Total Demand, Optimal Provision and Marginal Cost    The graph to the right shows the total demand for statues, DT, the demand without Pat, DO, and Pat's demand, DP. MC is the marginal cost of building statues.

   Optimal provision is just over 4 statues, where MC = DT But suppose Pat claimed to get zero utility from statues so that we thought total demand was in fact DO. If every one else told the truth we would still end up with essentially the same statues. If the statues are paid for by voluntary contributions then Pat's small contribution makes so little difference it is better to lie and get the same number of statues built for free.

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