Markets Serve Women Better Than Bureaucracies

Who do you think is more likely to spend money in the wisest, most economical way? Is it the bureaucrat who is responsible for spending other people’s money on other people's priorities or the individual who spends her own money on her own priorities? Here is economist Milton Friedman in favor of the individual:

You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

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Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.

This is a large part of why I oppose some students’ recent call to make the University responsible to provide no-cost feminine hygiene products. The University's involvement will doubtless cause expenses to rise and therefore demand the school raise the price of education, which hurts low income students who are the least likely to pay higher prices. This is what happens with bureaucracy involved.

Individuals are much better off using their own resources to purchase the products they want, since they are the most in-tune with the particulars of their own situation. They know what will work best for themselves.

In a market system, individuals demonstrate their desire for a product by their willingness to exchange their resources in the form of dollars for that product. Producers and consumers bid on each others’ resources through signals called prices. Prices go up and down until the two parties can find a mutually acceptable price for an exchange. Once they do, the two exchange resources. In this way, consumers signal to producers that the goods or services they provide at a certain price are desirable and that producers should produce more. This is true in the case of tampons.

Source: Reddit

Conversely, if consumers do not purchase certain items, they signal to producers that their goods or services are not valuable, so producers produce less.

Yet, what mechanism exists for when bureaucracies are in control? Not prices. In the bureaucratic system, students must depend upon more lobbying of administration, more formal complaining, which students have been unwilling to do in the past. This gives rise to special interest groups and the collection of political power.

Moreover, in a bureaucracy, change takes time to work through the multiple layers of bureaucracy. Students must endure dissatisfaction and ongoing expense while they wait for a machinery of administration. The bureaucratic system is undesirable.

Surely, individuals, not bureaucrats, provide better value for themselves through voluntary exchange and free enterprise when they spend their own resources on their own objectives—purchasing clothing, food, cell phone service and even important health care products like tampons. Voluntary exchange through the price system reduces waste in the form of excess product, improves quality and response time, drives down prices through competition and delivers better overall value than any other alternative. The market system is most desirable.
If there was ever a need to improve women’s quality of life when it comes to the natural activity of menstruation, it will be through this model, not through bureaucratic programs.

Therefore, the solution to students’ improved quality of life is to expand the private sector’s influence on campus, not to abandon it. It is to increase the number of private on-campus vendors and locations that can provide feminine hygiene products--at a price but one that students can bid and personalize their selections to their needs.

Source: PR Newswire

To think of some possible manifestations, this can take the form of coffee shops carrying hygiene products with more variety for competition that drives down prices. It could also be increased vending machines in hallways and bathrooms that sell menstrual products, much like Playtex Sport's PlayOn vending machine or the food and beverage machines that service students’ other needs. These are some examples of ways to improve market-based solutions to students' quality of life issues.

Regardless, the answer is promoting more market activity on campus, not abandoning it.

This is my contention against bureaucratic control of women’s menstrual products, which women undoubtedly need. Bureaucrats are essential to industries like accounting and government that depend on repeating the same task with consistent quality, but they are far too inadequate to meet the ever changing and varied needs of thousands of individuals in UT Tyler’s student body.

Individuals do this best. And in the market, directing their own resources, they thrive. So to support women, support markets so that individuals--women--can thrive.

Twitter: @JHescock

Feature Image: Flickr