Re: Private urban green space
--- Jeffrey Rous [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do think that a lot of times, economists are hostile the the idea of a public good like a park if there is some way to make the good excludable (fenced parks in London, country clubs, etc.). -Jeff Economists are not hostile to public goods. Public goods are facts to which economists apply theory like any phenomenon. There is nothing inherently good or bad about public goods. Fred Foldvary
Re: Private urban green space
On 2004-08-01, Fred Foldvary uttered: Economists are not hostile to public goods. Still, knowledge of economics tends to make you more receptive to the idea of the invisible hand and the possibilities of private economic organization. Hence, it makes you more libertarian. And libertarians are sure hostile to the public goods scene, because there the emphasis is on things that *need* to be solved publicly. Public goods are facts to which economists apply theory like any phenomenon. There is nothing inherently good or bad about public goods. I agree. Public goods are also highly interesting because they perfectly illustrate how hard econ can be. I mean, the simple rationality assumption we often apply to people clearly ceases to apply in case of public goods and all the various private ways people deal with their existence. -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Private urban green space
In a message dated 8/1/04 3:45:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Economists are not hostile to public goods. Still, knowledge of economics tends to make you more receptive to the idea of the invisible hand and the possibilities of private economic organization. Hence, it makes you more libertarian. And libertarians are sure hostile to the public goods scene, because there the emphasis is on things that *need* to be solved publicly. While studying economics might tend to make a person more libertarian than he'd be otherwise, studying economics doesn't necessarily make the person libertarian. The old Keynesians tended to have a fair fondness for government intervention, as summarized by Paul Samuelson's Two cheers, but not three, for markets. A Post-Keynesian instructor of mine back in 1990 told me that Post-Keynesians would say One cheer for markets.
