Public Good Provision, Punishment, Cooperation, and Defection - Essay Example

PUBLIC GOOD PROVISION, PUNISHMENT, COOPERATION AND DEFECTION Introduction: Public goods refer to the items, goods, services and properties, which areavailable in excess in physical and social environment as well as they are in easy access of the general public; and the masses maintain equal rights regarding the consumption of these goods and services at large. Consequently, public goods can be declared as unrivalled and non-monopolistic articles. “A public good is a term used by the economists to refer to a product (i.e. a good or service) of which anyone can consume as much as desired without reducing the amount available for others.” (Retrieved from ellevuelinux.org) The concept of public goods is always discussed by making a comparative analysis of the term with the notion private good, which is quite helpful in elaborating the term. Private goods are the goods and services launched by an individual or the group of individuals where these individuals have sole right of using such goods. Taking the illustration of a private building or residence, it looks apparent that the owner of that building has the privilege to use it according to his own desires, and no one can enter its premises without the prior express or implied permission of the owner. On the contrary, people are allowed without discrimination to enter a public park, a playground, a highway or other public places. Moreover, public goods not only offer an unconditional favour of the consumption of these goods, but also the use of such goods does not decrease or minimise the right of other people to use the same. For instance, breathing in the fresh air by thousands of people does not put the existence of air in jeopardy at all; rather, the quantity and quality of the air remains same even unlimited number of people is consuming it under one and the same environment. “A public good (or service) may be consumed without reducing the amount available for others, and cannot be withheld from who do not pay for it. Public goods (and service) include economic statistics and other information, law and order enforcement, national defence, national parks and others.” (Businessdictionary.com) Public good is not limited to one specific area, region or society of the world. Rather, it can be observed within the global perspective due to the very reality that it encompasses the people of the world at large in its wide fold. Hence, public good is beneficial and supportive for the public at a massive scale, and influences the unlimited number of population. “To make the notion of a global public good more concrete, consider, for example, the eradication of small pox. Once accomplished, the whole of humanity benefits - people in all parts of the globe, present as well as future generations, rich and poor. Similarly, if the international community were to succeed in ensuring peace, everyone would be able to enjoy it.” (Kaul, 2000) Consequently, public good is attributed to the governmental and political institutions that are responsible for the equal supplying and distribution of opportunities and resources without any discrimination in respect of caste, class, community, race, religion, gender or socio-economic status. Latest invented technology, newly introduced medicine, advanced design and logo, and all fresh statutes and provisions of law are meant for the public and apply on the people belonging to divergent classes, religions and racial groups without prejudice. It is therefore the racial discrimination prohibition US laws not only benefited the Asians and Caucasians, but also provided the African Americans rights and privileges on equal foundations. The sociological theorists and economists are of the opinion that the implementation of the policies of public goods is really hard nut to crack in almost all societies of the world, which certainly creates difficulties for the authorites to observe public good under their jurisdiction. In the same way, the responsibility of the political institutions in respect of providing equal chances of using the public goods to all and sundry accelerates to a great extent due to the very fact that no private entrepreneur is ready to offer its services for the public good. The private sector makes strategies, articulates plans, revises it according to the changing market scenario and spends a lot in the projection, promotion and advertisement of their private goods against the price determined against the goods and services offered to the public. In addition, private sector does not make the public its partner in any type of the profit or share due to the very fact that its profit is mere the outcome of its own efforts, investment of time and money and hard work. Fehr and Gachter also maintain the same fact in these words: “Many societies face the problem of how to provide public goods. For a group of self-interested agents, of course, public goods present the difficulty that since all agents will want to be free-riders on the efforts of others, no agent will contribute willingly to the public good.” (2000:163). By this, the writers simply view that since private entrepreneurship looks for their personal benefits, it seldom agrees to render services and display cooperation without having anything in return of the services. Here it appears the concept of reciprocity. Reciprocity is aptly observed by an overwhelming majority of people, and is applied even while dealing with the strangers and aliens. A person refusing to observe social norms and ignoring cultural values is disliked and discouraged through expressions and words. Similarly, an unfamiliar person breaking the prevailing law is seriously condemned and even punished. The basic motive behind punishing others at one’s own cost is the outcome of reciprocity that is the part of human nature. “The Edda, a 13th century collection of Norse epic verses”, Fehr & Gachter state, “gives a succinct description of reciprocity: "A man ought to be a friend to his friend and repay gift with gift. People should meet smiles with smiles and lies with treachery."” (2000: 164) Thus all