CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS
- Can a company be guaranteed all of the social benefits of a new invention? Why or why not?
- Is it inevitable that government must become involved in supporting investments in new technology?
- How do public television stations, like PBS, try to overcome the free rider problem?
- Why is a football game on ESPN a quasi-public good but a game on the NBC, CBS, or ABC is a public good? Provide two examples of goods/services that are classified as private goods/services even though they are provided by a federal government.
- Radio stations, tornado sirens, lighthouses, and street lights are all public goods in that all are non-rivalrous and non-exclusionary. Therefore why does the government provide tornado sirens, street lights and light houses but not radio stations (other than PBS stations)?
- The Junkbuyers Company travels from home to home, looking for opportunities to buy items that would otherwise end up with the garbage, but which the company can resell or recycle. Which will be larger, the private or the social benefits?