Basically, everything I want has to be produced by someone, possibly myself in limited cases, but generally by someone else. It also has to be transported and made available. All the people involved need to be rewarded for their part in making stuff available, and the price I pay is my way of ensuring that the stuff I want is available to buy. At the same time, there are goods that I might like to have, but when I consider how much of my income would be required to pay for them, I elect to forgo that purchase in favor of others, thus requiring me to choose what I am going to spend my money on. As my father-in-law was wont to say, "You can only spend a dollar once." And my supply of dollars is not unlimited.
My local town has a collection of free EV chargers. OK, they charge for parking, but not for the electricity. The logic seems to be that "we need to be encouraging the adoption of EVs" which is a sentiment I can buy into. I personally take advantage of this freebie while at the same time arguing to any city official that will listen (city council people at election time) that they should charge at least the nominal cost of electricity plus upkeep. My logic is that 1) there aren't enough of these chargers to meet demand and 2) no entrepreneur is going to try to compete with free so as long as they're free, we're stuck with too few chargers for the large apartment dwelling population of the area who don't have home charging like me.
Something I never got round to thinking through is that even in an entirely altruistic world, it would be bad to have everything free, because prices convey info and allow everyone to help everyone else more. Free dissertation topic!
Basically, everything I want has to be produced by someone, possibly myself in limited cases, but generally by someone else. It also has to be transported and made available. All the people involved need to be rewarded for their part in making stuff available, and the price I pay is my way of ensuring that the stuff I want is available to buy. At the same time, there are goods that I might like to have, but when I consider how much of my income would be required to pay for them, I elect to forgo that purchase in favor of others, thus requiring me to choose what I am going to spend my money on. As my father-in-law was wont to say, "You can only spend a dollar once." And my supply of dollars is not unlimited.
My local town has a collection of free EV chargers. OK, they charge for parking, but not for the electricity. The logic seems to be that "we need to be encouraging the adoption of EVs" which is a sentiment I can buy into. I personally take advantage of this freebie while at the same time arguing to any city official that will listen (city council people at election time) that they should charge at least the nominal cost of electricity plus upkeep. My logic is that 1) there aren't enough of these chargers to meet demand and 2) no entrepreneur is going to try to compete with free so as long as they're free, we're stuck with too few chargers for the large apartment dwelling population of the area who don't have home charging like me.
Something I never got round to thinking through is that even in an entirely altruistic world, it would be bad to have everything free, because prices convey info and allow everyone to help everyone else more. Free dissertation topic!
What exactly was your point?
> Why can’t everything be free?”
"So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own
-Jesus