Public Goods and the Function of Government

By analyzing the mutual defect in logic of economic liberalism and interventionism, as well as the characteristics of public goods, this paper points out that government is the institutional arrangement to provide public goods which originates from the common needs of the society members. As the publicity is a continuous interval and the public goods is liable to expand, the rightful scope of governmental activities is difficult to definition and keeps expending. Our nation should improve and perfect the mode and mechanism of providing public goods through reforming government, and should enlarge the scope of governmental activities to a reasonable degree.