| Actually, it may be true for other areas as well, I thought about this few days ago in the context of free market and choice. Maybe free market is harmful for society in the sense that market segmentation creates a choice between high and low quality based on price, and this choice doesn't force people who can afford the more expensive solution to make a fix for everybody. There is lot of anecdotal evidence about this. For example, there was article about school system in Finland, which is pretty much egalitarian. Still, the quality is great as a side effect probably because if someone improves the system, they improve it for everybody. Similar things could be said about healthcare system. In fact, probably every successful government-run system is based on belief of participants that it should be egalitarian (and yes, they do exist). We have negative examples of this as well. Most consumer product have awfully low quality, lower than what we could actually manufacture. The standard response to this is "you have a choice" and indeed, the knowledgeable people can buy quality for much higher price. But in doing so, they won't improve quality for those clueless, leaving them to buy lemons. Interestingly, even the knowledgeable group is then affected. They have to pay higher price, because they get less market power, because they chose not to extend this power by leaving others to bad choice. |