Skyline Drive and the greater Charlottesville area in general can have some beautiful sunsets. Last weekend, my roommates and I drove along that road with the idea to stop and have a sunset picnic dinner. Sunsets can be categorized as a public good as they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, in theory. Many people who want to view a sunset can (and should!) without bothering or lowering anyone else's utility in consumption. Further, we stopped in a small parking lot with just a few spots-- one of which we were lucky enough to snag. Like many roads or parking lots, it seems as though there was some degree of rivalry present in our situation through a risk of overcrowding and having one's view inhibited as well as a lack of availability to stop in that parking lot.
As a notable market failure, there was allocative inefficiency present in this sunset scenario because there's no way to appropriately charge consumers when a good is non-excludable. Q* does not equal QAE. A potential solution for this issue may be to utilize the gate (entry point) that is present along the road to "close the door" or to enforce Shenandoah National Park's entrance fee to create excludability to re-allocate resources efficiently. So, is it the government's role to step in and solve this economic issue?
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