The Tyranny of Do-Gooders

SEE HERE I'm not going to take a big position on this. But the question is whether we've really considered the unforeseen consequences of many of the actions we take for the very best of intentions. I personally have nothing against child labor so long as the children are treated fairly and not exploited. I was a paperboy and it taught me a lot about responsibility, money and money management, customer relations, and the importance of discipline. You had to be there every day and deliver the papers. In those days it was 42 cents a week for six editions of the Cleveland Press, and afternoon paper that doesn't exist anymore.

Other interesting cases are ticket scalping and price gouging that Stossel points out can be explained as the price for standing in line or the cost of going to the trouble of providing a scarce good in a difficult situation. Whether you agree or not, you should think through these things. The ticket scalpers are simply getting the market rate of a scare commodity. If you were hot to go then you should have gone to get the tickets while the getting was good. The alternative to price gouging is shortages. If you can't make a profit by going to the extra trouble then the goods that would otherwise have been provided won't be. Generally people don't think things through and that's a problem.