually look like would involve a specialised knowledge of the literature and an examination of the numbers (which is further than I’m going to go because it’d take ages and be too much like work). But it’s not a simple choice between the market and the government.

I think you have a thread running on this. I’ll take the hint and pop over to see whether I have anything to add.