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service treatment properly administered, would therefore move 
toward income equalization. 
Perhaps the most critical argument regarding pricing theory is based 
on the social externalities of consumption; i.e., the general public 
benefit that is derived from wilderness recreational areas. Such bene- 
fits include the building of a full and well balanced personal life, the 
vicarious pleasure involved in just knowing that such wilderness areas 
exist, and the improved welfare of the Nation in the aggregate. Such 
philosophic reasoning is difficult to justify quantitatively and the 
absence of empirical data on the subject is obvious to these researchers. 
Long ago, public schools were created out of similar reasoning over 
the objections of many who thought it immoral to be forced to pay 
for another child’s education. In this case, the electorate and econo- 
mists agreed that the general public benefits were so great as to 
justify whatever inequalities that developed from a general tax. Many 
experts in the field of recreation believe that their commodity pro- 
duces similar benefits. The force of public opinion in the United 
States, however, has not yet rallied in this direction. Increased. popu- 
lation densities of the future with the attendant frictions may very 
well provide the impetus necessary. 
A final argument uses the efficiency of centralization as its premise. 
Global control of recreational projects and facilities permits the sensi- 
tive balance to be maintained between types of areas. The services of 
specialists such as archaelogists, geologists, and historians are avail- 
able to a large management, services which would prove prohibitively 
costly to the private developer. 
The case for the private good 
The proponents of recreation as a private good rely on the more 
general attributes of the competitive market structure to justify 
their position. It is implicit in their reasoning that the social externali- 
ties for the consumption of recreational goods is exaggerated and that 
the consumer can display a preference for the commodity which is 
reflected in user data compiled by past researchers. By permitting the 
free market forces to operate, the most efficient allocation of nature’s 
resources will be attained, and with a minimum of expensive govern- 
ment intervention. The problem of overuse would be rectified by the 
high prices that would accompany excessive demands. 
A second line of reasoning attacks the government’s, or any cen- 
tralized management’s, for that matter, ability to accurately determine 
the specific needs of its people in a timely manner. The free market 
would be more sensitive to changing patterns of demand, it is argued, 
and at the same time would eliminate the steel-grey uniformity that 
seems to accompany most products of bureaucracy. 
The balance 
A resolution of the public-private good issue clearly involves 
qualitative judgments which draw heavily on the personal character, 
experience, and motivations of the individual. In my opinion, the 
implementation of recreational facilities of the resource and inter- 
mediate types is best accomplished through a central authority. The 
problems outlined which would result from private control under free 
enterprise are very real as can be witnessed in areas outside of the 
recreational sphere; i.e., pollution. The adverse income distribution 
