Comment Re:Should X be paid for by taxes? (Score 5, Insightful) 861
Ok, a thought experiment:
Let's say the city of Chicago throws its bureaucratic hands in the air and cancels any city-supported trash collection. A whole bunch of new and existing companies jump on this hugely expanded market, and households/buildings start paying individually for their trash collection. (We'll ignore for now the huge inefficiency of having multiple companies sending trucks down a single alley each emptying a small subset of the bins).
But what happens in the poorer neighborhoods, where a number of households will likely find it more efficient to just dump their trash in the vacant lot or unused portion of the alley than to pay to have it picked up? There might be fewer companies willing to service these areas, and prices for collection may be higher. Before long the underprivileged communities are loaded with garbage, rats and disease. Impromptu mismanaged landfills, blocked alleys, decomposing and non-decomposable waste everywhere. All of a sudden trash collection looks a lot like a civil liberties issue. Or even if you take an individualist well-that's-their-problem-they-shouldn't-be-so-poor stance, this would affect the whole city in terms of public health, sewer water management, ER visits, etc.
Let's say the city of Chicago throws its bureaucratic hands in the air and cancels any city-supported trash collection. A whole bunch of new and existing companies jump on this hugely expanded market, and households/buildings start paying individually for their trash collection. (We'll ignore for now the huge inefficiency of having multiple companies sending trucks down a single alley each emptying a small subset of the bins).
But what happens in the poorer neighborhoods, where a number of households will likely find it more efficient to just dump their trash in the vacant lot or unused portion of the alley than to pay to have it picked up? There might be fewer companies willing to service these areas, and prices for collection may be higher. Before long the underprivileged communities are loaded with garbage, rats and disease. Impromptu mismanaged landfills, blocked alleys, decomposing and non-decomposable waste everywhere. All of a sudden trash collection looks a lot like a civil liberties issue. Or even if you take an individualist well-that's-their-problem-they-shouldn't-be-so-poor stance, this would affect the whole city in terms of public health, sewer water management, ER visits, etc.
Despite the appeal of the libertarian ideal of everybody taking responsibility for just themselves, it simply doesn't work in the real world. We're all in it together and, no matter how frustrating it is, our actions unavoidably affect one another.
