Of course I care about those things. I simply think that government is not required to provide them.

Sounds good in theory, but practice that's silly. No business buys $5 billion bridges, like the new one being built now in NY cruising the Hudson. No business buys $5 billion airports, like Denver International, and the latest estimate to renovate LaGuardia. That requires a sovereign to borrow that much money in a way that lenders trust will be repaid.

If you want to argue governments act in part to facilitate waste and fraud, i.e. those airports and bridges don't really cost that much, I agree, but unless there's aggressive auditing attached to every project, I see no way around it. Enough people are sufficiently dishonest and greedy they will take if they can get away with it.

So who provides them if the government does not without falling into the tragedy of the commons and/or cutting off the poor from access to such services?

James Tooley has done fascinating work on private education for the poor around the world, putting the lie to the myths that private education is only for the wealthy and that the government must provide education.

There is an excellent EconTalk expisode[1] with Tooley, as well as a lengthy article here[2] by the author.

[1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/12/james_tooley_on.htm...

[2] http://educationnext.org/privateschoolsforthepoor/

1) What does that have to do with roads, military, etc?

2) His argument still would fundamentally function as a regressive tax burden greater than the existing tax burden [for education] on the poor.

3) A fee-for-service regressive tax burden will ultimately cut the poor off from services.

> With a minimum wage of about $33 per month in the area, monthly fees in the private unrecognized schools are thus about 12 percent of the average monthly earnings of an adult earner.

You do understand in the US the poor aren't paying 12% of their income to send their kids to school right?

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spendi...

http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-inco...

The full federal tax burden for education, infrastructure, etc. on the poor is ~3%.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-local-tax-burden-rank...

If you factor in the state-and-local burden, the full burden is barely higher at ~13%. So for literally one service, the cost is nearly the entire tax burden for the poor.

So the math in play here is "what are public goods? non-rival and non-excludable.

There! Done in one :)