On the smallest feasible political unit [fluff piece]
The main idea: the impact on externalities on driving up the optimal size of property / political units. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 27.07.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. 0.1 This post is a fluff piece, containing analysis and commentary but no proposed solution to some issue. I try to keep this sort of stuff to a minimum as commentary for commentary’s sake is not the point of this blog. 1 Is it the individual? In defence of zoning, or why you can’t own a piece of a city 1.1 The bane of private property owners are externalities, stuff you do where you only reap some of the benefit or bear some of the cost. Look it up. A reliable way to eliminate externalities is to internalise them, i.e. have the same owner own all bits of property affected by each-other’s externalities, at which point the owner is able to rationally calculate the truly eff