from Kevin Williams at National Review,Why does this gas station pay so well?

When I mentioned my surprise at what it pays to work at a gas station in Bastrop, I got two reactions, both predictable. One was from a purported conservative who sniffed that this pay scale was absurd for such low-skilled work, and that that was why a gallon of gas at Buc-ee’s cost a dime more than it did across the street. (For the record, this was not true of the Buc-ee’s in Bastrop.) And so I found myself having to accommodate the shock of a so-called conservative who has trouble mentally processing the fact that in a free market, consumers can choose between lots of price points offering different levels of service and amenities. (Given how purchasing decisions are actually made, I think they’re on to a pretty solid strategy here: A single man traveling alone may go to the funky service station across the street to save 80 cents — Hello, Dad! — but a man traveling with a wife and children is going to stop at the place that is famous for having the cleanest bathrooms in the business, even if it costs him an extra buck-and-a-half for a tank of high-test. Or he’s never going to hear the end of it.) There’s a reason that we have first class, business class, steerage, and Spirit Airlines: Some people are willing to pay more for better, and some people hate themselves and don’t care if their flight from Vegas to Houston runs a few hours late or never actually even takes off.

The left-wing response to Buc-eenomics is just as predictable and just as dumb: If Buc-ee’s can afford to pay gas-station attendants $17 an hour, then why can’t we mandate a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage? Put another way: If it’s a good idea for one specific business in one specific market at one specific time, why not everywhere? You get the same thing with Walmart vs. Costco: They’re superficially similar businesses, so how come the mean meanies in Arkansas can’t pay like the nice, nice men from Washington State do? The answer, of course, is that every situation is different, and every business is a social-science experiment, trying out different approaches to solving social problems, which is what entrepreneurs and successful firms actually do. If it weren’t for the self-interest of big, nasty corporations, it wouldn’t be a question of clean bathrooms vs. less clean ones: You’d be out there on the side of the road watering Mrs. Johnson’s beloved bluebonnets.

print