Governments and private corporations both have bureaucracy. They are so big they have to. One difference is that, if the government bureaucracy isn't responsive, it can be difficult to find a competitor to go to instead. That kind of "I'll take my business elsewhere" is a powerful control that people may have in a market.
A commenter at Daniel Drezner's blog suggested the following Do Not Call scheme:
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000677.html#000268 Much economic progress has come through the creation of tradable property rights, which enables beneficial actions to be taken and non-beneficial actions to be blocked. The Do Not Call registry creates a simple version of such property rights. The telemarketers can pay people to accept their phone call, if it's really so valuable to them.
I suggest a modified Do Not Call directory, in which people can name a price and a bank account. A telemarketer can call, but only after depositing the named price into the named bank account.
This, it seems to me, is the sort of institutional solution [Ronald "The Problem of Social Cost"] Coase would approve of.
Sort of defending libertarians, and a Do Not Call idea
A commenter at Daniel Drezner's blog suggested the following Do Not Call scheme:
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000677.html#000268
Much economic progress has come through the creation of tradable property rights, which enables beneficial actions to be taken and non-beneficial actions to be blocked. The Do Not Call registry creates a simple version of such property rights. The telemarketers can pay people to accept their phone call, if it's really so valuable to them.
I suggest a modified Do Not Call directory, in which people can name a price and a bank account. A telemarketer can call, but only after depositing the named price into the named bank account.
This, it seems to me, is the sort of institutional solution [Ronald "The Problem of Social Cost"] Coase would approve of.
RAS