universal access
From Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics - A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy - 2004.
Can you think of any industries he might be making an analogy to?
If the government were to come up with a “plan” for “universal access” to beach-front
homes and put “caps” on the prices that could be charged for such property, that would not
change the underlying reality of the high ratio of people to beach-front land. With a given
population and a given amount of beach-front property, rationing without prices would now have
to take place by bureaucratic fiat, political favoritism or random chance-but the rationing would
still have to take place. Even if the government were to decree that beach-front homes were a
“basic right” of all citizens, that would still not change the underlying reality in the slightest.
Tags: economics, sowell, rationing, universal access
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