ctrical utility to deny the street lighting to individuals unable or unwilling to pay for it. Therefore, the service would be funded by tax revenues raised in the jurisdic tion where the service was provided.
Without taxation, there is no way in a free society to assure that all individuals receiving a pure public good will help pay for its provision. There will always be some indivi duals who would volunteer to pay for a public good, while others, likely the majority, would refuse. The general assump tion is that most individuals would refuse to pay a so called fair share for a public good, if they believed it would be
provided, regardless of what they did (Gwartney, Stroup, and Studenmund, 1989).
A second important characteristic of a pure public good is that the consumption of that good by one individual does not reduce the amount of the good available for consumption by other individuals (Baxter, 1989). Thus, if one individual stands under public street lighting, the lighting is not used up, to the extent that lighting is
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