ABSTRACT
Neoliberalism, a dominant ideology of our times, denies the importance of public goods or else maintains that all our goods are best achieved by individuals acting out of individual self-interest. On a social level it claims this is all best coordinated through the market. This chapter considers certain core assumptions of neoliberalism regarding rationality8—unjustified assumptions that are obstacles to democracy and to people getting what they need. There are various kinds of public goods, and several senses in which they may be public goods. But all public goods have certain things in common: Public goods are by definition goods for all or most of us and they can be satisfied for one only if they are satisfied for others. The most extreme version of the theory that is dominant in economics holds that all behavior is the expression of preferences, and that our preferences are always egoistic.
