
Where is the pencil czar? - jlhamilton
http://www.newsweek.com/id/158752/output/print
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anewaccountname
Clever that they picked pencils instead of some tragedy of the commons problem
like basic scientific research.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Huh. The classic tragedy of the commons example I was taught in high school
was about lighthouses. In college, I found out that nobody had tested this
empirically except Ronald Coase, who found that lighthouses tended to be
private and profitable, historically (this, of course, is not taught in
standard economics courses; I only found out because I took a course on
Coase).

And I don't even know about scientific research. I've talked to people at
private research groups (e.g. Microsoft Research), and at major universities;
the latter spend a lot less time doing research, and a lot more time
delegating to grad students or hustling for grants. It is ironic, I guess,
that the public servants spend their time in such bourgeoisie pursuits, while
the capitalists are busy doing research.

~~~
wtrk
Just to clarify, Coase wrote (in "The Lighthouse in Economics" in the 1970's)
specifically on the case of lighthouses in the British Isles.

Lighthouses in England are maintained by Trinity House
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_House>) which is not in any
recognizable way a private organization. While it operates with a large degree
of autonomy, it is part of the UK government.

According to Coase, Trinity House funds its activities through "light dues"
that are assessed on a per-tonnage basis to ships arriving at or departing
from British ports. Assuming that there are never shortfalls or times when TH
needs to draw on outside funds, then the scheme is self-supporting.

IOW, We're not looking at a bunch of hard-working libertarian lighthouse
keepers each independently negotiating with ship captains in a free market.

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wallflower
Next time you are browsing in a technical bookstore, I recommend Henry
Petroski's tome on engineering w.r.t pencils: "The Pencil: A History of Design
and Circumstance". I couldn't get through the entire book but its exhaustively
researched.

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nickb
It's a classic piece of economics:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304160>

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ConradHex
Very interesting, but the timing is a little awkward. The current disaster in
the banking sector doesn't really speak to the brilliance of an unregulated
free market, does it? (Or at least, there wasn't much regulation when the
banks took greedy, foolish risks, but now that it's all gone south, guess
what? Time for government intervention, by golly!)

