Antiderivative
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I see. So the solution to the perceived underproduction is to take other people's money to subsidize the gardener. I would admit that then, yes, with a government subsidy, we would have more gardeners. But this comes at the expense of what? The solution is not Pareto efficient - you have now made other people (the ones whose money has been taken) worse off. Are you sure that the overall efficiency has actually been raised?
If you are concerned about Pareto efficiency, then the market failure causes by public goods is not Pareto efficient in the first place. In addition, if people were taxed less than the value that they receive from the additional gardens, then it would be a Pareto improvement. No one would be made worse off since the benefits received outweigh the costs incurred.
I'll state right up front that I don't agree with any solution to underproduction that involves coercion. I see the problem of free riders and underproduction as simply the excuse to force other people to subsidize certain producers. I'm sure there are economists up and down the line that can show that some good is being underproduced, and if we could only take money from other people we could have the "right" amount of the good. But as soon as they start talking about forcibly taking money from other people they've lost me.
Then it is not just economists who believe in using public policy to correct for a public good/positive externality such as streetlights, national defense, open spaces, roads, but taxation in general in which you are antagonistic to. Taxation is a coercive practice by nature.
In addition, it is not my prerogative to make you believe in the concept of public goods or public policy used to correct the market failure regarding public goods. I was just clarifying some confusion on what the free rider problem was. Again, I personally don't view the free rider problem and the provision of public goods an interesting problem.
Xerographica said:They wouldn't have "complete" control over their taxes. By "taxes" I'm referring to the portion of their income that they have to spend in the public sector.
In other words...taxpayers would be able to directly allocate their taxes to the government organizations of their choosing. The point of taxing them, but allowing them to directly allocate their taxes, would be to determine which public goods, if any, the free-rider problem applies to. If the private sector is producing "adequate" levels of a certain public good then it stands to reason that taxpayers would not choose to allocate any of their taxes to the government organization responsible for producing the same exact public good.
In other words, if the people who value a public good are getting their needs for that public good met by the private sector...then why would they "waste" their taxes by allocating them to the government organization redundantly producing the exact same public good?
But you definitely would not want to get rid of taxes and then discover the hard way that the free-rider problem applies to say...national defense.
Why are you just focused on public goods? The provision of collective goods, regardless if they satisfy the criteria of public goods, is much more practical. The problem with this scenario, is that it is only limited to public goods, in which there are no pure public goods. First you have to determine what a public good is. For example, is the LA Arboretum really a public good? People can be excluded if they do not pay the admission charge. It is also subject to rivalry during busy days. Therefore, the LA Aboretum is not a true public good.
In addition, many more goods, besides public goods, are produce by the public sector. What if a city wants to build a new public school? This is not a public good. It can also suffer from excludability and rivalry. A concern with this scenario is that it is only limited to public goods and who decides which goods are public goods and which ones are not? What is the criteria that you use to place a public good on a referendum where people can vote on it with their taxes?
In addition, you still don't solve the public good issue with this approach. For example, if national defense was determined by whether or not people wanted to donate their taxes to it, then many people would not donate do to the nonexcludable nature of national defense. Why would people allocate their tax money towards national defense, if other people will allocate their tax money to national defense? After all, they cannot be excluded from this public good.