 Before moving on, note that people sometimes use “the public good” to refer to something other than the technical notion of a public good in economic theory. In academic and nonacademic discussions, people sometimes use “the public good” in a way that is more or less synonymous with “the common good”. This use of the term was especially prevalent among political philosophers, roughly from the 16th century to the 19th century. For example, in the Second Treatise of Government (1698), John Locke defines political power as the right to make binding laws and the right to mobilize the community in defense of these laws, where both of these powers are 