The Economic Way of Thinking 13th Edition by David Prychitko, Peter Boettke, Paul Heyne

تمرين 10

Bombast City allows motor vehicles to be operated without mufflers if they carry a current noise license, which costs $20 per month. In Tranquil Heights it is illegal to operate a motor vehicle without a muffler, and the fine for violation is $100. Motorists who choose to violate the Tranquil Heights ordinance are caught and fined about once every five months. In other words, Bombast City permits noisy vehicles upon payment of a fee and Tranquil Heights prohibits them and fines violators. The fee and the fine are monetarily equivalent when we multiply the fine by the probability of 0.2 that it will have to be paid in any month.
(a) Given this monetary equivalence, what is the difference between the approaches of Bombast City and Tranquil Heights to the problem of mufflers and noisy motor vehicles?
(b) It's clear that people who drive without mufflers in Bombast City are licensed to make noise. Do the people who drive without mufflers in Tranquil Heights acquire a license when they pay their fines? Would the legislators of Tranquil Heights agree that payment of the fine authorizes one to drive without a muffler?
(c) One difference between "you may make noise if you pay" and "you may not make noise and you'll pay if you do" is that in the latter case, but not the former, the party who makes noise does something that the society condemns as wrong. Does this fact exercise its own effect on behavior? How do societies usually respond when individuals persist in behavior that has been legally condemned as wrong ? Does the penalty remain constant, as it does in the case of a fee for permitted behavior?
(d) Does this distinction aid us in understanding what lies behind some of the objections to pollution fees? When people protest that fees based on emissions into the air or water constitute a "license to pollute," are they perhaps objecting to the law's authorization of the emissions? Do they want the emitters to bear moral blame as well as higher monetary costs? Why might people who are intensely interested in cleaner air or water want the issue to be a moral one?
(e) When would it be desirable to treat discharges into the air or the water as costs imposed on others that will be allowed upon payment of a fee, and when would it be better to treat them as crimes punishable by fines?