If I pay to have my house fire-proofed, it creates a free economic benefit for my next-door neighbors. If I smoke and barbecue all day long, the smoke creates an economic risk or cost for those same folks. These are examples of what economists call “externalities … a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, incurred by a party who did not agree to the action“.
So, what happens if I publish my genome sequence online … does anyone else get a benefit? or incur a cost? My children? My siblings? What if I were an identical twin?
Do twins favor being more similar? … in which case, maybe, they might see positive externalities?
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