tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post6060111544511873514..comments2024-03-28T06:49:24.930-04:00Comments on International Political Economy at the University of North Carolina: Shall We Continue in Sin, So That Grace May Abound? God Forbid.Thomas Oatleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14092437150746625670noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-20430402695691591502012-11-20T12:31:21.744-05:002012-11-20T12:31:21.744-05:00KV, it is possible that I misunderstood. I am not ...KV, it is possible that I misunderstood. I am not saying that if a good should be provided then it must be a public good. Nor am I saying that all public goods should be supplied always and everywhere. What I am saying is that *if* something can be called a public good then it becomes more easily justified. This leads to "public good inflation", where everything with any possibly-imagined positive spillover effects are called public goods. See SBD's comment.<br /><br />I have never seen anyone claim that public goods are bad. The assumption underlying public goods is that they are good: that society would benefit from the presence and suffer from their absence.<br /><br />1. But public goods do not exist on a continuum. Something is either a public good or it is not. If it is excludable and/or rivalrous in consumption then it is not.<br /><br />2. No, I disagree. The radio spectrum is a public good. Any particular radio station is not (although it gets closer than roads, because it is non-rivalrous in consumption, and the capital investment required to consume it -- buying a radio -- is much lower than that required to benefit from a road).<br /><br />SBD, a few points:<br /><br />a. This is what I mean: just because something generates positive externalities does not make it a public good. A Harvard education generates positive externalities, but it is not a public good.<br /><br />b. Congestion is a major issue in many cities (see Munger's original post which raises this issue).<br />3. Kindred Winecoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14330671232391851377noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-47215093016221330852012-11-20T11:26:47.212-05:002012-11-20T11:26:47.212-05:00All point in every angle well elaborated. People, ...All point in every angle well elaborated. People, read up! Good post..Alexis Marlonshttp://incometherapy.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-87943438221903070812012-11-19T11:54:51.316-05:002012-11-19T11:54:51.316-05:00It seems to me the larger issue is whether roads s...It seems to me the larger issue is whether roads should be defined/not defined as public goods as relates to their 1st order function (transporting cars) or 2nd order functions and beyond (creating transportation networks that are widely shared and can be used to facilitate business transactions, lower costs of goods, and contribute to overall economic growth). If we think about road solely due to their 1st order function, sure, they are not public goods. But, that claim becomes more dubious as we think about 2nd order functions. It is very hard to make the case that you can exclude an individual from gaining utility in the form of a lower price of a t-shirt (or a loaf of bread, for that matter, to bring in previous commenter's example) that a functioning road system provides. In terms of non-rivalrous in consumption - it seems pretty far-fetched to claim that a national road system can only sustain a meaningfully finite amount of commercial traffic. Too many trucks on the road doesn't seem to be a major barrier to commercial entry in the US, at least.SBDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-29816344059056295432012-11-19T01:20:10.037-05:002012-11-19T01:20:10.037-05:00I think you misunderstand the part that I am conte...I think you misunderstand the part that I am contesting. You appear to be arguing that if something is determined to be a public good, then it should always be provided: if it should not always be provided, then it must not have been a public good.<br /><br />"To understand where this logic ends consider that under Munger's definition -- public goods are good, and less-used roads are the most public goody of all roads -- we should build a bunch of roads (and bridges) to nowhere. Almost no one will use them, so the marginal cost of an additional vehicle will be the closest to zero that it can possibly be. Let's start building!"<br /><br />I don't see where in Munger's definition he says that public goods are essentially good, rather than simply things that wouldn't be produced privately: whether they should be produced publically is a different matter.<br /><br />You say that "Roads are therefore not public goods. Ever." I am arguing that, to a great extent, scarcely used roads can be public goods (and are, excluding the possibility of banning individuals from all roads), but that that fact does not make them "good". <br /><br />As to your other comments:<br /><br />1) Yes, I prefer "mush", or as I say, continua. Most things lie somewhere on a spectrum.<br /><br />2) My "silly" analogy was intentionally so: it was imagining a hypothetical world in which the only way to prevent someone from consuming your excludable resource was to prevent them from consuming all associated excludable resources. If you want a less silly analogy, the fact that you can prevent someone from listening to your radio station by preventing them from buying a radio/radio components perhaps makes radio exclusive, but only in the most perverse sense.<br /><br />3) As far as I can tell, a common pool good is precisely one which, at certain margins, acts "like" a public good, while at other margins tends to behave in a non-rivalrous manner (I misspoke about non-exclusivity). Yes, they cannot be treated the same in economic models, but I would argue that the former is simply a limiting case of the latter. For instance, for all reasonable purposes, a streetlight is a public good: if enough people crowded around it, it would eventually become rivalrous, but that would be considered a pathological case.KVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17238349610733357418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-6108832340882011682012-11-19T00:48:08.502-05:002012-11-19T00:48:08.502-05:00KV -
