Public Goods, the Social Contract, and the Discussion that Americans Should be Having

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

For a several months now, as I've worked on one project or another or interacting with colleagues and friends, I keep coming back to the same two broad concepts that Americans should be discussing, but seem to have lost sight off: what exactly are or should be public goods and what sort of social contract should we have to make sure that they are properly delivered.  While this is going to be a light on hyper links post, as it is essentially a thought piece, given the type of discussions that we usually have here at SST, and given what we all witnessed over the past two weeks regarding continuing resolutions and budgets, and what we'll unfortunately watch going forward as issues like the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget come up, as well as the next election cycle, the time seems right to try to write this up and post it.

Let me start by defining my terms.  I'm using public good to refer to anything that is or should be non-excludable and/or non-rivalrous or both.  Simply if anyone could or should partake of it and if partaking of it can not reduce the amount of it to be consumed by anyone, then something is or should be a public good.  In simpler parlance we generally equate things like roadways, a variety of essential services such as sewer and water and electric, education, defense, law enforcement, emergency services (fire and EMS), and even healthcare as public goods.  Another good way to define a public good, which is often easier to use because it doesn't use words like "non-rivalrous", is an item or service that individuals, or even groups, can not provide for themselves, that by their nature are accessible to everyone in a society, and which have to account for the lowest common denominator (ie it makes no difference what one's class, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc is).  

By social contract I'm referring to the agreements that we make as a society on issues of political, social, economic, and religious governance.  Usually in liberal democracies, which is what the US is supposed to be (of the republic type), this requires giving up some freedom or liberty in exchange for certain public goods; specifically goods and services that individuals or even groups of individuals can not produce or provide for themselves.  So the two concepts - public goods and social contract are linked and intertwined.

In what passes for a national discussion about what America should be in 2011, what our budgetary and governance and economic choices should reflect, there is little discussion of either social contract or public good.  Essentially we are not having the necessary discussion at all, and what passes for discussion among our elected officials at all levels, as well as the media, doesn't even touch on these issues and concepts at all.  Whether it is health care, public safety and emergency services, transportation, education, national defense, essential services, or the safety net the discussion never starts in the right place.  As Americans it almost seems like we don't want to know what are the things that we might have to all help provide for each other, we just want to know what we are going to receive, that people we don't like will not receive it, and that it doesn't interfere with our liberty.  As such our social contract is terribly frayed if not completely shredded.  Over the past two years we've seen repeated, loud, and public calls for Americans to return to the Constitution or to the wisdom of the Founders and the Framers.  Its not completely clear that most of the people making that claim actually understand the Constitution, the particular genius of the Founders and Framers, or the fact that liberty still has to be paid for, often communally or collectively.  As Dr. Franklin said: "we can all hang together or we can all hang apart".  

Moreover, slavish devotion to a mid to late 19th century social contract may not well suit a 21st Century America.  I've seen many commenters at SST assert that the Constitution died or ceased to exist or was destroyed by President Lincoln or by President (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt  or by President Johnson.  Many believe it was destroyed by President Nixon or President (George W.) Bush.  Take the politics away and the real question should be: what kind of social contract makes the most sense for us, as Americans, today?  While I'm not calling for a new Constitutional Convention or a series of new amendments, there is a great deal of wisdom in President Jefferson's belief that social contracts should not last for more than 20 years or so.  He was concerned that ideas of past generations (the dead) would constrict and constrain and not well serve the current one.  Having a discussion, however, that first delineates and defines what the public goods are that we as Americans expect would lead to a discussion of what kind of social contract we need to ensure that we have the proper and appropriate social, economic, and political forms of governance in place to deliver them would do us a lot of good.  Instead of railing about the size of the debt or tax burdens (that are at historic lows and comparatively also very low) or how to pay for things, we need to first decide what should be paid for.  If medicare is such a great thing that senior citizens want to keep the government's hands off of it, even though it is a government program, then should only those over 65 have access to it?  If we want not just the largest, best trained, best equipped military in the world and we want to use it when we feel we need to, should we actually pay for its use through greater taxes (ie we all share the cost) and through everyone's service or do we keep paying for our deployments through supplemental off budget spending and by having less than 3% of the population bear the risks for the rest of us?  If, as many insisted both during the 2008 presidential campaign and last year during the discussion of letting President Bush's (43) tax cuts expire for those making more than $250,000 per year, a $250,000 annual income is not wealthy or rich, then does it make any sense to claim that teachers, law enforcement, and fire fighters who are lucky to make a fifth of that amount are somehow well off and should accept cuts in salary and/or benefits because the economy is struggling yet raising the marginal top rate by 3% is some form of socialist class warfare?  

These are the topics we need to be discussing, and there are several more that I didn't list, before we do anything else.  Then we can discuss how best to deliver them, which gets at the issue of the social contract in terms of how we're going to order our 21st Century society, which will in turn drive the question of how to pay for things.  Unfortunately we don't seem to have matured into a society that can have these discussions.  Sadly we seem to be doomed to ideologically driven screaming matches fueled by a news media that purposefully makes us less well informed and less well educated.  As Dr. Franklin is reported to have said as he left Constitution Hall in Philadelphia: "a Republic if you can keep it".  It is not clear, based on what passes for our public discourse, that we can keep it or even if we have.

*Adam L. Silverman is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed herein are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College, the US Army, or the US Government.

