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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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