conservative economics

[Daniel Davies]

The public good argument isn't actually all that good
in a purely economic sense, and has to cope with the
fairly serious problem that historically, we had roads
and lighthouses for quite a long time before it
occurred to us to pay for them out of general
taxation.  The only real, unambiguous public good is
national defence.

In order to make the genuine case for state provision,
you have to look at economies of scale and
free-riding.  But since the first involves accepting
that the gubmint does some things *very* efficiently,
and the second has the implication that rational
individuals acting in their own interests can create
severe problems, you're not going to find either of
them in a libertarian economics textbook any time
soon.

Lots of people like David Friedman believe (without
sullying their hands with anything so vulgar as proof)
that private organisations could and should be
responsible for constructing roads, lighthouses, etc,
and that this would be a good thing.

dd

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“It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances and to profess a conventional respectability which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men”  -- JM Keynes

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