As I am a "paying" subscriber, I can comment now on old econlib posts. Of course, Dr. Caplan intends comments here to be FREE, too - marginal cost at zero for him, near-zero (?) for substack. -
For many years, I had been disappointed by my gov. refusing to provide "free" service, when marginal costs actually are near zero (we do have lots of very expensive "free" stuff in Germany, ofc.): as in educational software. When Corona struck, kids got free access to online ressources done by commercial companies. Why was there hardly any gov. financed software - for schools, but also German courses for immigrants (there is one, now, even decent, just tricky to register - https://a1.vhs-lernportal.de ) ? Those who could do decent stuff (the publishers of course-books) had little incentive to do so (might hurt their book-sales). The babbel/duolingo/rosetta gang had less expertise and their own priorities (lure them in, keep 'em "engaged"). Also a lot of other near universal used stuff - twitter, fb, gmail, even okc - might be much better if they did not need to rely on ads/"data-theft". Now, I see all go rofl, imagining gov. could provide such fine stuff online. But why think gov. can do an even halfway ok job in the bricks-and-mortar world?
As I am a "paying" subscriber, I can comment now on old econlib posts. Of course, Dr. Caplan intends comments here to be FREE, too - marginal cost at zero for him, near-zero (?) for substack. -
For many years, I had been disappointed by my gov. refusing to provide "free" service, when marginal costs actually are near zero (we do have lots of very expensive "free" stuff in Germany, ofc.): as in educational software. When Corona struck, kids got free access to online ressources done by commercial companies. Why was there hardly any gov. financed software - for schools, but also German courses for immigrants (there is one, now, even decent, just tricky to register - https://a1.vhs-lernportal.de ) ? Those who could do decent stuff (the publishers of course-books) had little incentive to do so (might hurt their book-sales). The babbel/duolingo/rosetta gang had less expertise and their own priorities (lure them in, keep 'em "engaged"). Also a lot of other near universal used stuff - twitter, fb, gmail, even okc - might be much better if they did not need to rely on ads/"data-theft". Now, I see all go rofl, imagining gov. could provide such fine stuff online. But why think gov. can do an even halfway ok job in the bricks-and-mortar world?