Here’s a letter to the editor of National Review Online.
Editor:
Daniel Flynn’s reflections on Bill Buckley’s “feud” with Murray Rothbard are excellent (“Revisiting the Buckley–Rothbard Feud,” March 27). And while the balance of my sympathies are with Buckley and against Rothbard, on the question of the private provision of lighthouses, it was Buckley rather than Rothbard who suffered what Buckley called “the disadvantages of knowing nothing about lighthouses.” Rothbard was correct, and Buckley not, that private provision of lighthouses isn’t only possible, it was real.
In 1974, the great Nobel-laureate economist Ronald Coase published “The Lighthouse in Economics,” which tells of many lighthouses in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries being privately built and operated. Fees were collected when ships docked at nearby ports. Although government wasn’t completely out of the picture – it set rates and helped to collect fees – private enterprise, contrary to Buckley’s supposition, did indeed play a significant role in providing lighthouse services.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
