I recently watched a segment of John Oliver’s show Last Week Tonight on the debate
surrounding Confederate monuments, and one particular statue caught my eye. It
was a bizarre and almost comical statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a renowned Confederate
general, located on private property along Interstate 65 in Nashville,
Tennessee. To those who support the building and maintenance of statues of
Confederate leaders, the statue of Forrest is a market-provided public good
with positive production externalities. Not only does the statue provide
something to people with something to look at and take pride in their Southern
heritage, but it also has the potential to attract sight-seers and increase revenue
from tourism.
However, as shown on Last
Week Tonight, evidence seems to show that many Confederate statues that
exist today were erected specifically to intimidate African Americans. According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a majority of the 700 Confederate monuments
in public spaces across the U.S were erected decades after the end of the Civil
War, with huge spikes from 1900-1920 and during the 1950s and 60s with the
proliferation of Jim Crow laws and the rise of the Civil Rights movement,
respectively. This comes from the fact that certain individuals may contribute
to public goods or provide them because the utility that those goods give them
makes it worth it, even if they might have to pay more to make up for free-riders.
People may also contribute for non-economic reasons such as altruism, from
which they derive high utility. For many people and communities, the utility derived
from intimidating African Americans and asserting white dominance justifies the
building and maintenance of public Confederate monuments. These monuments, which glorify men that fought to keep slavery, also
present a negative production externality and high social cost of devastating those whose ancestors were slaves.
Recently, a Charlottesville judge ruled to move forward a
lawsuit over the city’s plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. It will be
interesting to see how this and other similar cases across the country play
out.
1 comment:
I think approaching confederate statues as a public good is interesting. They are certainly an example of a polarizing public good, meaning that there are those both strongly for and against their provision. I think goods like these are interesting test cases for Tiebout’s model. Tiebout would argue that localities can provide or remove these statues as they see fit, and then people will move to the locality that provides the public good mix they prefer. Preferences for confederate statues would be expressed by moving away from (or to) the city that provides them.
However, I think this demonstrates some of the challenges with applying Tiebout’s model to reality. Confederate statues, or other polarizing goods, might be said to have externalities on other nearby cities and visitors, as the effects of their provision are not felt solely by residents. Additionally, the friction created by moving costs (particularly born by lower-income residents) are damaging with polarizing public goods. Since the provision of these goods imposes larger external costs upon those who don’t want them, the societal costs caused by lack of mobility in Tiebout’s model are increased. So while Tiebout’s model could be used to argue for some cities providing confederate statues, I think a more careful examine of the model’s shortcomings could change the recommendation.
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