The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods
Cliff Landesman
(email comments, questions, etc. to "cland@netbox.com")
A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE
BY THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
June 1995
copyright 1994
The author grants permission for anyone to reproduce any part of this document, or all of it, provided authorship is clearly acknowledged with each copy. Electronic copies are available from the author upon request.
Abstract
Some people voluntarily provide public goods while others take a free ride. Are the providers acting rationally? Should they instead follow the example of the free-rider? What are the rational and moral justifications for voluntary provision? This dissertation examines five ways to justify voluntary provision: rational prudence, social norms, group agency, fairness, and altruism. It suggests that altruism provides the best possible defense. Considerations of fairness may also provide a justification in some circumstances, but generally this argument is vulnerable to the objection that free-riding is often a legitimate way of protecting oneself from exploitation by other free-riders. In places, the dissertation relies on simple game theoretic models and intuitive economic equilibrium notions to analyze public good situations. The dissertation closes with a discussion of the government's role in providing public goods. An argument is made that, for certain kinds of goods (those over which preferences are public, but whose benefits are private), the standard public goods argument is not appropriate to homogeneous populations. If this is correct, other justifications for governmental provision must be summoned for goods of this form.
Thesis advisor: Gilbert Harman, Professor, Princeton University
Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank my advisor, Gilbert Harman, for his generous help. He consistently provided very valuable comments with lightning speed. I owe a special debt to Nathan Tawil for reading parts of the dissertation during various stages of development and always offering penetrating and constructive criticism. I would also like to thank the following people for their written or oral comments, encouragement, or assistance in some way: Clancy Bailey, Jerome Berger, Tim Brookes, John Broome, Mary Anne Case, John Collins, Peggy Dean, Mark Debellis, George Downs, Jamie Dreier, Margaret Gilbert, Karen Gold, Cliff Groh, Laurie Hollander, Frank Jackson, Arthur Kuflik, Jamie Mayerfeld, Liam Murphy, Howard Margolis, Martin McGuire, Kirsten Monroe, Karen Needels, Pauline O'Connor, Lee Overton, Derek Parfit, Shanny Peer, Philip Pettit, Nick Richter, Adina Schwartz, Mark Vanroojen, and audiences at Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of Vermont.
In addition, I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of my parents and grandparents.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction 1
The Problem Defined 1
The Importance of the Problem 10
What Is New Here 18
II. Can Egoists Take Care of Themselves? 24
Preliminaries 24
The Problem of Non-excludable goods 32
Conditional Cooperation 40
Known or homogeneous preferences 41
Cheap communication 49
Solution to bargaining problem 52
Iterated Games 56
Privileged Groups and Selective Incentives 60
Prestige, Pleasure and Guilt 67
Quasi-Causation 73
Patchwork Theory 77
III. The Name of the Game 81
Voluntary Provision as a Prisoner's Dilemma 81
Voluntary Provision as Coordination 90
Assurance 92
Chicken 95
Battle of the Sexes 105
IV. Social Norms 110
Justifications That Appeal to Social Norms 110
Everyday Kantianism 116
No free riding 119
Civic duty 122
Free Riding as Theft 124
V. Group Agency 131
The Metaphysics of Agency 131
When one head is better than two 132
A second argument for social agency 138
Collective Principles of Choice 158
VI. Fairness 167
Goals, constraints and what is fair 167
Comparative Unfairness 175
Fairness as a Constraint 195
VII. Partial Altruism and Two Competitors 203
Utilitarian justification of voluntary provision 204
Objections to Utilitarianism 212
Partial Altruism 223
Objections to Partial Altruism 234
Hybrid Altruism 242
VIII. Is Altruism Self-Defeating? 255
The Prisoner's Dilemma 258
Voting 261
Spouse Selection 265
The Bequest 268
Repeated Sharing 274
The Market 277
IX. Governmental Provision of Public Goods 283
Some arguments against governmental provision 283
Public preference, private benefit goods 297
Conclusion 312
Appendix 315
Unlimited Provision 315
Efficient Provision Without Matching 317
Over-provision With Matching 321
References 323
II. Can Egoists Take Care of Themselves?
VII. Partial Altruism and Two Competitors
VIII. Is Altruism Self-Defeating?
IX. Governmental Provision of Public Goods
[Note: Permission to convert and post this document in HTML format was granted by the author, Cliff Landesman.
. . . . . Leon Felkins, 5/20/1997]