[Propertarian]

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All one has to do is set up a conditional contract, an agreement to pay a certain amount upon fulfillment of the condition that everyone else has paid. If the public good is genuinely desirable, there should be no problem. The only people who aren't going to sign are those for whom it isn't worth $200 for them (in which case, why should they have to pay?) If you're concerned about a few sticklers who don't want to pay for it, simply raise the cost and lower the conditional requirements to compensate. If you still can't get enough signatures, well your public good is probably not that valuable now is it?

[/ QUOTE ] You still don't understand public goods. A public good is something that everyone gets regardless of whether or not they contribute to the fund; hence no individual has an incentive to even enter into this conditional contract, because they are going to get a share of it whether they pay for it or not. Hence, regardless of whether or not someone wants the public good in question , if they are rational they will not agree to one of these conditional contracts. This does absolutely nothing to solve the public goods problem.

[ QUOTE ]
No, because I can calculate EV and no mercedes is worth $800,000. I'll say yes if what I'm winning is worth more than $800,000 to me. This is a lottery, totally different. Lotteries flourish in the free market. That should seem obvious. The only thing stopping them from flourishing now is government. I don't see what your point is.

[/ QUOTE ] No, this isn't a lottery: you've missed the key point. In a lottery, a person must actually buy a ticket in order to win. In this case, a person can win the car regardless of whether or not they buy a ticket, which is what makes this a public goods problem. Given that buying a ticket doesn't increase your chances of getting the Mercedes, it makes no sense to buy one.

BTW-I should have said $100 bucks.

[ QUOTE ]
When the oppression gets bad enough, individuals will start sending signals of their wilingness to cooperate via activism.

[/ QUOTE ] History simply betrays your viewpoint. The opression of blacks in the U.S. was not worse in the 1950s than it was in the 1870s. The fact of the matter is that in the 1950s blacks belived that they had a chance of ending that opression, contra what people belived in the 1860s and 1950s.

The sad reality is that people are just as likely to lay down and die when confronted with opression such as this, given the difficulties of collective action.