Recently, I moved to a new apartment. The house is bigger and better, but with one flaw - there are no reserved parking spots. There are plenty of parking spots and they are all on a first-come-first-serve basis.
In my old apartment complex, there is one reserved parking spot per apartment and a bunch of 'floating' spots that can be used by visitors or even extra cars. This arrangement was quite good for me, as I have only one car and so I could park it quite close to my apartment.
The new apartment complex also seems to be relatively more affluent than my old one, and as a result, it looks like many of the residents have two cars on an average. These two factors - relative affluence and lack of reserved spaces - have combined together and typically result in lack of spots close to my apartment especially late in the night, such as when I get back from shopping. While there are still plenty of spots available in general, they are no more close to my apartment.
While I can look at it as a mandatory exercise that's probably good for my body, it gets a little frustrating to not have it close to home (maybe I am becoming too American - I can visualize my Dad giving a story about how he walked for a mile to school in the old days!). Overall, I felt that my previous apartment had a much better arrangement.
This led me to thinking about some of the 'socialistic' plans of the Obama administration.
A market-driven economy seems to be equivalent to my new apartment complex. It's purely democratic and whoever can meet the demand (empty parking space), get to supply (park the car). In general, this is great - it's purely meritocratic. However, as in the case of my new apartment, the trouble comes when there is an imbalance in the economy, such as when some people have more cars than average, and some less (rich vs middle-class vs poor). In this scenario, the ones who have more and are at the right place at the right time (reasonably affluent and gainfully employed) get to park all their cars at the prime spots (good healthcare at good hospitals). At the outset, this looks great - purely meritocratic, right? But what about the average Joe who has one single car and works late? He cannot park his car because someone with two cars took his place! Now would that be considered fair? Shouldn't Joe be assured at least one spot so he can park comfortably?
To me, this seems very similar to the ideal goal of partial Government intervention, a la Obama healthcare plan (other nuances and politics aside). The government should be responsible for providing at least certain minimal level of care (one parking spot per apartment), while letting the market rule anything above (additional 'floating' parking spots for extra cars). This seems to be a much better proposition than a pure 'floating' model. Needless to say, it also better than letting the apartment management make 'all' spots reserved without any 'floating' spaces, as that provides very little flexibility and adds more bureaucracy (such as when getting a new car, you have to go to the management to get a new spot assigned).
So, in all, it looks like the ideal option is to have a 'minimum' Government intervention (aka Public Option) that provides some basic guarantees while providing some flexibility for anything beyond the minimum.We can extend the same logic to other 'social' programs such as Education as well.
What do you think? Do post a comment.
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