Comments

[Brent Wiggans]

The public goods that will be in the crosshairs next are entitlements. Entitlements are goods and services that society has decided (in our case by democratic processes) it will guarantee any citizen, and sometimes others, who need them. Before harking back to the Constitution and original intent and before citing our regional differences we should consider, with respect, that these entitlements are covenants that were made by past generations - and their American experience - to us and to generations yet to come as both a gift and an obligation in order to free us from groveling dependency on charitable impulses that may or may not exist in the breasts of the few who today possess an ever greater portion of the national wealth. Entitlements are the means by which everyone is allowed to exist with dignity, beholden to their country, yes, but a country that includes oneself.

There is much myth and illusion concerning what America is and what it stands for. Entitlements are a very concrete expression of some of the values to which Americans have committed their nation. This national conversation we are trying to have is about nothing less than the country’s reason for being.

[William R. Cumming]

The Charter for the National Academy of Science was signed by President Lincoln in 1864 in an attempt to marshall scientific knowledge on behalf of the Northern Cause.

[William R. Cumming]

Always remember entitlements are guarantees of due process, equal protection and even civil rights. They have never under SCOTUS rulings been guarantees of any particular level of funding. See the rulings of SCOTUS over the funding of WWI insurance policies of the vets. These were not "bonuses" IMO. Nor pensions!

[walrus]

Entitlements are actually about controlling the poor. If they are removed or reduced, expect security costs to increase disproportionately.

[Brent Wiggans]

Even without the protection of SCOTUS, entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are a declaration of our determination as a society to make looking after our own a civic obligation. Our means may be imperfect but the intention was clearly to free our people from the Dickensian nightmare of poverty and its accompanying subjugation to the arbitrary whims of private charity.

[DCA]

I am probably just going to get myself in trouble by asking a gun-control question, but this seems like the right forum. To me, someone who would like to see the risk from guns diminished by, eg. requiring licensing to use them (as with cars), what is most troubling about gun-rights advocates is their claim that any incursion on gun0owners rights will lead inexorably to guns being unavailable to the citizenry, and then to tyranny--which an armed citizenry would prevent. I think the "inexorable" part is fantasy, but my question is different: if we somehow had a tyrannical government, with a modern military, would armed citizens really be a barrier to it imposing its will?

I appreciate that exactly this argument was the basis for the 2nd amendment--but the model there was Cromwell's New Model Army, and military capabilities are somewhat stronger now.

[Patrick Lang]

DCA
"and military capabilities are somewhat stronger now."

What? Nuclear weapons and napalm? pl

[JT Davis]

I am always troubled by the term "Entitlements," especially when used to refer to Social Security INSURANCE. Because that is what it is. An insurance program we all pay into, and then collect from. Would you consider some other form of insurance an "entitlement" when you collect on it or just the government run ones. It is a matter of framing and disingenuous framing at that.

Sidney, I think Thayer is saying, mostly about acolytes of Ayn Rand, and I agree it is thought provoking, that a libertarian of the Ron Paul variety may own some land with a stream running through it. He chooses to use the stream as a sewer for dumping all kinds of waste. It is his land and he can do what "he likes with it". The people downstream are then deprived of pure fresh water from the stream as it passes through their land. This sort of thing is rather common and one doesn't have to be a libertarian to feel or act that way. When it comes to property in land, I believe it is a special kind of property unlike any other. The list of Founders and Framers who felt this way is long and notable. Adam Smith and John Locke felt the same way and I can provide you exact quotes from any of them, should you so desire.

[Patrick Lang]

DCA

"requiring licensing to use them (as with cars"

OK. Start a movement to repeal the 2nd Amendment. pl

[Sidney O. Smith III]

JT Davis
Libertarians would probably say that a further development of nuisance law is the answer to your woes.

I spent a few years deeply involved in toxic tort litigation dealing with multinational corporations and saw firsthand how common law precepts can develop rather rapidly once a case gets before a jury, particularly if punitive damages are involved. But, typically, you have to get the issue before a jury first.

I can give you some citations if you want.

In my opinion, we do need a national apparatus to respond to natural disasters, such as Katrina, the Gulf Oil Spill, and at some point, the fracturing of the San Andreas fault in Southern California. But, as the federal response to Katrina certainly demonstrated, our nationalists certainly failed in responding to Katrina because they were too busy trying to “reconstruct” the Muslim world as an example of enlightening the world through American exceptionalism.

[optimax]

DCA,
You only have to license a car taken on public streets. If you just drive it on your own property, you don't need a license. Most states require a permit to carry in public but not a gun kept at home. Gun restrictions are for the most decided by the states.

[Brent Wiggans]

Social Security is an insurance program that was set up that way from the beginning, which will probably save it from much more than tinkering and nibbling. Medicare and Medicaid are more properly classified as entitlements. The means by which these entitlements were to be financed did not anticipate either the explosion of medical capabilities or their cost. They likely did not foresee the conversion of mutual insurance companies to for-profit corporations either. We are, at present, caught straddling two models of health care financing that are antagonistic instead of synergistic. Republicans are attempting to redefine these entitlements as defined contributions in the case of Medicare and fire-and-forget block grants to states in the case of Medicaid coupled to a complete reversion to the private insurance model. The Democrats do not seem to have the courage to opt the other way for a comprehensive single payer model that would have the leverage to control costs. The Republican redefinition has the advantage of being predictable and controllable in terms of outlays, but it decouples the benefit from the promise to provide health care. The disparity between the benefit and health care it actually buys will become apparent over time, but for now their rhetorical lock on the words “private” and “freedom” will serve. If the Democrats fail to get behind a model that people believe will control costs, they will probably lose the argument and they will have to rely on popular dissatisfaction with the Republican solution to get another shot some decades hence.