The Publicness of Private Goods

I think that the typical public/private distinction is obfuscatory and should be replaced.

Consider a household (or even a nation state) that produces all of it's own food. We call this autarky - it is the absence of trade. One can only consume what one produces, and your opportunities are limited to the resources at your disposal. Such a household would be Romanticised but brutal: none of us live in autarky.

Instead, we specialise in some endeavour and trade for whatever else we need. I think it's progress, that I can't grow vegetables, can't mend my clothes, can't make my own paper etc... or at least choose not to. We have prospered precisely because we outsource as much as possible, and in doing so become dependant on the efforts of others.

So instead of private denoting "capitalist", we need a better conception of what it means to be public. Economic progress moves us away from autarky and into the marketplace - the most public part of any town.

No more must we rely on the single seller (monopolist) in the village store. We can now buy from anywhere on the planet. To me, eBay is as public as it is private.

I haven't got a solution to offer. But I want to chip away at the common belief that only collective or government action can affect the "public" interest, and that Society is incompatable with capitalism.