alt Hacker News"Public good" is a term of art in economics which means a good is both non-excludable (it is impractical to control who benefits from it) and non-rivalrous (one person benefiting does not prevent others from also benefiting).
Roads are clearly rivalrous and while it's often impractical to prevent non-payers from entering a toll road, one can certainly record them and met penalties after the fact to discourage it.
So no, roads are not a public good.
Replies
DangitBobby • last Saturday at 8:52 PM
If roads are "rivalrous" then so is literally everything else.
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> roads are not a public good
You’re both right. Roads can be an impure public good.
At low traffic loading, they are not rivalrous and can be modelled as a public good. At high traffic loading they become rivalrous and thus closer to a common-pool resource.
If roads are made excludable, they resemble a club or even private group.