The Memphis Business Journal published this a few days ago. I originally submitted it as an op-ed, but they asked if they could edit it and publish it as a letter to the editor.

"If representatives of the City of Memphis are really looking to save money, they should start by privatizing those municipal luxury services that lack any compelling government function.

Two obvious candidates are swimming pools and golf courses. Subsidizing such recreation can hardly be argued a necessary function of government.

Furthermore, the City of Memphis has hardly proved it has a comparative advantage in the provision of such services. And really, golf courses and swimming pools are private goods—rival and excludable—so there is no “market failure” to justify government provision. Finally, if these pools and golf courses cannot survive without government subsidies or ownership, they are a waste of valuable resources.

Since these are municipal operations and therefore are not sensitive to profits and losses, we cannot know if they are creating any value.

Without profits and losses to guide decision-making, such determinations over resource allocation boil down to competing value judgments and the use of political power.

The net result is an enormous waste of resources expended in a political battle that often trigger subsequent resource waste. Given our state of affairs, Memphis cannot afford this extravagance.

Next steps? The City of Memphis should privatize golf courses and swimming pools. But don’t simply sell them to the highest bidder. Instead, issue shares of stock to Memphis taxpayers. We’ve paid for these facilities, so we own them. Ownership shares would make this explicit, and privatization ensures that the resources will be allocated to the use that produces the most value.

My case is straightforward. But a disagreement over these indisputably decadent services indicates a problem with much deeper roots than politics. Instead it is one concerning fundamental philosophies about the appropriate operation of society. As we stand, Peter has the “right” to rob Paul so that he can swim or play golf more cheaply than he would be able to in a free market. Unfortunately, this view supposes that Memphis can be sustained as a community of thieves in which we live as parasites on the productive labors of others.

Make no mistakes. I’m certainly not against golf. Nor am I against swimming. And I’m definitely not against children. While privatizing golf courses and swimming pools means that some of them might close, they will be replaced with more valuable services that can earn income for their owners--in this case, Memphis residents.

Governments might have a number of legitimate functions, but subsidizing recreation is not one of them. When I was a kid, I learned not take things that didn’t belong to me. Have our representatives forgotten that lesson?

Art Carden
Adjunct Fellow, Independent Institute
Professor of economics and business
Rhodes College"

On the city's website, there's an option to book a tee time at a city golf course. As politically feasible privatizations go, I would hope that this is relatively low-hanging fruit. I don't have data on hand, but it's reasonable to believe that the average income of city golf course patrons is higher than the average income of city taxpayers. The first person to email me with data comparing golfers' incomes to others' incomes will get a copy of The Age of Economists: From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, which is volume 26 in the Hillsdale College Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series. Note that when I say "golfers' incomes" I'm referring to people who play golf recreationally, not professionally.