ARNOLD KLING
December 28, 2011
Bricks, Mortar, and Education
December 27, 2011
Tabarrok on Innovation
December 27, 2011
Book Recommendations
December 26, 2011
Self-Recommending Books, Not Yet Available
December 25, 2011
Various Sentences to Ponder
BRYAN CAPLAN
December 29, 2011
Psychiatry's Disorders
December 28, 2011
From the Handbook of the Sociology of Education
December 28, 2011
The Mind of Robin Hanson: The Inside Story
December 27, 2011
How to Fix Group Projects
DAVID HENDERSON
December 28, 2011
Keynes a la Mode
December 27, 2011
The "Courage Campaign's" False Statement
December 26, 2011
George Stigler's Tenure Call
December 24, 2011
Rothbard on Stigler and Friedman
December 21, 2011
Bauman versus Landsburg et al
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I wouldn't hire just anybody to manage my worm bin!
I agree that websites like TaskRabbit Inc. can be beneficial to those unemployed in the short run by providing a little extra cash. If Ivey was unemployed and he made an extra $31 from draining the worm juice that would be beneficial to him and Ms. Christenson, this would be a simple example of a market working efficiently. But the article does not state that he is unemployed or that he will become a full time compost maintainer so stating that websites such as TaskRabbit Inc. are “tackling things like unemployment in an efficient, viable way,” in this case is a bit of a stretch.
A note on the title of this post: “More Evidence Against Zero Marginal Product,” how is this situation evidence against zero marginal product? This post is promoting the benefits of people being able to allocate their household chores to people who are willing to do them in exchange for wages. That means the original “workers” in this case would be Ms. Christenson and her husband, both of whom were unwilling to do the work of draining the compost bin and therefore should not be considered workers. There is only one worker in this case, Ivey, so of course there would be positive marginal product of adding a worker to a job no one else would do.
[econlib url removed--Econlib Ed.]
Antonia,
Due to shorthand, I think there is a misconception about what Dr. Henderson means by "ZMP". I think we can all agree that ZMP exists as a phenomenon. The argument is over how prevalent this phenomenon is. Some argue that a great portion of the labor force's MP approaches Z.
> There is only one worker in this case, Ivey, so of course there would be positive marginal product of adding a worker to a job no one else would do.
I think Dr. Henderson would agree with you. Identifying these jobs that no one else would do is what allows a ZMP worker to go positive. The idea is that many more such identification opportunities exist, such that ZMP may not actually be such a large problem today.