ParisTampaBlog

I’ve had one comment in response to my previous Blog, “Making too much of and from a public good.” It’s from Alex, who says, “Leonhardt’s statement begs the question, conflating free markets (read capitalism) with anarchy. This is nonsense. Implicit in Capitalism is the social contract, and that includes things like police, courts, defense.”

The capitalist, or free marketer would like to believe this, that public goods are of his own making. It’s comforting, but history and experience hardly bears it out. Whatever “social contract” Alex is talking about ignores the “externalities,” the things that weren’t dreamed of by those producing and exchanging goods and services, in particular the bad things that do happen, like polluted streams and other such, that are as much a part of the factory’s output as the chemicals and microchips.

In fact, of the bad things, there is no end of them, things such as air, water, noise and visual pollution, environmental degradation bringing with it an irrevocable loss of habitats and species, job related injuries due to the failure to provide safeguards, risky bank lending, as resulting in the recent recession, inadequate health insurance, and many more.

I don’t think that Leonhardt is in any way “conflating capitalism with anarchy,” let alone begging the question. He is merely saying, quite reasonably, that there are essential public goods that the free market system, if left to its own devices, will neglect and not provide. I find it hard to disagree with this.

Underneath all this is the legitimate question of what is the proper role of government.  And what is the responsibility of the private sector, of the people themselves, in the promotion and maintenance of public goods.

It has always seemed obvious to me that government alone, or socialism is not the answer. That the government cannot do for people, what they can and will need sooner or later to do for themselves. The President knows this very well. He is not a socialist. The name calling ought to  stop. And in any case socialism is a thing of the past and ought to be left there.

But it is no less obvious to me that the people are in need of government, on the one hand to limit the bad externalities, and on the other hand, and when appropriate, to promote those public goods that, without government, would probably not happen, such as a wildlife refuge or community health center, even a sidewalk. For any number of the things that only governments can do are no less essential to our lives and well being than the things that we alone can do for ourselves.

Governments, not people, not the market economy, have established on solid and permanent footings the civil rights of all our citizens. It did take them some 150 years or more to bring that about, but they did. And governments, not people or the free market, have made us safe and secure in our neighborhoods and communities, in our work places, and in our country. Not General Motors, or General Electric, or even General Hospital.

To say it again the President is not a socialist (or, as on the placards that one sees at the gatherings of the Tea Partiers, a communist). And government is not the enemy. And Leonhardt had it exactly right when he said that, “A public good is something that the free market tends not to provide on its own,” and hence our need for government.

This entry was posted on March 30, 2010 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Current Affairs. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.