You shouldn’t be downvoted, kind of a lame part of HN lately.

I disagree that it’s a recipe for disaster - there are many valid kinds of holistic experiences of how a product is priced / sold, that don’t change the positivist economics of what is happening.

As long as childcare is economically positive, I think it is, it doesn’t really matter whatever you call it. And perhaps, it’s free in a way that matters most: redistribution from the very rich, that makes more customers with bigger budgets to spend on shit made by the firms they own.

Thanks for your comments. I agree--HN has been quite disappointing lately. For a place that's supposed to be full of tech contrarians, it does sound like an answering machine around here sometimes :)

Regarding your retort, I believe it should possible to measure the economic return of every social benefit. I strongly suspect that there are social benefits that more than pay for their own cost.

However, the most effective way to prove this is by measuring it.

It’s not just redistribution from the very rich. It’s redistribution from every tax payer, and you can bet your tax dollars aren’t used very efficiently.