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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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