09 March 2011

A defect in property rights

The trouble with the mining of resources that have no obvious owner is that the payment for them comes after the things are consumed. When the price is set after the thing has already been consumed it tends to be higher by a factor of 2 to 10. 
The trade-off between the long term and the short term is a defect in property rights. 
The failure to register value in prices also occurs when risk evaluations are wildly wrong, as was the case, for example, with AIG. 

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