large firms often track resource use by offering internal services at internal prices. (those prices become the subject of a lot of office politics, kind of a zero-sum game of trying to look good, played between managers of service-providing and service-utilizing units.) 1/

there’s no reason the state can’t do that if it doesn’t! (i suspect that to some degree it does.) /fin

good point!

(i guess one answer, though, is the auto protectionism Tesla is banking upon would likely survive a US transfer of power, while solicitude toward crypto grift might not, depending on factional outcomes.)

not what i was commenting on, but if we’re doing this i’ll say there’s rich and there’s rich, and if by heights we’re not talking abt achievement in some general sense but, like, how many dollars, i’m for a ceiling of roughly $100M and am happy to argue for that as a very positive message.

there’s no fair share for a billionaire to pay. that kind of money is not legitimate luxury, but illegitimate influence and control.

unfortunately “Tiebout competition” doesn’t work so well, there’s a lot of lock-in implicit in ones home and community; when supply of residences is inelastic “success” shows up as price rather than quantity; etc. 1/

because success / failure criteria are muted and blurry, we don’t see a lot of innovation chasing success. 2/

as an electoral-reform enthusiast i find it infuriating municipalities aren’t laboratories of voting systems, but what’s the incentive? doing something unusual paints a target on leaders’ backs, any good effects will seem marginal and be contestable, while plain malfunctions kill careers. /fin

yes. i very much agree it’s best to actually design these things rather than have weird rivalries emerge along unintended dimensions. 1/

it’s just that when we think about how to arrange the public sector, we should be thinking about competition as a potentially useful tool. it’s not the special province of the private sector! 2/

(and we want to think of hybrid designs where public and private sector entities are placed intentionally in competition. this is much of the virtue of “public options”.) /fin

How do you prevent competition in the private sector from leading to innovations vendor lock-in and tricky pricing models (Warren’s “tricks and traps”)? 1/

Every competitive system, whether a sports league, a private industry, or a public rivalry requires rules and regulations that strive to insist the dimensions of competition are pro-social rather than counterproductive or Tonya-Harding-esque. 2/

WRT something like NASA, the question becomes something like which is harder, addressing the risk-aversion, sclerosis, and tolerance of waste common to monopolies (public or private) or regulating rivalry so the race it spurs serves (inevitably imperfectly) the public interest? 3/

I guess the past few of decades experience with NASA suggests to me that poison #2 might be worth a try. /fin