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… is from page 383 of Tom Palmer’s May 1983 essay “Infrastructure: Public or Private? [2]” as this essay is reprinted in Tom’s excellent 2009 book, Realizing Freedom [3] (footnote deleted; link added):
Of course, it may be no accident that the claims made on behalf of state provision of public goods are not borne out in practice; as a consequence, perhaps the theory of government underlying such claims should be revised. Harvard economist Joseph P. Kalt suggests [4] that we should view government “as a means whereby some free riders are able to force others to pay for their rides, rather than as a means whereby we all agree to coerce ourselves in order to overcome a free-rider effect that frustrates desires for public goods.”
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