You say my definition is pedantic. Well, def...KV -<br /><br />You say my definition is pedantic. Well, definitions tend to be! What else *could* they be? Don't get on my case about "Yes, well, technically...". Technicality is important in these matters, and Munger's entire post is dedicated to the finer points of definition. It is in that spirit that I wrote.<br /><br />As I said, the definition of "public goods" is loaded, politically. If you can get something designated as a public good then there is no intellectual case for opposing its provision. Given that, I think preserving a clean meaning for the term is worthwhile. Perhaps you prefer mush.<br /><br />My argument may be confused, although more likely it is confusing. But you seem to have gotten my drift...<br /><br />If public goods are "mostly understood in the same fashion" as common pool resources then that is an error (though not on my part). The two are different in very important ways. It's not clear (to me) that roads are a common pool resource either, since they are planned and constructed with intentionality. But maybe the opposite case can be made.<br /><br />You say "whether or not something is a public good does not directly affect whether or not a utility-maximizing authority should pursue it" as if it contradicts anything I wrote. It doesn't. Please see the last four paragraphs of my post. Hell, read all of it again while you're at it. <br /><br />The rest of your comment is, as best as I can tell, irrelevant to what I wrote. Most silly is your analogy between roads and bread, given that (nearly) all roads are paid for by the public purse while (nearly) all bread is supplied privately. That indicates that there might be some significant differences between the two. You might start by thinking of collective action problems in a consequentialist way.Kindred Winecoffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14330671232391851377noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-83429654460589889092012-11-19T00:29:27.834-05:002012-11-19T00:29:27.834-05:00You are being rather pendantic in your definition,...You are being rather pendantic in your definition, and rather confused in your argument. Yes, technically a pure public good must be entirely non-excludable, but goods that are simply fairly non-excludable (common pool goods, according to Wikipedia) are mostly understood in the same fashion. Concerning your argument, whether or not something is a public good does not directly affect whether or not a utility-maximizing authority should pursue it, only whether the failure of private interests to pursue it should bear on the decision. For instance, a private lighthouse is a fairly silly proposition, as (barring nonexistent oceanic property rights) the ability of a private company to exclude non-compliant customers from using a lighthouse is limited. However, that does not mean that the government should build them everywhere: there is a cost associated with their construction, and that should be balanced against its utility. The same can be said for rural roads: if the overall economic benefit overwhelms the base cost of the road but not the cost of road with exclusivity monitoring, then a UM government should build it and not charge for its use explicitly. Conversely, a well-congested road, while presumably congested for the reasons you discussed, is obviously not non-rivalrous and probably not non-exclusive: multiplying a modest charge by the number of users would easily cover the cost of the regime. <br /><br />One could ask the question of why such a good wasn't provided privately: in this case, because of a poor tradition of private roads. Certain roads/bridges may have a monopolistic feel, in which case it is reasonable to have a regulatory regime prevent the economic benefit of the road funneled into monopoly rents. In the case of, say, avenues in Manhattan, this monopoly power is rather more limited: with the exception of reaching locations on those specific roads, one could use whichever appropriate avenue had the lowest current fee (estimated, say, by current occupancy). These fees can then be channeled into paying for road upkeep/building new roads/subsidizing alternate transportation, all of which satisfy your goals. <br /><br />Also, for future reference, saying that roads are excludable because you need to own a car in the area along with the right to drive is rather silly: yes, you can bar someone from using all roads, but once you allow one road it's rather difficult to stop them from reaching any particular road should they want. If the only way you could stop someone from eating your bread was to stop them from eating bread at all, I would definitely call bread a (quasi)- public good.KVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17238349610733357418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331441403058020963.post-47719787701355412542012-11-18T19:14:40.469-05:002012-11-18T19:14:40.469-05:00Well said.Well said.Phil Arenahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07914096126693147647noreply@blogger.com