Clients, Consumers, and Citizens: Using Market Mechanisms for the Delivery of Public Services.

Argues for a consumer-choice system for the delivery of public services, rather than detailed central planning. Detailed public planning tends to be elitist, insensitive, and wasteful. Once the government takes responsibility for making available some good or service such as education, recreation, skill training, child care, health care, housing, or retirement insurance, the best method often is to provide vouchers to pay the recipient's choice of suppliers. This is done with Medicare, food stamps, and veterans' educational benefits. If official quality standards are established, with consumer education, and if steps are taken to expand supply to meet demand--as was not done with Medicare and Medicaid--the voucher system has the advantages of free choice, marketplace efficiency, and mingling of subsidized with unsubsidized consumers. However, it is not applicable to natural monopolies, the protection of incompetents, or services such as police or national defense. 12 pp. (To be presented at the Quail's Roost Conference on Centrally Planned Social Change, April 26-29, 1972.)