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Pastimes : Ayn Rand
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To: MechanicalMethod who wrote (16)10/4/2000 9:44:48 PM
From: Paul Ma  Read Replies (2) of 23
 
Ok I will give you an example. Ayn Rand says that the government should leave the economy alone. I don't think that would work. Here is one example. If there was no government then there would be few public goods. For example no person from the private sector would do a fireworks show because of the free riders who would not pay anything. However the government has the power to levy taxes in order to pay for the fireworks.
Another example is externalities. If something has a positive externality(fire extinguishers), then it should be subsidized to a degree because it provides extra consumer/producer benefit and there is no deadweight loss. Others such as negative exterlanties(pollution) require taxes so that the supply curve would shift to the social cost curve. The government HAS to have economic policies to make a lot of this work and this benefits consumers. So to say that lassiez-faire is the way to go is sophistry.

Paul
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