Last Saturday, I went to a charity banquet for a student org, partly for the delicious food and partly because my friend wanted to see a boy she liked who was also attending. For clarity, the boy will hence forth be referred to as Ken.
This event was "ticket optional." All proceeds went to charity, so you could pay/donate as much as you wanted when registering. And if you wanted to be a real jerk, you could pay nothing. Either way, you would still receive entry and have access to the catered dinner. The dinner here is our public good.
While we were in line for the buffet, Ken told my friend he didn't donate any money and was just here for the "free" food. In that moment, I realized: 1) Ken sucks and my friend can do so much better, and 2) this was an exact replica of the situation outlined in Chapter 1 of the Olsen reading. This student org was relying on voluntary monetary contributions, driven by emotional/idealogical factors, to the cover event costs. Ideally, org members would want to pay something to support the cause. But this creates a free-rider problem.
There's no way to exclude people like Ken, who weren't sufficiently motivated by sentiment to contribute, and yet still receive the benefits of the common interest/public good (dinner) the org managed to obtain. As Olsen points out, this is why governments can't survive on voluntary dues and instead impose compulsory payments like taxes. The state provides public goods, ie non-exclusionary goods. It'd be impossible to exclude citizens who didn't voluntarily contribute to the cost of public defense from the benefit of said defense.
In conclusion, I'll be advising my friend to stay single!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment