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"Defence is a public good." Surely the issue is whether it should be? If it is a public good because it's being provided by the government, that's not much of an argument, is it? So is every other public good, including lesbian basket-weaving classes. Clearly, that something is a public good is not an argument that it should be. I'm prepared to believe that it should be, but what I'm asking is, what is the reason? "That means it gives positive externalities. That means (cet par) the public benefit of contributing does not equal the sum of the many private benefits of contributing." Okay, but unless that is to be an article of faith, then it needs to be an article of reason. How do you know that it does give positive externalities? "Ergo, underprovision. It is a sound theory as far as it goes." Do tell, LOL. I'm not saying it's not, I'm just asking why people say so. A lot of the times the Australian 'defence' force has been used, it has been a long way from Australia attacking other people: Sudan, South Africa, Gallipoli, Malaya, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. etc. Supposing that if some of these missions did not happen, Australia's chance of being attacked would not have been any higher, then are not these examples of negative externalities? If there are negative externalities of defence, then how do we know that the negative externalities of government providing it, do not more than outweigh any positive externalities?
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