Comments on: Valve and post-capitalism http://snarkmarket.com/2012/7939 The stomping grounds of Tim Carmody, Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. It's a long-running conversation about media, journalism, technology, cities, culture, design, books, music, movies, the future and the past. Tue, 14 May 2013 15:49:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: Robin Sloan http://snarkmarket.com/2012/7939/comment-page-1#comment-136754 Robin Sloan Sat, 04 Aug 2012 03:29:19 +0000 http://snarkmarket.com/?p=7939#comment-136754 That IS helpful, Mintie—thanks. Yeah, the reason the Wikipedia page was so confusing is... because... I was thinking of something totally different. That IS helpful, Mintie—thanks. Yeah, the reason the Wikipedia page was so confusing is… because… I was thinking of something totally different.

]]> By: Mintie http://snarkmarket.com/2012/7939/comment-page-1#comment-136728 Mintie Sat, 04 Aug 2012 02:37:34 +0000 http://snarkmarket.com/?p=7939#comment-136728 That's not a great characterisation of the Coase Theorem - I think you're getting confused with Coase's work on the existence/nature of the firm? The Coase Theorem is actually reasonably succinctly explained on the wiki article you linked and hated - "The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights." That is, regardless of who owns the rights to the lake, if it gets polluted, it should be cleaned up exactly the same way. The property rights alter who pays, but not how the externality is dealt with. Hope that's helpful! That’s not a great characterisation of the Coase Theorem — I think you’re getting confused with Coase’s work on the existence/nature of the firm? The Coase Theorem is actually reasonably succinctly explained on the wiki article you linked and hated — “The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights.”

That is, regardless of who owns the rights to the lake, if it gets polluted, it should be cleaned up exactly the same way. The property rights alter who pays, but not how the externality is dealt with.

Hope that’s helpful!

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