I would argue that this man has provided a useful service to society. A price system is the best way to allocate a scarce resource. If he hadn't taken initiative, then the parking spaces would have not been used properly:
From The London Times:
A Well-Planned Retirement
Outside England 's Bristol Zoo there is a parking lot for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, its parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were £1 for cars ($1..40), £5 for busses (about $7).
Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn't show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.
The Council did some research and replied that the parking lot was the Zoo's own responsibility.
The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.
The City Council responded that the lot attendant had never been on the City payroll.
Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain (or some such scenario), is a man who'd apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own; and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about $560 per day -- for 25 years.
Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over $7 million dollars!
......
And no one even knows his name!
From Atomic Nerds
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