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[log in to unmask], "Jr." wrote: 
 
> 
> So, let us confront then the final question, the existence 
> of pure collective consumption (or "public") goods. 
> Samuelson poses the standard example of national defense. 
> Why do you reject this? 
 
Thanks, J. Barkley, for the invitation. I dug up a part of a chapter in a 
provisional text on Market Failure that I wrote a couple of years ago and 
posted it to my web site. The address is below and a more complete answer 
is 
there. But to give you a brief answer, it is obvious to anyone who thinks 
about 
it, from the modern perspective, that exclusion of beneficiaries is 
possible. 
The provider only needs to have the power to expel someone from the 
protected 
area. And if a provider of national defense does not have this power, she 
could 
hardly provide national defense. It is almost as obvious that the long run 
marginal cost of supplying people in most practical situations is about the 
same as the long run average cost. The important question is why Samuelson 
(and 
his supporters) did not think of these facts. 
 
As for Kevin Quinn's post, I did not claim to be a Coasean. As for his 
further 
argument that Coase's "revolution" is only vocabulary, he will have to do 
more 
than simply make the claim. Otherwise, the discussion will turn ideological 
which, contrary to his suggestion, so far it is not. So far the discussion 
is 
about the history of the concept of a public good, insofar as those who 
define 
it wish to have a theory that helps them show the effects of government 
policies. 
 
To challenge the theoretical orthodoxy, which Coase did, does not turn one 
into 
a ideologue. If we agreed that it does, we would have no grounds to claim 
that 
economics is a system of thought capable of being improved. And this 
organization (HES) would not be concerned with the history of economic 
thought 
but with the history of economic discussion. It would be a branch of 
literature. 
 
http://www.gunning.cafeprogressive.com/issues/econ/topics/ndpubgd.htm 
 
-- 
Pat Gunning 
American University of Sharjah 
United Arab Emirates 
 
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