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From: tw8023@pyuxii.UUCP (T Wheeler)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Solution to Free Rider problem
Message-ID: <293@pyuxii.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Jan-86 08:44:38 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxii.293
Posted: Thu Jan  2 08:44:38 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Jan-86 05:42:20 EST
References: <20@calgary.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 26

I just love the free rider solution.  I hope it goes into effect
soon because I am going to run around the country looking for
dam sites to start new projects.  I will find myself a top-notch
ad agency to plug the project so that the locals will be beating
down my door hoping to contribute to the trust fund.  As soon as
the fund reaches a sizable amount, I will drop the idea and
collect my reasonable fee for my troubles.  What a great way to
make money.  I won't have to bother with any construction or
such.

I'm amazed that the writer has not realized that in any dam building
situation, there are folks who would be living upstream from the
dam who would probably not be too excited about having their land
and homes inundated by a lake.  Take the situation of the Hartwell
Dam in South Carolina.  The damn cost many, many millions of dollars.
Yet, those who directly benefited with flood control and irrigation
and such, were only a few hundred.  To make that few people pay for
a giant damn, if it was going to benefit them, would have been
the ultimate of dumbness since 98% of those people were hovering
on the poverty borderline in the first place.

I just wish the netters who put forth these `pie-in-the-sky'
schemes would look at both sides of the story and use a little
logic.
T. C. Wheeler