Some goods and services are available to anyone and can be used by many without reducing others' consumption. Familiar examples include national roads, parks, streetlights, national defense and public safety. Their common trait is non-rivalry: one person's use does not diminish another's access or quantity available. Non-excludability — meaning even those who haven't paid can use them — is another key attribute. Modern economics calls such goods "public goods."
In real-world politics, essential goods such as housing and key industries are sometimes treated as public goods. As a presidential candidate in 2021, President Lee Jae-myung stressed the introduction of a national land holding tax as part of a solution to the housing crisis, saying, "Housing is a public good, and land belongs to all citizens." On the conservative side, former President Yoon Suk-yeol pressed for lower fees and interest rates in 2023, saying, "Telecommunications and finance are government-licensed businesses with strong public-good characteristics that maintain an oligopoly structure."
But essential goods are not necessarily public goods. Among housing, privately built apartments are private property. Telecommunications frequencies are public goods, but phone and internet services — operated by private carriers that pay for the right to use specific frequency bands — are "club goods" available only to paying subscribers. Even so, when the government lumps essential goods together as public goods, it can fall into the temptation of state intervention that distorts market order.
Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon said on the 27th, "Samsung Electronics is a private company, but for us living in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors have already become a public good." His point was that the distribution of excess profits earned from semiconductors should be discussed socially. Semiconductors are an industrial essential, but their supply and demand are determined strictly by market logic, making them far from a public good. If the semiconductor industry — walking a thin line of survival of the fittest — is locked into a public-good frame, it could fall behind in global competition. It would be far more beneficial policy for the public if the government instead helped Samsung Electronics and SK hynix reinvest their profits to generate more value-added, employment and tax revenue. Economic theory is being put to shame by a policy that emphasizes redistributing excess profits over reinvestment by big businesses.
