List the public-good aspects (if any) of the following goods:
a. Safety.
1.It involves choices the public makes, such as safe driving, that enhances their own safety.
2.When one person acts in a safe manner, it affects others not included in the decision to act safely. It reduces risks to others.
3.Safety has no public-good aspects, since it is both rival and excludable.
4. If safety provides a safe environment, it is provided for all people, and one person enjoying safety does not preclude others from benefiting from that safety.
b. Street names.
1.Naming streets allows people to orient themselves in towns and facilitates communication. Since the government is in charge of naming streets, they are a public good.
2.Naming streets is not a public good because it is up to each person to navigate maps and streets. Naming streets allows people to orient themselves in towns and facilitates communication. Although everyone benefits from street names, no one wants to pay the costs if some people are free riders. The government eliminates the free rider problem by using tax dollars to name streets, thus creating a public good.
3.Naming streets has no public-good aspects, since street names are rival (unique to towns) and excludable (once used in a town, it cannot be used again).
4. Naming streets allows people to orient themselves in towns and facilitates communication. Once a street is named, it benefits all people. No one can be excluded from referring to that name. In addition, one person using that street name does not preclude others from referring to that street.
C. A steak dinner.
1.A steak dinner is a public good because an entire cow has to be butchered to produce the steak. Other people receive the remaining meat, making the steak a public good.
2.A steak dinner is a public good because cows graze on public land. In this way, farmers are often free riders and the meat they produce is actually a public good.
3.A steak dinner has no public-good aspects, since it is both rival (if one person eats it, no one else can) and excludable (if you don't pay for it, you don't get it).
4. A steak dinner is a public good because the government subsidizes meat farms. In other words, the price of a steak is partly paid for by taxes, making the steak itself a public good.
