Protecting Individuals from Others
People can use and even abuse other people for economic gain in ways
that members of society find offensive. Child labour laws, minimum
standards of working conditions, and laws against physical abuse and
sexual harassment are responses to such actions. Yet direct abuse is not
the only example of this kind of undesirable outcome. In an unhindered
free market, the adults in a household would usually decide how much
education to buy for their children. Selfish parents might buy no
education, while egalitarian parents might buy the same education for all
their children, regardless of their abilities. The rest of society may want to
interfere in these choices, both to protect the child of the selfish parent
and to ensure that some of the scarce educational resources are
distributed according to the ability and the willingness to use them rather
than according to a family’s wealth. The government requires all
households to provide a minimum of education for their children, and a
number of inducements are offered—through public universities,
scholarships, and other means—for talented children to consume more
education than they or their parents might choose if they had to pay the
entire cost themselves.