Note: Libertarian Girl is off to Europe, but while she’s away she’ll be updating with previously written posts about politics and life in the places she’s visiting. She’ll soon be back to her regularly scheduled Libertarian Girl programming.
The Vienna Opera House is beautiful for sure, and it sells out virtually every performance far in advance. However, it never makes money and is kept going solely through the ongoing support of the Austrian government.
Freidrich Hayek might have agreed that the state could support certain industries as long as it did not hold a monopoly, specifically citing the Vienna Opera House, but Milton Friedman and I I still think it’s generally a bad idea.
To give you an idea of how bad the situation is for the Vienna Opera in regards to making a profit, the only time the Opera actually turns a profit is when there are no operas– the annual Vienna Opera Ball.
How can an independent opera house ever hope to compete with an opera house supported by the entire tax base of Austria?
How can an opera survive if one the likes of the Vienna Opera cannot turn a profit?
Should the state be involved in this sort of thing at all?
What do you think?
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