Free Parking; G. North

People want to get a piece of noth ing in order to put something into it. This is a far greater problem in productive capitalistic societies than it is in underdeveloped na tions. We have so many items around that we need space to house them. So the price of "noth ing" - empty space - goes up. One place where this space probDr. North, economist, lecturer, author, cur rently is an associate of Chalcedon, an edu cational organization dedicated to Christian research and writing. His latest book is An Introduction to Christian Economics, Craig Press, 1973. 50 lem occurs is on the Hollywood Freeway at 5 p.m. Another is the Long Island Expressway, or as it is also known, the world's longest parking lot. Lots of drivers try to insert their cars into the available freeway space. And the "freer" the freeway, the worse the jam. Men are told that it costs them nothing extra to use the available space on the freeways; they find subsequently that there is greater demand for "nothing" than sup ply at zero price at 5 p.m. Even on the Eastern toll roads, the same problem occurs, since it always costs the same, day or night, to use the available space. There is no incentive to allocate the space economically. It costs three cents (or whatever) per mile at 5 p.m.

or 7 p.m. Parking space is another prob lem. Private firms have plenty of incentive to purchase space down197-'f "FREE PARKING" - SPACE NOT AVAILABLE 51 town and allocate it according to the most efficient uses. It costs more to parkin the heavily used business districts than in a sub urban flrea. Men therefore have an incentive to plan wisely. If they want to pay less, they can go to work earlier, park farther away, and walk the extra distance, or ride the bus. No Man's Lane But some sections of a business district may be outside the pri vate sphere's ability to allocate space~rationally. I refer to the curb lanes of the city's streets. These are the property of the city gov ernment, not private citizens. There was a time in the past when the doctrine of "free" space led to the same sort of difficulties that the doctrine of "freeways" creates today. It was only when urban comm uni ties took a lesson from the free market that the problems diminished. Arnold Shapiro de scribes what happened: Parking a car downtown in most cities in 1935 made grown men cry - and curse. Practically all the spaces were occupied by the ears of store owners, their employees and several other all-day parking hogs. The shop pers fought over whatever was left and chaos prevailed.

In Oklahoma City, the Chamber of Commerce turned for help to news paper editor Carl McGee, who had achieved fame in the 1920's for un eovering the Teapot Dome scandal. He solved his city's parking problem by inventing one of America's most helpful but irksome gadgets: the parking meter. On a July morning in 1935, Okla homa City drivers were confronted with 174 of McGee's Park-O-Meters. As an experiment, these four-foot high mechanical cops were placed on one side of a few downtown streets. The contrast spelled success. On the unmetered sides, there continued to be confusion - cars j anlmed together and pushed in front of fire hydrants, fenders bent, and traffic stopped by motorists backing into cramped parking spaces. On the metered sides, there was order and room for every car to be parked. The price tag for this lux ury? Five cents for an hour. [Which was plenty in 1935 Oklahoma City, Shapiro fails to mention.] When merchants on the unmetered sides realized that the meters helped busi ness by keeping the flow of customers moving, they requested meters in front of their stores. 1 Prices set by governments are only vague estimates. Other con siderations besides profit must be considered, such as the political re action to increased meter costs.

The public streets are a monopoly, so it is not possible to measure economic value of the spaces di1 Shapiro, "Meter Maids Show Their Mettle," Westways (October, 1973).

52 THE FREEMAN January rectly, since outside agencies are not allowed to enter the market to buy up the spaces. Thus, even at best, the meters are inefficient space-allocators. But when com pared to the effects of ufree goods" for one and all, there is no ques tion which approach allocates more rationally. Didn't the merchants in Okla homa City realize that by parking their own cars on the streets they would reduce local business? Prob ably they did, or at least some in dividuals did. But if anyone man does find other spaces for his car and his employees' cars, he only leaves a "free" space for the mer chant across the street. It is very hard to organize all the local mer chants, impose sanctions, and then keep out all-day nonshoppers (e.g., movie viewers) from taking the available spaces. But the simple addition of an allocating device, the parking meter, reduced the disorder. A Pricing Prob'em Today we are returning to the pre-1935 parking problem. Meter fares are probably too cheap in some areas. The allocation action is provided primarily by the in convenience of having to return to the meter to deposit a fresh coin. Other devices must be added, such as chalk-marking of tires (in those regions that only allow one hour of parking, even with the nickel meter). Even the "no park ing" signs, however, are really little more than expensive parking spaces: a $5 or $10 fine is imposed, which in downtown New York City may be ,cheaper than a local parking lot, especially if the city planners impose ceilings to the legal parking fees in private lots, or establish "quality-oriented"

guild monopolies among the opera tors of the lots. 2 If "nothing" is really something, but political authorities insist on charging nothing for it, there will be endless confusion, disruption, and waste. The fallacy of "nothing" for nothing is just another case of something for nothing. To avoid paying money for something valu able, we wind up paying plenty in frayed nerves, bent bumpers, missed appointments, and so forth. In a culture. that already drains us emotionally and physiologically, it seems far cheaper to pay enough money to get the things we need. It might even be a form of preventive medicine. ~ 2 See Henry Manne's classic descrip tion, "The Parable of the Parking Lots," The Public Interest, No. 23 (8.pring, 1971).