If You Build It – Privately – They Will Come

Ideas on Liberty
Economics on Trial
August 2000

by Mark Skousen

“Government provides certain indispensable public services without which community life would be unthinkable and which by their nature cannot appropriately be left to private enterprise.” – PAUL A. SAMUELSON

If you take a course in public finance, you will invariably encounter the “public goods” argument for government: Some services simply can’t be produced sufficiently by the private sector, such as schools, courts, prisons, roads, welfare, and lighthouses.

The lighthouse example has been highlighted as a classic public good in Paul Samuelson’s famous textbook since 1964. “Its beam helps everyone in sight. A businessman could not build it for a profit, since he cannot claim a price for each user.” 1

Really? Chicago economist Ronald H. Coase revealed that numerous lighthouses in England were built and owned by private individuals and companies prior to the nineteenth century. They earned profits by charging tolls on ships docking at nearby ports. The Trinity House was a prime example of a privately owned operation granted a charter in 1514 to operate lighthouses and charge ships a toll for their use.

Samuelson went on to recommend that lighthouses be financed out of general revenues. According to Coase, such a financing system has never been tried in Britain: “the service [at Trinity House] continued to be financed by tolls levied on ships.”2

What’s even more amazing, Coase wrote his trailblazing article in 1974, but Samuelson continued to use the lighthouse as an ideal public good only the government could supply. After I publicly chided Samuelson for his failure to acknowledge Coase’s revelation,3 Samuelson finally admitted the existence of private lighthouses “in an earlier age,” in a footnote in the 16th edition of his textbook, but insisted that private lighthouses still encountered a “free rider” problem.4

Private Solutions for Public Services

The lighthouse isn’t the only example of a public good that can be provided for by private enterprise. A privately run toll road operates in southern California. Wackenhut Corrections manages state prisons. Catholic schools provide a better education than public schools. The Mormon Church offers a better welfare plan than the USDA food stamp program. Habitat for Humanity builds houses for responsible poor people.

And now, for the first time in 38 years, there is a privately built major league baseball stadium-Pacific Bell Park, new home of the San Francisco Giants. After Bay area voters rejected four separate ballot initiatives to raise government funds to replace the windy and poorly attended Candlestick Park, Peter Magowan, a Safeway and Merrill Lynch heir, teamed with local investors, to buy the club and, with the help of a $155 million Chase Securities loan, built the new stadium for $345 million. The owners also got huge sponsorships from Pacific Bell, Safeway, CocaCola, and Charles Schwab.

So far the private ballpark has been a super success, selling a league-leading 30,000 season tickets for the 41,000seat stadium. The team’s 81 home games are nearly sold out. Other team owners, whose stadiums are heavily subsidized, were skeptical, but a dozen team owners have visited the new operation to study what they’ve done. They include George Steinbrenner, who is considering a $1 billion new Yankee stadium.5

Economists Attack Public Financing

Perhaps private funding of major league sports facilities has been influenced by two recent in-depth studies by professional economists attacking publicly subsidized sports arenas. In Major League Losers, Mark Rosentraub of Indiana University (and a big sports fan) studied stadium financing in five cities and meticulously demonstrated that pro sports produce very few jobs with little ripple effects in the community, take away business for suburban entertainment and food venues, and often leave municipalities with huge losses.6

A Brookings Institution study came to similar conclusions. After reviewing major sports facilities in seven cities, Roger G. Noll (Stanford) and Andrew Zimbalist (Smith College) found they were not a source of local economic growth and employment, and the net subsidy exceeded the financial benefit to the community.7

These empirical studies confirm a longstanding sound principle of public finance: Beneficiaries should pay for the services they use. In my free-market textbook I call this “The Principle of Accountability,” also known as the “benefit principle.” It’s amazing how often politicians violate this basic concept. For example, John Henry, a commodities trader worth $300 million and owner of the Marlins baseball team, is pushing through the Florida state legislature a bill to tax cruiseship passengers to help fund a new Miami ballpark. (Fortunately, Governor Jeb Bush just vetoed the bill.)

Please, will someone send Mr. Henry a copy of my free-market textbook, Economic Logic?

1. Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, 6th ed. (New York; McGraw Hill, 1964), p. 159.
2. Ronald H. Coase, “The Lighthouse in Economics” in The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 213. Coase’s article originally appeared in The Journal of Law and Economics, October 1974.
3. Mark Skousen, “The Perseverance of Paul Samuelson’s Economics,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1997, p. 145.
4. Paul A. Samuelson and William D. Nordhaus, Economics, 16th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1998), p. 36n.
5. Peter Waldman, “If You Build It Without Public Cash, They’ll Still Come,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2000, p. 1.
6. Mark S. Rosentraub, Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who’s Paying for It (New York: Basic Hooks, 1997).
7. Roger G. Noll and Andrew Zimbalist, Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums (Washington, D.C.., Brookings Institution, 1997).