Political Action Committees

In class Professor Hampton made the statement that if you look hard enough you can find an externality with anything. When I thought about it a little more his statement I realized that there is not a better example of this phenomenon than what occurs in our nation’s capital. Depending on your point of view Washington D.C. is either full of or infested with political action committees otherwise known as PAC’s. A PAC is a group that works to elect candidates that support their views by donating money. The reason PAC’s exist is because a group of people have found a way that some certain object negatively affects them and wants it controlled or it positively affects them and they want more of the object. When I checked there were over 4,000 PAC’s in existence. That means that 4,000 groups of people have searched and have found an issue with the existence or lack thereof of a product. They were so moved by the externalities of this product that they are willing to donate thousands of dollars for a candidate to alleviate their problems. They are proof that if you look at anything long enough you can find an externality and currently 4,000 people have done just that.