Or internet discovery month, for those that did not travel this part of the internet during those times. The age of an article does not necessarily negate its worthiness of being read or spoken about.
I love 90s techno-optimism. Pick up some old issues of Wired for this sort of thinking. The Internet was viewed as a transformative, unstoppable force for freedom. From an engineering point of view, we're closer to that ideal than we ever have been in the past, but people don't have the same outlook on the future. IMO you can date the death of 90s optimism to the NASDAQ bust and Bill Joy's essay "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us." Both happened within a month of each other.
It’s the same ideology that says progressivism is dead, despite that today’s yellow journalism is watered down, there’s no traditional war between organized countries, sanitation’s up, and we’re getting further along with promoting resource equality in LDCs.
Not only that, but there’s complete ennui in living. I can go out in most parts of the world at night without worry of being beaten, killed or enslaved; the corner market to get fresh broccoli in winter. All of the programmers I know want to buy a house, settle down, and work an unpleasant job in an unfriendly country, when the internet allows any of us to pick up and move and still work.
Welcome to the age of pessimism and cynicism. Also, bedbugs. Just because America is sliding doesn’t mean the world is doomed.
remember the last Declaration was important, made by people with political power and influence. This is merely an idealistic essay rather than an action--it describes a movement, it does not _compel_ movement.
This is true but does not conflict with my assertion. The Declaration of Independence was an act of political power and influence. This is an idealistic essay that might spur actual acts of political power and influence.
Great prose, but honestly I was expecting (between wikileaks vs amazon and comcast vs netflix) that there was going to be a dissection of the actual infowar that is happening around us now. May we live in interesting times indeed...
Most people don't mean anything so precise as "goods which are, by their nature, both non-rivalrous and non-excludable." Nor do they simply mean "goods which are presently provided by the government." Rather, I suspect what most people mean by "public goods" is these goods which, by their nature, only the government can provide. This question begging has little utility beyond lending the imprimatur of economic legitimacy to the state.
It seems like a perfectly useful concept to me: if there are indeed goods that, by their nature, only some social arrangement like a government or a de facto government can provide, and if I think that at least some of these goods are things that ought to be provided, it follows that there are are reasons to favor having governments. I don't personally care much what phrase we use to describe them. I have in mind things that even relative state-minimalists like F.A. Hayek had in mind as legitimate roles for governments, like provision of basic health care, defense against invasion, police and fire services, and a social safety net.
(One counterargument would be to claim that there are no goods that, by their nature, can only be provided by a government, but I don't read that as what you're arguing. Of course, another counterargument would be to claim that no such goods are desirable, or at least not desirable enough to justify government existing.)
A government by definition is a monopoly on violence, which leads to the next question - why would any goods or service require a monopoly on violence?
I would argue a coercive monopoly on any market is counter-productive and unnecessary (they even claim to protect us from such monopolies, thanks SEC). Even if we're talking about delivering mail, UPS, FedEx and DHL are evidence that an involuntary service CAN be provided voluntarily. Voluntary is always better than involuntary.
Does laying tar on the ground need a monopoly on violence? What about delivering packages? Collecting taxes actually DOES require such monopoly. Markets work because humans have preference. Even a democratic government cannot account for the preference of it's territory without disenfranchising a large population! If you don't like blockbuster, you can use netflix. Don't like UPS? Use fedex. Don't like Homeland Security? Well that's too damn bad.
Well, I gave some examples, like providing a basic safety net, and policing. Hayek makes a good argument for why these can't, or at least are unlikely to, be provided voluntarily, which is one reason he's a free-market advocate but not an anarcho-capitalist.
> Well, I gave some examples, like providing a basic safety net, and policing.
Policing isn't provided by the market because there isn't a market for it, and this is not a shortcoming of the markets either - it's human preference. Policing an imposed "service" that free people would not solicit.
If we take an empirical analysis of what provides safety in our life's I would argue that mitigating the risk of harm is provided almost exclusively through voluntary means, such as markets, friends and family.
Security cameras, seat-belts/airbags, cell phones, firearms, door locks, fences, pepper spray and tazers all provide FAR more cost-effective security than a policeman driving around making a quick buck on speeding tickets.
These technologies are sufficient for most people, but you can always buy more security, which malls frequently do. Police don't keep us safe and prevent theft, which is why malls have to buy mall security.
How do you deal with things which have no effective market? e.g.ChloroFlouroCarbons, where the cost is borne by people distant from the obvious transaction.
Roads are by no means public goods, as it is very possible to exclude people from them, e.g. tolls.
