Steven Johnson argued that the private sector overvalues apps… hence the need for maximum wages. But he did not argue that the public sector undervalues high-school principals. He didn’t argue this because his basic premise is that the public sector correctly values public goods. I encouraged him to take a closer look at his basic premise.

Now here you are saying that I’m centering my arguments around the “invisible hand”… which is true. But then you go on to say that Smith put more effort into the Theory of Moral Sentiments. This means that, on the off-chance that you actually read either of his books, then you clearly did not understand them. Which means that you really might not understand the following passage…

It is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stocks towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society among all the different employments carried on in it as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society. — Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Profit… and just as importantly loss… ensure that we really don’t have to worry about apps being overvalued. The public sector however, really doesn’t have profit or loss… which means that we shouldn’t have any confidence that high-school principals or any other public goods are being correctly valued. Therefore, Steven Johnson’s basic premise is wrong.

The solution isn’t to implement maximum wages… it’s to allow people to choose where their taxes go (pragmatarianism FAQ). If people start to allocate too many taxes to high-school principals… then the increasing scarcity of other public goods will naturally encourage people to correct the faulty distribution.

Now, if you truly believe that congress is better than consumers at identifying and altering faulty distributions… then you’re a socialist. You should argue that congress should spend all of our money.