>From: Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: Airlines
>Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 15:06:00 -0400
>
>John A. Viator wrote:
> >
> > My (non-economist) take on this:
> >
> > The federal government has an obligation to step in where the
> > assumptions of a free market fall short in practice. I think a free
> > market model assumes that goods can be transported fairly easily.
>
>Not at all - transportation costs are just like any other cost.
I was just about to step in and say something to that effect, but then I
thought, "No, wait, Bryan Caplan's the guy who wrote 'Why I'm Not An
Austrian Economist'. He'd probably pick a fight with me if I disagreed."
Fortunately, my guess was in error.
I think Mr. Viator actually has something here - isn't one of the
neo-classical assumptions about perfect competition (a prerequisite to a
free market) that there aren't any exploitable transportation bottlenecks
(e.g., a mother lode of natural resources that one and only one firm can
access)? Or am I making a strawman here?
-JP
>--
> Prof. Bryan Caplan
> Department of Economics George Mason University
> http://www.bcaplan.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we
> ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught
> books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what *they*
> thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of
> light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the
> lustre of the firmament of bards and sages."
> --Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
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