Winterspeak points us to what he claims is an extremely good article on economics in Slate, Shut City Hall!. I beg to disagree with Zimran and author Steven E. Landsburg. The Supreme Court (in the April Tahoe decision), according to Landsburg, concludes that most government agencies should be out of business. What the Justices wrote in their decision was that compensating property owners for every decision that is less than a complete taking is prohibitively expensive for governments. Since the cost exists whether the government pays it or the property owner does (by losing the amount, since this is a zero sum game), Landsburg says that what’s good for the goose ought to be the same for the gander. If the cost is too much for the government to bear, it must be too much for anyone to bear. He cites the economic analyses of that were done about 30 years ago when politicians were debating whether or not to change to an all-volunteer army and claims they show explicitly that such a conclusion is already proven.
However, Landsburg makes clear his logical error when he writes: “But it follows inexorably from what he [Justice Stevens, in the majority opinion] did say.” Cost, in some abstract, economically perfect world, probably is the same no matter who bears it, I’ll concede, but we don’t live in such a place. Our society has chosen to operate on the basis that some government decisions will cost some people or corporations money, directly through taxes or indirectly through regulations, and so it does not follow inexorably that the Supremese must recognize that almost all routine government decisions “are … unjustifiable luxuries.”
BillSaysThis 