Recognize this market?

So, imagine this scenario: there are 3 people, Andy, Billy and Charlie.

Andy has a product to sell. Billy is compelled, under penalty of death, to spend whatever money he has on this product, regardless of price. Is it a mob protection racket maybe?

Now Charlie won't buy Andy's product no matter how cheap it is. Even if Andy were giving it away, Charlie wouldn't take it.

So before going further, what price should Andy charge? Since neither Billy or Charlie decide based on price, Andy should charge as much as possible right?

By now you probably recognize this market as a free health care market. This is basically the reason why health care can't be a functional free market. One side can charge as much as possible, and the other must continue to pay and pay and pay, just to survive. The market is not balanced or free when one side isn't free to choose whether or not to participate.

As my friend, Franklin, once said, "You can't wait for heart surgery to go on sale."

Nobel for Linus Torvalds

The Nobel people ought to consider Linus Torvalds for the next Nobel Prize for Economics. The open source model of software development has exposed a new kind of market, one where the cost of producing and distributing a product falls to zero, leaving only the cost of designing it. "Open source" is now even spreading to other cheaply produced products, even though they don't actually have "source". The Linux kernel is by far the most successful open source product. Through his work with Linux, Linus has proven that this kind of market can work and that people are willing to give away the effort of designing a product for the seemingly small benefits of notoriety and creative expression.

I suppose it might make sense for Richard Stallman to share in the Nobel Prize, for creating the GPL, but the idea of giving him an economics award is almost too much for me.

Stopping Illegal Immigration is Easy

Immigration was a big deal in US elections recently. Even now, America's presidential candidates seem obligated to out-tough each other on border security. It's so simple-minded. Stopping illegal immigration is not a problem. Simply raising the number of legal immigrants would greatly reduce illegal migration. Scrapping the caps altogether would bring illegal immigration to nearly zero. It would make us more secure too, by drying up the illegal routes into the country. Will any politician ever have the good sense or courage to explain this to the American people?
Probably not for a while, but one can hope.