7 people, all paying the same price, are sharing a 7-bedroom apartment. Not all the bedrooms are of equal size. How should the scarce resource -- the larger bedrooms -- be allocated?
One approach is to say that whoever arrives first gets to claim the room he wants, and call it his own. The last to arrive takes whatever is left.
Another approach is to say that the oldest person gets to claim the room he wants, and then the next oldest, and so on.
A third approach is to draw straws, so that the privilege is randomized.
A fourth approach is for the extra value attached to the choicer rooms to be valued, and for those who want the better rooms to bid for them, and to pay into the common treasury the excess value, to fund something that benefits the entire apartment. Alternatively, the payment could go to the person who gets stuck with the least desirable room.
A fifth approach is to rotate rooms part way through the year in some way that gives everyone equal access to the prime resources.
A sixth approach is to add up the total square footage -- if that is the only difference among the rooms -- and then have each person pay their share based on their share of the total. Those with larger than average spaces would pay those with smaller than average spaces.
How do we run our society? We permit those who arrive first to choose their spaces, and keep them forever. Their heirs, if they don't want to live in them, can rent them out to others, or sell them to the highest bidder, and the next child who doesn't stand to inherit a place to live and a place to work needs to enter that bidding, and mortgage the next 30 years of his wages.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all of us are created equal.
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