A Stitch in Haste

To review: The government has no business providing any goods other than public goods. A public good is one that is neither excludable (I can withhold a cheeseburger from you if you do not pay for it) nor rivalrous (a cheeseburger cannot be consumed simultaneously by more than one person).

One instance where this seemingly obvious distinction between public and private goods gets conveniently befuddled is where a good is excludable but is not strictly rivalrous -- so-called club goods. Two separate people can each be excluded from a 200-seat movie theater, but they can also both watch the movie non-rivalrously (though 201 people cannot).

There is a robust economic science to club goods: how to price, when to expand, whether to price uniformly or engage in price discrimination. But one underlying truth remains: Club goods are not public goods. There is consequently no basis, none whatsoever, for the government to provide club goods. At most, the poor (and only the poor) can be subsidized to enable them to "join the club." But the line between welfare finance and outright public provision should never be crossed.

No one (I hope) would suggest that governments should own and operate movie theaters. Libraries, on the other hand, are also club goods (they're excludable just as movie theaters are), but most people (not most libertarians!) overlook this on dubious "positive externality" grounds (i.e., that a public library is more akin to a public school than a movie theater). On the other other hand, such positive externality arguments completely evaporate when public libraries engage in ancillary operations such a DVD rentals -- who would dare suggest that a Netflix subscription is somehow a public good?

Now, armed with that:

Golfers' wishes outweighed the argument for turning Jackson's [Mississippi] two public golf courses over to a private management company, Mayor Frank Melton said Wednesday.

You remember Frank Melton, right? He's the Hugo Chavez wannabe who seizes children on highways for group hugs and was warned by both the federal Justice Department and the state attorney general to stop impersonating a police officer (complete with firearms).

Melton later said he decided not to approve privatization of the Sonny Guy and Grove Park courses because he was not sure the city actually was losing money operating the courses.

"This is not a decision that needs to be made from City Hall. It needs to be made by the customers," Melton said. "I have asked them to come up with a list of things that need to be done (at the courses)."

Strange, I always thought the "customers" of government were the population generally and taxpayers specifically. Apparently not -- apparently city government now works strictly for golfers.

Grove Park and Sonny Guy golf courses lose about $300,000 annually.

Apparently Melton didn't get that memo. In any case, every taxpayer who does not use the golf course is subsidizing every person, taxpayer or otherwise, who does. All in the name of providing a supposedly "public good."

The only reason golf courses seem to get a waiver from the basic proposition that club goods should be strictly privately provided is of course because it is mostly a middle class pastime. If doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers played hopscotch (and if hopscotch were an expensive hobby), then we would no doubt see many municipal hopscotch parks -- on the grounds that hopscotch was, somehow, a "public good."

Perhaps class warriors like John Edwards ought to spend less time asking whether the rich can pay ever more taxes and instead ask mayors like Frank Melton (a Democrat, incidentally) why the poor are taxed so the not-poor can save on their greens fees and cart rentals.

(Via Out of Control.)