Public Goods, Redistribution and Rent Seeking

164 Pages·2005·0.977 MB·English

by  Gordon Tullock

Public Goods, Redistribution and Rent Seeking
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Public Goods,
Redistribution and
Rent Seeking
Gordon Tullock
George Mason University,USA
The Locke Institute
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham,UK • Northampton,MA,USA
© Gordon Tullock,2005
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Contents
Preface vii
1. Some difficulties in the existing theory of 1
externalities
2. Coase and all that 18
3. More on why government? 28
4. The poor 39
5. The legacy of Bismarck 49
6. Some biological problems 56
7. The rich 66
8. A survey of the existing system 75
9. Rent seeking 92
10. War 101
11. Monarchies and dictatorships 114
12. What,if anything,should we do? 132
References 146
Index 149
v

Preface
I started on this book just as the difficulties with Iraq were
beginning to heat up.As a reader will remember,we took quite
a while getting ready to move. Thus a sort of war atmosphere
was present while I was writing the manuscript. I don’t,
however, think this had much impact on it. I have a few men-
tions of the war and of terrorism but they certainly don’t domi-
nate the book.
Basically it is a revision and improvement of the public
choice literature on why we have a state, and why it would be
nice if it worked better.It’s easy enough to read so that it could
be used for students who have had no introduction to public
choice,but I have enough new ideas in it so that it should be of
interest to more advanced scholars too.
At the end I propose some fairly radical revisions to the US
Constitution intended both to make it fairer by giving citizens
of different states equal representation in a revised Senate and
making it harder to engage in the kind of rent seeking which
tends to make us poorer.The last is rather radical,but I am well
known to be radical,albeit in an unusual direction.
vii