1) To posit that democracies are better at producing public goods as a mere hypothetical, then observe that popular behavior indicates that the hypothetical is widely-believed to be true, does not establish the truth of the hypothetical. What evidence is there that democracies are better producers of public goods than the free market? None that I'm aware of, even for military defense.

2) If X really is a public good, and this public goods problem is insurmountable by the free market, and the benefit of the public good would exceed the cost of coercive production of that public good, that still doesn't solve the public goods problem, because coercive production of public goods is also a public good. Why should the public good of coercive production of, say, public roads, be any less insurmountable than free-market production of public roads? The infinite regress problem is what's really insurmountable.

3) My favorite analogy to the public goods rationale for coercion: Suppose Joe wants to have sex with Sue, but Sue doesn't want to. But Joe would benefit more from having sex with Sue than it would cost her, so Sue ought to be forced to have sex with Joe...

Tim Starr
Fight for Liberty!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fightforliberty/