Public Goods, Private Goods
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
IN 1814 ONE OF THE founding figures of European liberalism, Benjamin Constant, published what was to become his most influential book on politics, De l'esprit de conquête et de l'usurpation.1 In it he distinguished sharply between the "private existence" of members of a modern society and their "public existence." "Private existence" referred to the family and the intimate circle of personal friends, the spheres of individual work and the consumption of goods, and the realm of individual beliefs and preferences; "public existence"2 designated action in the world of politics. For a variety of historical, economic, and social reasons, Constant thought, the "private" sphere had come in the modern world to be the source of especially vivid pleasures, and the locus for the instantiation of especially deep and important human values. In the small self-governing city-states of antiquity the sphere of private production was tedious and laborious-an endless backbreaking round of agricultural activity-and that of consumption underdeveloped. On the other hand, the political power of ancient democratic assemblies w ... read full excerpt from Public Goods, Private Goods ebook
