Seeing fireworks is non-rivalrous, but being somewhere is. So getting a good viewing spot for the fireworks is rivalrous.

BTW, the title doesn't make any sense

edit: typo

> Seeing fireworks in non-rivalrous, but being somewhere is ... BTW, the title doesn't make any sense

Neither does your comment! What do you mean 'in non-rivalrous, but being somewhere is'?

The article uses the term. If there is a star in the sky and I see it, I don’t consume it so that you can see it too.

But if I occupy a spot, I “consume” that so you can’t be there simultaneously.

So there is rivalry if we both want to be there.

Yes but 'in non-rivalrous' doesn't make any sense.

It took coming down to your comment to realize that GP had “in non-rivalrous,” I’d just glossed it over and assumed it said “is”

Being in a place can be thought of as a rivalrous good because other people cannot simultaneously be in that place.

s/in/is

What a sensationalist, clickbait title of a very short piece written in 2019 and republished now to get some NYE traffic (needs a year in the title).

This doesn't make clear at all how converting the free event to a ticketed event "broke" economics textbooks.

I think it just means that a commonly cited example of a public good in textbooks is arguably no longer a good example. But yeah, the choice of words is pretty clickbaity.

Apologies. Fireworks are the text book example of public goods.

But how does this break economics textbooks? They took a public good and effectively privatized it, ostensibly for the public benefit (reducing infrastructure costs on NYE) but conceivably for private benefit (passing out VIP tickets as favors or steering a profitable security contract to an ally).

There's nothing in economics that says the optimal outcome will naturally emerge. There's the concept of equilibrium in price theory, but that only exists under conditions of perfect competition - zero exit/entry costs, absolute market transparency, and fungibility of what's traded. To parallel your firework example, that works quite well for commodities like oil or many ag products, but not for housing.

Check out this book, which provides a good explanation of why it is politically profitable to do things like privatizing public goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dictator%27s_Handbook

Essentially, the authors' argument is that political power can easily be modeled as transactions in a political capital market where access to public goods is traded for political support (participatory or vote delivery blocs in rigged elections, or non-interference by military actors in more obvious dictatorships). The wiki article includes a link to their more rigorous academic exploration of the topic which is almost equally readable.

The state of economy as a science seems to be in much deeper trouble than I expected.

> it doesn’t make economic or practical sense for the organisers of the fireworks display to actively exclude people from viewing it, say, by hiring security staff that will actively patrol and prevent people from looking up into the sky

It absolutely makes sense. Before the restrictions, watching the fireworks meant ensuring a crush of people for hours, and even getting away from the riverside afterwards could take over an hour. Getting a paramedic in and out of that was terrible, not to mention toilets and small children.

Anyone who can look up to the sky is welcome to do so, from hills, rooftops, balconies etc.

> Anyone who can look up to the sky is welcome to do so, from hills, rooftops, balconies etc.

Yep - always a large crowd up at the top of Hampstead Heath as it has huge panoramic views over London. Great to see the whole city horizon light up.

So all of the ticket proceeds go towards collecting fees and enforcing the ticket restrictions... so as to reduce public good.

Sounds a lot like charging for WiFi, which usually costs as much to administer and enforce as it collects.

They charge a nominal fee so that there aren't a million people fighting over 100,00 spots stampeding each other.

Ok, I'm going to just go with that idea. Let's create a public lottery for art, education, or lets say business funding. Since it's public funded of course it's worth more than the nominal fee (just there so proles don't fight over it) and we can hand out what... $100M (only 20x the fireworks) for a 100,000 people. That's $1000/person and only the scaled cost is only $200! If that's good, why not go bigger like $100B since it costs $10M to start a real business and hey, if you can't raise $2M for the ticket, what kind of entrepreneur are you?

So now we're distributing tickets from public funds worth 5x their purchase price only to the wealthy that can afford them? That sounds... fair? I mean proles get to work in the companies that are started so they benefit too (like watching the fireworks from behind the stands). Heck, even the "failed" entrepreneurs who just throw lavish parties and buy expensive cars support the economy! Life is good when you're born with privilege.

To be fair, they did this with Godiva festival in Coventry to good effect - It's a public music festival put on by the council, however every year there were issues with overcrowding and people queueing to get in after the venue reached its capacity.

They changed the model to ticketed entry at £3 per person (enough to pay for the full infrastructure for collecting and checking tickets but nowhere near enough to scratch a surface on the event costs) and it worked really well - no queues and really good value. The money wasn't a barrier to entry, but did put up enough of a barrier to entry to mean that people didn't register 'free' tickets and then not show.

making the public good a private good so they could raise the money for making the transition :)

but seriously, the reasons are legit.

Perfect example of when it should have been made of a bunch of smaller fireworks displays, so that people wouldn't want to travel as far but would still be able to watch a fun show.

There are other fireworks displays in London (or were last year, anyway). Battersea Park, Alexandra Palace and Crystal Palace have/had displays. There are probably several others I'm not aware of.

The big display on the Thames is broadcast on national TV, and had 16 million viewers last year.

But firework enjoyment doesn't scale linearly. Launching a single firework at random places in London is not as impressive as a bunch of fireworks at one place in London.

Large fireworks displays do scale sub linearly, just not all the way down to a single bottle rocket. The issue is large displays are viewed on a roughly flat surface aka the earth, but irradiate light into 3D space. To maintain a proper viewing angle fireworks need to be launched ever higher into the air as your showing them to more people.