Public Goods Fallacies: False Justifications For Government

The most popular tentative justification of government in rational terms is Public Goods theory and its variants [1], whether presented from a utilitarian point of view (often with the help of its econometric toolbox), or from a moral point of view: some activity is of a special nature or has a special importance, and therefore must be managed by a central agency in the interest of the public´´. Without analyzing the details for the moment, suffice it to say that all other justifications of government somehow boil down to a more particular or more general case of the Public Goods argument. Thepublic good´´ considered may be some form of service related to security (police, justice, army), infrastructure (transportation, telecommunications, education, health), ``harmonization´´ in some matter (information, education, language, industry standards), certification (identity, land registry, verification of conformity to standards), etc.

Unhappily, many libertarians concede some public goods´´ to the statists, but then they are on a slippery slope, for there is no reason to stop the public goods argument to any particular service. To paraphrase Emile Faguet: minarchists are libertarians who do not have the courage to accept the full consequences of their ideas; anarchists are uncompromising libertarians. Indeed, using arguments of thepublic goods´´ type, government can intervene into just any domain — and once it does, it will make sure that the domain is so messed up that, by the same argument, it will have to extend its grasp over it until the domain is both completely under its control and completely messed up. But of course, intervention is based on the premise that government intervention is useful, to begin with — and this is precisely the point that statists posit as a petition of principle; it is precisely the point that needs to be disputed.

A common confusion is to fail to distinguish government´´ as a monopoly of force fromgovernment´´ as an organization of force. In this article, we are using the word government´´ in the first meaning, that of a monopoly of force.Government´´ in the second meaning, that is, organization of force, always exists, just like the market´´ always exists; it may be simple or complex, it may be structured in a variety of ways, but there is no question beingfor´´ or ``against´´ it; the question is about individuals being free or subjected, about there being a monopolies and privileges, or there being a free market. Libertarians support freedom, in the way that force is organized just like in all other matters.

Here is a brief review of the justifications given by statists to argue for the necessity or utility of government.

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