A good example is a dam. If you live in a valley that floods every year, the government may well come in and say, "we're going to build a dam." But by its very nature, you cannot exclude people from this -- the dam will hold back all of the water, not just for some of the people in the valley.
Your Superhighway metaphor-metaphor is getting further into the ether, without adding substance (unless you can make your statement about concrete more concrete).
Sometimes I wish there was an 'easy button' to figure out the context of comments.
Roads are neither non-excludable nor non-rival. So they are in no way public goods. Therefore, they are irrelevant to the comment you were replying to by "thefool".
The article you are pointing to does not currently cite roads as an example of a public good, but it does give the definition I used above: non-excludable and non-rival. I didn't edit it. Tollbooths, roadblocks, and gated communities are a manifestation of the excludability of roads; traffic, traffic accidents involving more than one vehicle, and potholes are manifestations of their rivalrousness, to which we have responses such as traffic laws, road maintenance, gasoline taxes, rearview mirrors, and seatbelts.
In short, every aspect of how we interact with roads and cars is pervasively shaped by the rivalrous nature of roads, and their excludability profoundly affects many social institutions. Only in the most rural areas are roads even approximately non-excludable or non-rival.
Exactly! The existence of something like a reliable Internet depends on some form of physical civilization with laws and law enforcement, not to mention food production and distribution required to keep the netizens alive.
Will some aspects of life move from the physical to the virtual? Sure; they have and they will continue to some extent. However, there is a limit. Cyberspace cannot exist without physical space. If you want to ascend into some kind of purely spiritual existence, you need to look elsewhere than technology.
This is what I meant. You need something to force people to internalize externalities, and to provide goods that wouldn't otherwise get made.
Market failures are a real thing, and you need some sort of institution to address them. The internet does nothing to change this, except that it makes it possible to create more discriminating policies that are more efficient (in theory).
Market failures are an idea. An idea that the market is failing because someone isn't being provided with something that they want at the price they want.
You are saying that if a good isn't being provided, it's a failure. But who told you the market would give you everything you want for free? Who stops you from raising money for your pet project?
Your statement is completely wrong, from beginning to end.
(I am going to do my readers the honor of assuming they know what a public good is. If not, I suggest they look it up.)
Science is a public good. Lots of science is funded by governments, but lots of science is done without government funding, too.
Recorded music and books are now public goods, now that it is so cheap to copy them and to find instances to copy. Only a small fraction of them are provided by governments. Many of them are provided by individuals rather than institutions of any kind.
TV and radio broadcasts are a public good. In some countries, they are mostly provided by governments, but in almost all countries, they are at least partly provided by private parties who fund them with advertising. In the US, many "public TV stations" are actually funded mostly by public subscription, using "pledge drives" in which viewers receive an item of nominal value in exchange for pledging to donate to the station if enough other people do so; this is a variety of the dominant assurance contract.
Views of fireworks that go more than a few meters high are a public good. Here in Buenos Aires, they are provided almost exclusively by private individuals. At Christmas and New Year's, the sky over the entire city is filled with amazing displays. In countries with less freedom, such displays are sometimes provided exclusively by governments, but that is far from invariable.
Lighthouses were public goods. Palacio Barolo, the lighthouse six blocks from my house, is now only operational as a lighthouse one night a month, and in any case it's been obsoleted by radio systems and impeded by the building of other, taller buildings between it and the river, but it was constructed by a wealthy businessman.
Many public goods, including TV broadcasts, lighthouses, views of fireworks, and recorded music, are definitely not needed.
In conclusion, you don't need anybody to provide public goods; entities that are not institutions often provide public goods; many public goods can be provided worldwide, rather than within particular regions; even in cases where public goods are provided by institutions, the institutions are often not governments or government-supported; and even in cases where public goods are provided by governments, those same public goods are also often provided by non-government institutions as well.
I am not taking any position here on whether or not governments are necessary.
That's currently the case, but let's hope that will change or that at least the governments of the future will be smaller and will respect (real) freedom.
Dunno, I wasn't there. To me it seems that the U.S. government is probably the furthest-removed from the people among western nations - and Americans are by far the least trusting of government.
This wasn't written when the United States came into being, but I would like to think that Abraham Lincoln had the founding father's heart when he spoke it.
Great essay -- although parts of it are very 1996 :-)
The whole "past trying to rule the future" dynamic he talks about here remains incredibly relevant. Oh yeah and this too:
"In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media."
No, the EFF does not have a position in favor of the abolition of any of the random grab-bag of rights known as "IP rights". Some of its board members have such positions, while others have quite contrary positions. As a result, the organization compromises.