the cooperation made by the humans while interacting their fellow beings is the outcome of mutual understanding based on human nature, social norms and moral values existing in a society. Reciprocity is both positive and negative in nature, which is not only the case with individual level; rather, the roots of reciprocal activities are spread from societal and cultural levels to global level where the states cooperate with one another on equal foundations. If one country displays aggression towards the other, it also faces aggression in return though the intensity of hostility may be lesser in strength. “Human beings” Fowler (2005:7047) submits, “frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers whom they will never meet again, even when such cooperation is individually costly. This behaviour is puzzling because natural selection works against those who are willing to engage in costly cooperation and in favour of those who “free ride” on their efforts.” It is the cooperation that promotes altruistic punishment in humans and they get ready to punish the non-co-operators in order to teach them a remarkable lesson because of their negligence and selfish behaviour. Sociological researches reveal the very fact that people are geared up for altruistic punishment and look ready to pay the cost of such punishment to deal with the non-co-operators around them. By examining the Marxist perspective of social conflict, it is obvious that conflict between different groups unite the people of one group and they pay a lot in return of gaining their rights, privileges and status. The same is applied by renowned African-American human rights activists of twentieth century, Rosa Park, who bravely fought in the face of hardships for the noble cause of winning equal status for her African American community. She refused to leave her seat while travelling in a bus in favour of a white American. She had to pay a lot in return, but the incident united her community under one banner and they won the battle through altruistic punishment against the non-co-operative individuals of society. “My resistance against leaving the seat”, Parks submits, “was neither due to my physical tiredness, nor it was an outcome of my age factor; rather, the whole incident was the reaction of the humiliating attitude of the whites, who considered the blacks as the inferior stratum of society.” (1992:77) Game Theory: Game theory is a branch of mathematics that is interested in examining and analysing the competition and conflicts between two or more people, groups or states. “A simple example of a conflict situation is the game of tic-tac-toe. In this game, two people take turns making Xs or Os in a #-shaped grid. The first person to get three Xs or Os in a straight line wins the game. It is possible, however, that neither person is able to achieve this goal, and the game then ends in a tie or a stand-off.” (Retrieved from scienceclarified.com) The game theory is not confined to mathematical exercises or some chess board games only; rather, it contains social, national and international conflicts and hostilities too in its wide fold. In the present research paper, Marxist conflict theory has been selected for analysis and interpretation of the subject. Marxist theory is named after celebrated German socialist philosopher and thinker Karl Marx, who vehemently expresses that conflict is inevitable in every culture and social set up, which is necessary for progress of the society. Social conflict, according to him, always exists between haves and haves-not i.e. bourgeoisie and proletariat, where bourgeoisie always try to exploit the proletariat. The exploitation of the lower stratum at the hands of upper classes is the outcome of industrialisation, which will last for long till the proletariat get their share and place in society on the principles of equality and justice. Keeping in view the public good, punishment, co-operation and defection, it looks obvious that hatred of a larger group drags the smaller or weaker groups to unite and co-operate with one another, and strive to punish those who create obstacles on the way to equality and social justice. So many researches have been conducted on Marxism, Neo-Marxism, Marxist Feminism and Feminist perspective, which support the very idea that people are ready to pay collectively to punish the non-co-operative elements of society. “The uniqueness of human cooperation necessitates investigations that reach beyond the explanations of cooperative behaviour of nonhuman animals. Profound empirical evidence shows that the possibility of sanctioning norm violators stabilises human cooperation at a high level, whereas cooperation typically collapses in the absence of sanctioning possibilities.” (Gürerk, Irlenbusch, & Rockenbach, 2006:108) Researches also reveal that negative reciprocity invites punishment. Taking the example of the Jews, one comes to know that Jews were maltreated, massacred, injured and hurt by Nazi Germany during WWII. Consequently, they played vital part in the participation of Germany into two separate countries. Not only this, but also they are taking revenge from the helpless Palestinians, due to the fact that they are unable to harm of destroy the powerful Germany. REFERENCES: 1. Fehr, E. & Gächter, S. (2000a). Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14 (3), 159-181. 2. Fehr, E. & Gächter, S. (2000b). Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments. American Economic Review, 90(4), 980-994. 3. Gürerk, Ö., Irlenbusch, B., & Rockenbach, B. (2006). The Competitive Advantage of Sanctioning Institutions. Science, 312, 108-111. 4. Kaul, Inge. (2000) What is a Public Good? Le Monde Diplomatique. Global Public Goods: A New Way to Balance the World’s Books. (Quoted in http://mondediplo.com/2000/06/15publicgood) 5. Parks, Rosa. (1992) My Story 6. Game Theory. (Quoted in http://www.scienceclarified.com/Ga-He/Game-Theory.html) 7. Public Goods: A Brief Introduction. (Retrieved from http://www.bellevuelinux.org/public_good.html) 8. Public Good Definition. (Quoted in http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/public-good.html) Read More