Comment on David Friedman paper at MPS

“Do We Need a Government” (Papers by David Friedman, Birgir Thor Runolfsson, and Boudewijn Bouckaert delivered at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting, Iceland, August 2005) Comment by Tom G. Palmer Senior Fellow Cato Institute tpalmer@cato.org It’s a pleasure and an honor to be asked to comment on these fine papers. I received Professor Friedman’s paper in advance and am acquainted with Professor Runolfsson’s work and I will try to offer some spontaneous remarks on Professor Bouckaert’s paper. These fine papers have occasioned five comments, as follows: I. Government is not the only solution to the public goods problem, nor is the underprovision of public goods the problem to which government is the solution. Professor Friedman is surely right in maintaining that the state is not the obvious or only solution to the public goods problem or to other failures of collective rationality; those problems also bedevil governments. For every problem of collective rationality encountered by people facing each other as buyers and sellers in a market setting, there is a problem of collective rationality faced by people facing each other as citizens in a political setting. Indeed, as Professor Friedman argues, such problems are likely to be worse in political settings, both because “it is harder to produce a public good for a very large public than for a very small public” and because in political settings people are generally more able to impose ...