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Concerning publicized goods (or, the promiscuity of the public goods argument)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2020

Vaughn Bryan Baltzly Open the ORCID record for Vaughn Bryan Baltzly [Opens in a new window]
Vaughn Bryan Baltzly*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, USA
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Email: baltzly@gmail.com
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Abstract

Proponents of the public goods argument (‘PGA’) seek to ground the authority of the state on its putative indispensability as a means of providing public goods. But many of the things we take to be public goods – including many of the goods commonly invoked in support of the PGA – are actually what we might term publicized goods. A publicized good is any whose ‘public’ character results only from a policy decision to make some (otherwise private) good freely and universally available. This fact poses complications for the PGA, insofar as the set of possible publicized goods is quite extensive indeed.

Keywords

public goodsthe public goods argumentpublic financecost–benefit analysis

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Article
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Economics & Philosophy , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , November 2021 , pp. 376 - 394
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© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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