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AnthonyCV's avatar

"But we could similarly argue that if the government could have solved the problem, it would have already have done so."

I don't think you can, for the simple reason that the private sector contains more entities acting, thinking, and trying things in parallel than the government does. Congress literally can't vote on 10,000 issues per year, for example.

Now, *usually* people immediately demanding new government action in response to a (perceived?) problem are wrong, and oftentimes private solutions either exist but are underused or unused, or are actively prevented from arising because of past government actions. This applies in support of a whole lot of your past proposals, obviously.

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Berder's avatar

There are classes of problem that government can address that private industry cannot address.

Private enterprise can address a problem if:

1.) The problem is primarily a concern to people rich enough to pay to solve it. (Example problems where private enterprise alone would fail: health care for the indigent, low-quality school systems in poor communities, crime in poor communities).

2.) Private enterprise is not prevented by law from effectively acting to solve the problem (Example problems: police corruption, excess copyright terms, state highway congestion, regulatory capture).

3.) The problem does not involve a situation like tragedy of the commons where 100 people are afflicted by the problem, each person would be willing to pay up to $10 to solve the problem for themselves, but the only available solution is to pay $500 to solve it for all 100 people together, where everyone benefits regardless of whether they helped pay. (Example problems: pollution, overfishing)

4.) The problem is not the result of a failure of competition. (Example problems: excess length of TOS of online services, prices being set higher than the marginal cost of production, "confusopoly" where the customer can't figure out what is the best value, companies deliberately impairing or locking down the functionality of the products they sell).

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