The Myth of Public Goods

By Mark Davis
Strike The Root
Jun. 25, 2010

The myth of public goods is based on the belief that there are special things that everybody needs, but nobody will pay for. The priests perpetuating this myth include self-interested professors who spend a lifetime informing young, bright-eyed students about the magical qualities of these special goods that can only be provided by popular people with big guns. The media reports on the provision of these special goods and services as if this violently engineered operating system was mandated from the heavens. The democratic-corporate state is therefore a necessary evil that must impose itself on society, touching the lives of all, for our own good. That’s a heavy price to pay for magic beans.

Free-markets, where individuals make their own decisions instead of coercive central authorities, are considered too dangerous. Because all those crazy, ignorant people out there making their own decisions would be the death of us all. There would be no government army or police to protect us, no fire departments, electricity, water, sewer, parks, or roads! Air travel would come to a halt and where would we watch our sporting events?! Our children could not be educated!! Civilization itself depends on public goods being provided by political means. Peaceful cooperation somehow lacks the efficiency of violent coercion when it comes to these special “public goods.”

Public goods are thus used to justify creating an organization that forces people to pay for something up front and then this organization (based on a monopoly on the use of force) provides the quality and quantity that the leaders of this organization decide is right for us all. And for it all to work, it is believed by these cultists that, the pixie dust of democracy somehow changes the fundamental human trait of favoring self-interest. Elected officials (flesh and blood people) are magically elevated above the quest for virtue and now have the power to work selflessly in the public interest. That’s enough leaps of faith to build one hell of an obstacle course, coming and going.

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