An example of government provision and positive harm

February 27, 2006

What if - every time you bought a bottle of Coca-Cola at the store, you were required also to purchase a bottle of Pepsi-Cola, even though you didn’t like it, and you would just throw it out or give it to someone else? At what price of Coca-Cola (and Pepsi) would you decide you no longer could afford Coca-Cola, even though you still preferred it, ceterus parabus to Pepsi? And then you started purchasing only the pepsi, and consuming what previously you were giving away to others. This is precisely the type of “public goods/public provision” problem that arises when dealing with the question of public v. private schools - those who elect to attend private schools are forced to pay for the public schools that they don’t want, and don’t use, on top of the tuition and fees at the private school they attend.

The Detroit Free Press today reports of the closing of the Taylor Catholic Elementary School, another parochial school in the Metro-Detroit area on a growing list of schools that lack funding and are forced to shut down. According to the Freep: “School officials with the Archdiocese of Detroit said they don’t expect any other closings. Last year, 18 Catholic elementary and high schools closed in metro Detroit.”

In and of itself, this story is not particularly newsworthy, it made the paper as a heart-string-pulling human interest story, but there’s a legitimate public policy issue just underneath the surface, allow me. I shudder every time I hear the public goods argument - that the market necessarily underprovides necessary public goods (as if there is an objective way to measure the optimal provision thereof). That aside, I think there is a lot of ground to be gained in dominant assurance policies, but the idea is still very new to me, and that’s not the issue I’m concerned with here.

As I previously blogged, in Against Altruism:

Suppose that forced spending (via taxation) really makes people better off, in aggregate. I’ll assume for the moment that this is always the case; that on average, society (its individuals) are/is better off after being taxed to support interest programs. But on average does not mean “without exception.” … Doubtless, there are people who do not benefit from the forced spending programs, and there are most definitely people who are worse off under such policies. for these people, the only thing to blame for their comparatively poorer position is the policy that disadvantaged them in favor of others.

Well, the Taylor Catholic case validates my hypothesis - State interference in the markets for “public goods” does adversely affect real people in the real world. The misfortune befalling the students and families of the parochial schools in Taylor can be blamed on none other than the governments that have fostered the “free” education system provided by public schools. And we know the Taylor students are being negatively affected because A) public schools are already cheaper than what they are currently paying and B) they have elected to attend the parochial school instead.

The mere existence of the “free, public” schools has caused the price of admission at the parochial schools to rise to an unjustifiable level.

Tell me again, how public schools benefit everyone, because I can show you 150 children in Taylor, MI, who aren’t benefitting from the presence of public schools.


Posted in: Potpourri

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1 Comment so far

  1. …no third solution » Blog Archive » On redistribution August 27, 2007 10:29 pm

    [...] Rubbish, I say: My suffering will never be alleviated by your benefit. And shut it about the whole public goods [...]

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