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Friday, August 13, 2021

Opinion: How government screws up the economics of bears, garbage and time in North Vancouver - Financial Post

In a well-ordered world, under privatization, the time of garbage collectors would be substituted for the efforts of those who make a greater contribution to our economy

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I spend my summers in a suburb of one of the most beautiful cities on the planet: in North Vancouver, near Hunter Park. One of the problems we face in this otherwise Garden of Eden is bear visits. The animals come sniffing around on a regular basis, except when they are hibernating. When they are awake they come on by, like friendly neighbors, to see how we are doing.

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This is not the world’s most serious problem. No lives have been lost due to this inter-species togetherness. Nor have there even been any physical attacks on humans.

But the bears do present a minor problem. Because of their insistence, it is dangerous to leave garbage bins with food in them out of doors. There is nothing that attracts our ursine friends as much as the savory smells the bins give off. If you leave your garbage out overnight, you’re almost certain to find it scattered about the street in the morning.

Garbage collection is any time after 7 a.m. So the locals (the human ones, that is) have to set their alarms for around 6:45, hop to it, and put their bins out for collection first thing in the morning. To say the least, this disturbs their sleep patterns. It is also a royal pain in the neck.

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Is there no way the garbage pails could be put out night before, even with food in them? At the moment the receptacles are only bear-resistant. With additional resources, however, they could be made bear-proof. (If we can put a man on the moon, we can outwit a few bears.) Except that this would inconvenience the garbage men. If the bins were placed in the locked position, they would refuse to empty them.

Now, that’s a real kick in the head. Bears? OK. What can you do if you live near the forest? But uncooperative business firms? That is entirely a different matter. What’s going on here?

What’s going on is that the government, not private enterprise, owns, runs and manages garbage collection. Were this service to be privatized, you can bet your boots the locals would be treated more deferentially. The customer is always right, after all! The bins could be locked, the employees would be told to open them even though it would take a bit more effort on their part, and the sleep patterns of the residents would no longer be disturbed. The contract between garbage collection company and customers would reflect the extra costs, as would only be fair.

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How do we know this? Because this sort of thing occurs in every nook and cranny of the private economy. What sort of thing? Reducing time costs and increasing productivity and hence wealth.

Why is it that doctors overbook, and patients have to sit around waiting for them? Partly because of government-created shortages of doctors but also because, on average, physicians, earn far more money per hour than their patients — which in turn is because they make a greater contribution to our society. If matters were organized the other way round and physicians had to sit around cooling their heels waiting for their next appointment, valuable productive time would be wasted.

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On the other hand, you can bet that the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg never sit waiting their turn in a doctor’s offices. For ordinary checkups, at least, the physicians come to them, and for the identical reason: their time is more valuable than the physician’s.

Want to buy a ticket for the next hot sports event or concert? You’ve got to wait in line. Who queues up? High-priced lawyers earning mega-bucks per hour? No. They hire others with lesser productivity, and pay them perhaps $20 per hour to take their places in ticket lines. In that way, everyone gains from the added economic efficiency.

One of my neighbors is a doctor who earns roughly $400,000 per year. I know that since under B.C. medicare it’s a matter of public record. Another is a highly paid aquatic engineer. A third owns a string of prosperous restaurants. Their time is very valuable. What are the salaries, and hence, roughly, the productivity levels of those in charge of picking up the trash? Again, it’s a matter of public record: $43,000. Much, much less.

In a well-ordered world, under privatization, the time of garbage collectors would be substituted for the efforts of those who make a greater contribution to our economy. In that way, both overall prosperity and the sleep time of North Vancouverites would be optimized.

Walter Block teaches economics at Loyola University in New Orleans.

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