The Escape Route of Socialist Economists: Private Goods Versus Public Goods

What, then, does the “escape route” that socialist economists have found in order to avoid drawing Molinari’s conclusion look like? Since Molinari’s time it has become increasingly common to answer the question of whether there are goods to which different sorts of economic analyses apply in the affirmative. As a matter of fact, nowadays it is almost impossible to find a single economic textbook that does not make and stress the vital importance of the distinction between private goods, for which the truth of the economic superiority of a capitalist order of production is generally admitted, and public goods, for which it is generally denied.

--Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), 225-226.