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Dear J. Barkley: 
 
I doubt that we are on the same wave length. To understand the exclusion 
problem, it seems to me that one must have an open mind toward the 
alternative 
systems of legal rights that can be established and the costs of 
establishing 
them. The latter is partly a matter of predicting what kinds of exclusion 
methods are likely to be developed if there is no government intervention. 
This 
requires a rather Schumpeterian mindset, applied to phenomena that so far 
as I 
know Schumpeter did not discuss in this context. A focus on the exclusion 
problem from the property rights perspective promotes such an open mind; 
the 
Samuelsonian mathematical exposition does not. This, in my view, is why his 
classification scheme does not help to harness reality. 
 
Let me address the post that you wrote. Is an attack, the anticipated 
result of 
which is the destruction of all life on earth, "national defense?" Do you 
think 
that this is what Samuelson had in mind? Remember, his article was written 
in 
the early fifties. Be that as it may, if indeed someone had the power to 
prevent accidents that would destroy the earth, surely she would also have 
the 
power to exclude people from benefiting from the use of her power. She 
could 
threaten them with imprisonment or death. We could imagine a situation to 
the 
contrary, but what is the point of doing so? In fact, what is the point of 
imagining that such a good -- the prevention of accidents that would 
destroy 
the earth -- can be provided and that there is a demand for it? 
 
It seems to me that we are getting off the track here. Even if it is 
possible 
to imagine a situation that conforms to Samuelson's definition, the 
question is 
whether it would ever exist and also whether it is important. 
 
I expected you to address the exclusion issue directly, since it was the 
beginning of the revolution I hypothesized. It seems to me that Samuelson 
gave 
insufficient attention to private property rights (i.e., rights to control 
actions that potentially have external effects) and that the mathematical 
language he used was partly responsible for this. 
 
By the way, mathematical language is just that. Whether it is relevant to 
economic problems must be established by the user. As you know, many 
professional economists are more interested in mathematical elegance and 
tidiness than in building realistic and useful images of economic 
interaction. 
In many of his papers, Samuelson seems to have paid more attention to the 
former and less to the latter. I believe that this is the case with his 
original paper on public goods. In my view, his later papers did not do 
much 
better. 
 
Pat Gunning 
 
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