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Societies for the History of Economics

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Subject:
From:
J. (J.)
Date:
Fri Mar 31 17:18:27 2006
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----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
 
Sam, 
      Although closely related to collective consumption 
goods, external effects are not their essence.  It is their 
collective nature that precludes exclusion and thus  
creates the problem for property rights.  I note that you 
have not denied the possible existence of pure collective 
consumption goods, although perhaps you wish to. 
 
With regard to your example, no insult intended to 
your pregnant wife, but her negative reaction is not one 
of eating the food that she sees the other person eating. 
Clearly there is a negative externality from her seeing 
the other person eating that food.  But their eating it  
fully excluded her from eating it.  It is still a pure 
private good, despite the possibility that there may be 
consumption externalities associated with it. 
 
A possible counterexample along such lines might 
be the Ammanita Muscaria psychedelic mushroom that 
is (or was) consumed by Siberian (and other) tribes,  
especially by their shamen.  The active agent is passed 
through the urine, although not fully, and traditionally up to 
four persons would ingest the agent from a single dose 
by drinking each other's urine in turn.  Obviously there is/was 
a social hierarchy element involved in the order of ingestion. 
 
It is clear that at the time Samuelson wrote, there was 
a lack of clarity about a number of matters, including the 
relationship between externalities, collective consumption 
goods, and important issues related to property rights.  I 
note that the very first thread I was involved with on this list 
was one in which the origin of "externalities" was discussed. 
The bottom line appears that clarification of that term did not 
appear until at least the late 1950s, if not later, certainly after 
Samuelson wrote his original 1954 paper in any case. 
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
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