GETTING THE ARGUMENT RIGHT – CONSTRUCTION OF COMMONS It is not that there is no

GETTING THE ARGUMENT RIGHT – CONSTRUCTION OF COMMONS

It is not that there is no common good we can know, it is that, even if we can determine a common good, the monopoly state bureaucracy cannot construct a common good without an equally or worse, damaging set of externalities – by its mere existence. If a common good is truly possible to construct, the government (a body of people negotiating a contract with one another to whom all citizens must agree), can construct it without the aid of a monopoly bureaucracy – assuming that the first common goods that have been constructed are property and rule of law – and then contract out the execution of those commons to individuals who can be fired if they fail to perform, and held accountable for those failures by restitution, punishment or even death.