Coase vs religion
In the vicinity of our new apartment is a church that likes to celebrate its Sunday service by ringing the church bell continuously for about 5 minutes at 9.30am and 10am every Sunday. Furthermore it is not a nice melodious bell but just a continuous loud bonging of a single tone over and over.
Now I have nothing against religious celebrations per se but I do quite enjoy having a snooze on Sunday mornings. According to Coase, I should offer to pay the church not to ring the bell, but somehow I have a feeling that suggestion wouldn’t go down very well …
4 Comments
Well, perhaps it’s not necessarily a failing of Coase’s theorem, but it’s just that you are misperceiving the value of the bell-ringing to the church and its constituents (i.e. because it’s one of symbolic/religious importance, you’ll need to pay the church a lot).
“it’s just that you are misperceiving the value of the bell-ringing to the church and its constituents”
If only you could do something to prevent the bell being rung - then they would pay you so that they could ring it and we would have an efficient solution :)
Have you considered praying for the bell ringing to stop?
I think that you should make no assumptions and simply come up with an initial offer. I am sure that this noise in not appreciated by your neighbors too and they may top up your offer when you know what the vicar is prepared to accept. On the other hand, you could study why parishes insist on a very old technology for summoning adherents. Is some technological fix missing?