Chapter 82 Question ○ seven three

Why can we rent DVDs but not books? (Ap Ern) If people want to watch a DVD, they typically rent one from a commercial rental company, a rental chain like Block buster, or an Internet rental store like Netflix.As for commercial rental bookstores, although they have existed in some places and in some periods, they are still relatively rare.Most people either buy books from bookstores or borrow books for free from public libraries.Why don't we rent books? Part of the reason is that the government is obliged to use tax revenues to support public libraries.The principle of cost-benefit tells us that the marginal cost of the social energy efficiency level of reading or any other activity is equal to the sum of private and social marginal benefits.Economists point out that in addition to benefiting individuals, reading also benefits other people in society.For example, the wider the horizons of society as a whole, the better for everyone in the society.However, when judging whether to read a book, individual consumers mainly focus on whether it can bring benefits to themselves, while ignoring the benefits it may bring to others.In this way, the number of books people read will be less than the cost-benefit principle answers from the perspective of society as a whole.Then, the corrective method is naturally to reduce the cost of reading and increase its attractiveness, that is, to increase the attractiveness of public libraries.

Of course, a similar point could be made for certain films.For example, it has been argued that films such as An Inconvenient Truth (An Inconvenient Truth) raise environmental awareness among citizens and ultimately lead to the adoption of smarter public policies on global climate change.But in any case, most people agree that movies whose mission is to educate people are in any case much less than books, and therefore receive correspondingly less public support. There are far fewer rental bookstores than DVD rental stores, and another reason is that movies can usually be finished in two hours, while reading a book takes days, or even weeks.Due to the long circulation time of books, the necessary book rental fee charged by the book rental store is several times higher than that of the DVD rental store in order to maintain normal operation.The situation is the same as the case of the wedding dress mentioned above, because the rent is too high, renting books is not as cost-effective as buying them.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, behaviors that serve the limited interests of individuals often harm the interests of the group to which the individual belongs.When this happens to animals, there is usually no cure.While there are good reasons for all bull elk to reach an agreement calling for each bull to have their antlers halved in size, they don't have any viable means of enforcing that agreement. Of course, the human situation is different.We try to reconcile the inconsistencies between actions that benefit the individual and harm the group.We saw in the previous chapter that even though hockey players would rather skate without helmets, they empower teams without exception to enforce the helmet-wearing rule.The following examples describe how laws and regulations can help resolve conflicts of interest between individuals and groups.