Public Goods : An Introduction

One aspect of the “myth of the frontier” that has contributed so mightily to American culture is the belief in rugged individualism: the conviction that America was (and should be) made by hearty men and women who seized a continent by their bare hands and through toil, ingenuity, and unmeasured doses of violence carved a great nation out of a wilderness. The social tropes of the west embody the myth: the stoic pioneer, the laconic cowboy, the law-skirting frontiersman, even the prostitute with a heart of gold. We’ll leave aside for the moment the historical reality of a country largely made through unpaid slave labor; here we’re discussing myths, not historical reality, and their power. And it is a powerful myth, measured, as all myths are, by how effectively they erase competing historical truths. In this case, the truth that however much the private labors of rugged individuals made and remade the United States, and leaving for the moment slavery out of the equation, no American development would have happened without what we call “public goods.”

Map of Erie Canal courtesy of https://www.eriecanal.org/maps.html

By public goods we mean a whole range of provisions generally provided (in liberal society) by governments, at taxpayer expense, and available of access by all without market limitations. Public infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and tunnels are certainly one example. Defense, police protection, access to courts, and a monetary system constitute another category of public goods. Modern America provides other forms, such as parks (national, state, local), broadcast entertainment (e.g., PBS), or, in some communities, public pools and public beaches. Governments can and do provide access to certain knowledge bases, such as public libraries, or social, economic, and commercial statistics such as provided by various government agencies. The air traffic control system, run by the Federal Aviation Administration, provides another kind of example. The list is potentially endless.
 
Both the American political right and left have largely removed public goods from the conversation: the right, for ideological and economic reasons, has argued heatedly since the New Deal of the 1930s (which provided so much of our contemporary public goods infrastructure) that public goods are “socialistic” and in every case inferior morally and economically to private goods. This has not always been the argument of American conservatism, as Alexander Hamilton’s establishment of a banking system or the Whig Party’s championing of transportation infrastructure, such as the Erie Canal, in the 1830s-50s attests. The left, which throughout much of the 20th century has been the stalwart champion of public goods, has increasingly for the last generation or two abandoned the defense of public goods in favor of a focus on identity politics.
               
There are at least two essential arguments in favor of public goods which we’ll outline here and develop in later postings. The first is that they are almost infallibly cheaper than private goods. Public goods achieve the economies of scale that guarantee lower costs, usually of production and almost certainly of use. One publicly-financed road is much cheaper to build and operate than a chain of private roads. A community (i.e., public) pool is much, much cheaper to build and operate than a warren of smaller, private, backyard pools. Imagine the costs, to say nothing of the complexity, if each airline operated its own air traffic control system.
               
The second argument in favor of public goods is that, as the economists say, they are "non-exclusive." That is, individuals cannot be kept from their use by their position in the market. Put another, and I think better way, public goods are those goods to which citizens have access by right. It is an American’s right to use a public park, or the interstate highway, or a community pool. By contrast, few of us would argue that a citizen has a right to an automobile or a pair of jeans; the price is the mechanism by which an individual registers the strength of his or her desire for a private good to which he or she does not otherwise have a right. Again, a toll may be imposed on a public good for some reason, and in contemporary society those tolls do in fact operate as a price mechanism: if you don’t pay the entrance fee, you can’t enter Yellowstone. Still, the distinction between price and toll is an important one, especially as it concerns rights. If you have the toll – which after all is generally kept as low as possible – you cannot be denied use of a public good. In contrast, even if you have the price – which by definition is kept as high as possible—you may still be thrown out of the Apple store.
               
Nothing in the foregoing should be understood to mean that public goods produce consensus in American life. Americans have always fought over public goods. Fierce battles over infrastructure, from the Whiggish heyday to the New Deal, have defined eras in American politics, and those epic struggles have given way to even more transcendent ideological struggles in our day over public versus private goods. And throughout our history, local but no less fierce debates have occurred about what sort of public goods might be built and where they should be located. And always, always, concerns about corruption—about private contractors and their political cronies feeding at the public trough have, rightly, been at issue.
               
Nevertheless there is reason to believe that public goods might get us beyond what is by now a very stale political polarization in American politics. A return to a public goods discourse would certainly re-energize and refocus the left. It also has the potential to provide political valences, and thus consensus, with a reformed right. Public goods may not solve all our political ills. But the discussion about rights is a historic sweet spot in American politics, an idea around which many of us regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum might rally. It’s worth talking about.
 
Expect to see much more about #publicgoods on the FractalPast blog as we develop the conversation. Share your thoughts below!