The importance of contingently public goods

Abstract

Exposing an overlooked ambiguity in how philosophers use the term ‘public good,’ this paper proposes to distinguish between inherently and contingently public goods, where inherently public goods are non-rivalrous and non-excludable in principle (e.g., national security) and contingently public goods are non-rivalrous and deliberately provided in a non-exclusionary way (e.g., parks). This distinction is conducive to philosophical debate in two ways. At the level of ideal theory, contingently public goods reveal the inadequacy of the v Show more