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From: sykora@csd2.UUCP (Michael Sykora)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Solution to Free Rider problem
Message-ID: <4340039@csd2.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Jan-86 14:45:00 EST
Article-I.D.: csd2.4340039
Posted: Fri Jan  3 14:45:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jan-86 22:17:38 EST
References: <20@calgary.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 41

>/* tw8023@pyuxii.UUCP (T Wheeler) /  8:44 am  Jan  2, 1986 */

>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.

This is called fraud, and can be used in most commercial situations.
By and large governments commit it more often than businesses do, but it is
also more often legal when governments do it.  In any case, what makes
you so sure people will invest with a disingenuous swine like you?

>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.

If the damn would cause damage to the property of some then it should
be illegal for EITHER the private sector OR the government to build it.

>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.

I just wish the netters who put forth gratuitous insults would think twice --
they're so boring.

>T. C. Wheeler

Mike Sykora