Equity and Chocolate Cake (Re: Socialists and Equality)

[Brad DeLong]

>>I wonder why no-one seems to have come up with some variety
>>of the traditional human way of selecting the recipients of a
>>limited number of goods, responsibilities, tasks, etc.--random
>>selection  (like jurors being chosen by lot, or the conspirators
>>in Un Ballo In Mascara  drawing straws to select the assassin
>>of Gustav III?
>>
>
>If you distribute goods at random you will have no better than 
>random chance that they will end up with who needs them or wants 
>them. Congrats, Shane, you just won a set of Olympic weights for the 
>week! I got a dialysis machine! Kelly, you have a weeks' supply of 
>Viagra! Beethoven, you get the CD player, Homer, you have the Mona 
>Lisa. Etc. You see the problem. jks
>jks

Well, in the old days of high transaction costs, this would have been 
a decisive objection to random allotment.

But now we have eBay!!

Brad DeLong