我不是 Iron Man 的漫畫迷，也沒有看過這部電影。不過即將上映的 Iron Man 2 的 trailer 有一段對白吸引了我的注意：
Senator Stern: Our priority here is to have you turn over the Iron Man weapon to the American people.
Stark: Well, you can forget it. We are safe, America is secure. You want my property? You can't have it. But I did you a big favor--I successfully privatize world peace.
5 comments:
Can a non-rivalrous and non-excludable public good be privatized?
Sure you can privatize it, you can privatize anything as long as you find a "profitable" business model.
In Iron Man's case, Stark has money to burn so he doesn't care how he gets paid off. He's not the only one, NYC mayor Bloomberg does the same thing in the real world.
Or he can profit from his fame, which we can see from the limited fragments of the trailer. This is a potential gold mine.
Some super heroes do not need to spend a lot of money to fulfill their tasks, such as Super Man and Spider Man. Though the latter does struggle to make ends meet, they don't have a huge maintenance fee or depreciation to take care of.
Bat Man and Iron Man use another model, they can afford the expense and they can maximize their own utility by doing good. In the end, it's how you max your utility matters, not how you max your wealth. We often consider these two are the same in some economic models, but they are not always the same.
If we broaden the scope of a "profitable" business model in the super hero case to how they manage to max their utility, it all makes sense.
I actually have a business idea after reading your reply. So it is possible to create a future exchange where the future contract are derived from MLB's team performance and individual player performance. And this future market can be privatized.
Do you think this can be a profitable business idea?
The movie industry has done just that. They can write futures contracts on box office turn-outs so producers are able to hedge their investment risks.
Baseball managers should be able to do that. In fact, with insurance companies so reluctant to insure long term deals, there should be a market for that. However, given the direction of the financial overhaul bill is moving, this could only be an idea.
I see. So I should wait a little before start writing a business plan and see if it can attract venture capital
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