When is state coercion for the provision of public goods justified? And how should the social surplus of public goods be distributed? Philosophers approach these questions by distinguishing between essential and discretionary public goods. This article explains the intractability of this distinction, and presents two upshots. First, if governments provide configurations of public goods that simultaneously serve essential and discretionary purposes, the scope for justifiable complaints by honest holdouts is narrower than commonly assumed. Second, however, claims to distributive fairness in the provision of public goods also turn out to be more complex to assess.

中文翻译：

---

重新配置基本和可自由支配的公共物品

国家强制提供公共物品什么时候是合理的？公共产品的社会剩余该如何分配？哲学家通过区分基本公共物品和可自由支配的公共物品来解决这些问题。本文解释了这种区别的棘手之处，并提出了两个结果。首先，如果政府提供的公共产品配置能够同时服务于基本目的和可自由裁量的目的，那么诚实的抵制者合理抱怨的范围就会比通常认为的要窄。然而，其次，公共产品提供中分配公平的主张也变得更难以评估。