Collective Consumption and Social Justice

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Collective Consumption and Social Justice
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Outline

• What is collective consumption
• Services and social justice a case study
• Welfare needs and public goods
• Geography and Inequality
• Restructuring of urban services

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Collective Consumption Definitions

• Collective consumption refers to all
  collectively organized and managed services
  consumed via non-market mechanisms and at least
  partly paid for from the public purse (Pacione,
  p. 332)
• Distinction between income transfers and public
  services
• Characteristics of public goods
• Joint supply
• Non-Excludability
• Non-Rejectability
• Services vary across space and between social
  groups.

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Examples of urban services

• Health care
• Libraries
• Schools,
• Social services
• Sewage
• Garbage
• Police/fire
• Transportation
• Parks
• Water

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Case Study Firefighting in LA Basin
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The Case for Letting Malibu Burn

• Westlake/Downtown, high levels of urban fire
  incidence, primarily human caused
• Malibu, high incidence of wildfires, often forces
  of nature
• Malibu residents defended by large army of
  firefighters, insurance, disaster relief
  subsidies
• Westlake/Downtown residence fires might have been
  prevented with even just minimal standards of
  building safety.
• Where are priorities for public services?

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Basic Government Function

• Capital accumulation

• Political legitimization

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UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• everyone has the right to a standard of living
  adequate for the health and well-being of himself
  and his family, including food, clothing, housing
  and medical care and the necessary social
  services and the right to security in the even of
  unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood,
  old age or other lack of livelihood in
  circumstances beyond his control. (Pacione, P.
  333)

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Measuring Need

• Hierarchy of human needs
• Physiological (food, shelter)
• Safety (protection from harm)
• Affiliation (group membership)
• Esteem (personal integrity, esteem)
• Actualization (fulfillment of capacities)
• Aesthetic (personal concepts of beauty, learning)

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Meeting Welfare Needs

• Mutual support of family and friends
• Charitable and voluntary organizations
• Private markets
• The state

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Theories of Public Service Provision

• Market-surrogate school
• Based on ability to pay. Local politics in
  response to consumer demand. People vote with
  their feet
• Ideology-appeasement school
• Provided to appease interests of marginalized
  groups. Political legitimization
• Needs-assessment school
• Allocated based on need, not ability to pay.

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Geography and inequality

• Jurisdictional partitioning
• Different resources, expenditure needs,
  preferences
• Tapering
• Frictional effect of distance
• Externalities
• Both positive and negative

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Changing Nature of the Welfare State

• Largely put into place during the 1930s.
• Threatened by
• Demographics
• Cultural factors
• Ideological developments
• Economic Trends

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Some forms of restructuring

• Partial self-provisioning/domestication
• Intensification
• Technical change
• Rationalization
• Subcontracting/privatization
• Marginalization of labor
• Spatial relocation

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Service efficiency, equity and equality

• Locational efficiency
• Personal Accessibility
• Locational Accessibility
• Equity
• Not equality
• Balancing equity, efficiency and costs

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Take-home messages

• Collective consumption services are a critical
  function of urban government
• These services potentially have a tremendous
  impact on promoting social equity
• In practice, in many cases, collective
  consumption services perpetuate and reinforce
  inequality
• Restructuring of service provision seems to be
  increasing inequality