Liberation as a Public Good

Over my several years of learning and teaching economic science, I have
repeatedly come across the simple yet useful concept of public goods.
Private goods for example, as opposed to public goods, are the goods and
services you usually buy, like your PC, haircut, clothes, or restaurant
or hotel services. Public goods on the other hand are characterized by
the fact that once produced, you can’t restrict their consumption by
those who don’t pay. You don’t have control over access. National
defense or disease control are like that. Once provided, they are
provided to all the inhabitants of a country, regardless of whether they
paid for them or not. Radio airwaves are also a public good because the
broadcasters can’t charge all those who are tuned in, and exactly for
the length of time they were tuned in. (Public radio is different in
that its “free” transmission is not financed by commercials, so they
seek donations or government aid).

But because you could control access, public roads, parks, schools, and
hospitals on the other hand don’t have to be strict public goods. They
are in fact called merit goods. Government can charge those who use
them if it chose to, but frequently doesn’t, so they are treated as if
they were public goods. But fire protection (in the U.S) and air-traffic
control are typically offered as textbook examples of public goods.

The central problem of public goods is that they usually go un-produced
or under-produced, especially in third world countries, because neither
private companies nor individuals think it is rational to bear such an
undue burden of the cost themselves when everybody else could benefit
too. Think about it like this. If you’ve driven on a highway in the
U.S., you will know that every few hundred yards or so, you will usually
find the carnage of run-over stray animals, or leftovers of. Why don’t
you pull over every time you come across one of those to burn or bury
the body parts then sweep and wash the bloody spot where you found them?

Get it? That very service you won’t provide is an example of a public
good..

So a few years ago during one of these late-night sessions while
studying for a microeconomics comprehensive examination, my mind
took a serious detour of procrastination. This led me eventually
to the thought that the liberation of the oppressed in general,
and the liberation of Palestine and Arab unity in particular,
are in our particular Arab case supreme examples of public goods.
They won’t get produced because just like other public goods:

1) their costs are too high to be borne by just one individual or group,
2) their benefits can’t be easily withheld from those who didn’t bear
   the cost, and
3) there is no central social agency right now in the Arab world,
   whether government or political party or movement, that is
   willing and able to undertake effectively the production of these
   political public goods on behalf of the rest of society.

Those of you who are familiar with Palestinian activism and activists
can probably relate instances in which they heard a burned out activist
or fighter say angrily when perceiving an excess burden being incurred
upon her/him: ”Palestine is not mine alone!!” (Falasteen mish illi
la7alli).

In fact an activist who risks life, long prison terms, persecution, or
the welfare of her/his family to contribute to a public cause like the
liberation of Palestine is definitely putting in cost-wise much more
than what s/he is expecting to personally receive in benefits. This is
a line however that many enemies of the liberation of Palestine or Arab
unity try to remind you of (under torture or through their defeatist
mouthpieces) either to get you to abandon your commitment to the cause
or to turn you into a traitor of your people. They try to get you to
think in terms of individual, instead of social, costs and benefits.

Another more vicious extension of this is the line of
everybody-else-is-doing-it. Here you are told that everybody else is
minding their own best interest, normalizing with “Israel”, accepting
bribes, selling out for cash, avoiding trouble, and not worrying about
‘unrealistic’ goals, so why should you be any different? What difference
could that possibly make!! Similarly, this line is also used to get
some reluctant girls to accept prostitution under the pretext that
everybody else is morally imperfect too (which even if true, still
does not necessarily make a valid SOCIAL justification for prostitution).
Our concern here though is how the conflict between immediate individual
and public interests is successfully highlighted and manipulated by
those who seek to foster private inaction on public causes, and
defeatism in the collective consciousness.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that societies in which public goods like
national defense, crime control, disease control, and what have you,
are provided, are much better off than societies in which these public
goods go unprovided. Not all public goods cost the same however. And
not all the costs are financial. Those who think it rational not to
make any sacrifices because they believe their private costs will
exceed their private benefits will eventually get what they are
paying for:

nothing!! They and their offspring will have to continue living in
a society mired in occupation, division, and dictatorship for that
is the cost of doing nothing, and sacrificing nothing. That is the
opportunity cost of thinking small. Defeatist thinking SEEMS individually
rational, but is in reality self-defeating for society in the long-run,
i.e., irrational.

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