Public goods and the unpublic

The Arizona Republic has a story, "'Tea partyers' oppose changes to Fountain Hills trash collection," about how in Fountain Hills, Arizona, a change in how garbage is being collected -- from five companies to one, and adding recycling to the program -- is being opposed by Tea Party groups as socialism and big brother.

I had been planning to write a long entry about how the current political environment and its paranoid style repudiates the concept of public goods, and the role of government and collective action in organizing and maintaining society, and how as corporate institutions become larger, citizens need to bulk up their resources as countervailing forces, but I don't think I have the energy.

From the article:

Councilwoman Ginny Dickey, who also supported the measure, said she felt that her motivations were especially questioned because she is the only Democratic council member and worked for seven years at the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

"It seems counterintuitive, but in order for this proposal to pass, I believe I had to downplay the benefits of recycling," she said. "When ideology prevents rational discussion of a really pretty mundane topic, trash, there is no perspective. Everything is suspect, which paralyzes us."

- Public Goods, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics