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Patrick,
Well, there is no discussion of either intermediate
cases or of "public functions" in the original 1954 paper,
which is very short. He brings in this discussion in the
1955 paper to respond to critics of his original paper
who pointed out the existence of the intermediate cases.
Samuelson fully agrees with the critics that there are
intermediate cases. He does not clearly say that those
functions you mentioned must be or should be provided
publicly, and he clearly did not say that they were pure
collective consumption goods, although he probably did
at the time believe that they should be provided publicly
as they largely were then.
I continue to disagree that his definition of pure
collective consumption goods (definitely the clearest
term) is based on mathematics. I shall not repeat this
again, but simply note that the mathematics follows
from the definition. Now, you seem to deny the existence
of such pure collective consumption goods, and that is
certainly a defensible philosophical and methodological
position, partly because such goods are by their very
nature hard to "put one's hands on" (much less assign
property rights with excludability characteristics to them).
But, once one allows the possibility for such a good to
exist, the mathematics follows logically, although again,
I grant that one can object in general to the use of such
mathematics or deny the applicability of the mathematics
because it assumes some kind of nonexistent collectivity
in the face of methodological individualism. But, it is not
the math that is doing the defining.
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? I can appreciate that if it is defense
against a ground attack on certain boundaries of a country
that it might not be a pure collective consumption good, with
national defense actually only defending a subset of the
population. But, what about deterring against overwhelming
nuclear attack that would destroy all human life on the planet?
Is this not a pure collective consumption good?
As a final point I would say that you make to much of
denying a reality to "public functions." These are simply
services and we treat services as being like goods in usual
economic analysis. Whether these publicly provided services
are actually pure (or even intermediate) collective consumption
goods, or whether they could or should be provided privately,
is quite another matter.
Barkley Rosser
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