BY ANDREW CLINE  (reformatted, emphasis mine  – Skip)

In a market, consumers have numerous opportunities to pay more for products or services they value, even if lower-cost alternatives are available. Consider how the market for beer works. While most people buy low-cost, mass-produced beers, hipsters and beer snobs can enjoy artisanal IPAs, provided they’re willing to pay the a premium price for a premium beer. If craft brewers struggle to compete, they have choices, too. They can find ways to cut costs and drop their prices. They can change their offerings to respond to public demand. They can try to attract more customers by convincing people that their products are worth the price. If they can’t compete, they close. Smuttynose Brewery, a signature New Hampshire craft brewer, went out of business last year after finding that it had misread the market.

It’s unlikely that many beer drinkers would have supported subsidizing Smuttynose by raising prices on all other beers. Yet most people probably don’t know that the state has just such a subsidy program for some niche New Hampshire businesses. Had Smuttynose been an artisanal energy supplier rather than an artisanal brewer, it would have been kept alive by subsidies. Every time you pay your electric bill or your employer pays its electric bill, you pay an above-market price for energy. The difference between what you pay and what you would have paid in a free market is distributed to businesses and programs you might not support if given a choice.

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