The aff expands participation in the formal market, which organizes social life around work and production rather than care. Vote negative to rethink care as a public good—it solves the aff and is mutually exclusive.

Currently, our individual and collective lives are organized around the accumulation of capital and growth of the market. It is time for new values, goals, and understandings of how humanity fits into the larger web of life. The most prominent care scholars, such as Joan Tronto, Nancy Folbre, and others, argue that we must recenter society around care in order to fundamentally end the twin exploitations of care and environment. Scholar Kristin Munro (2019) asserts that “promoting human and environmental well-being requires fundamentally changing the production processes that take place in households and elsewhere” (p. 451), which can only happen by a drastic shift in the current capitalist system. Tronto (2013) extends this line of thinking to democracy itself: “To pursue democracy while at the same time taking seriously how central care is for all human life requires a fundamental rethinking of questions about how we organize our lives, individually and collectively” (p. 27). A care-centered world cannot exist until there is a shift in our primary societal values.

Thus far, policies in the U.S. designed to address the devaluation of care fail to achieve this value shift. Solutions to care-related problems answer the question, “How can we better represent care in the current system?” rather than “How can we better value care as a society?” For example, public and subsidized child care is offered as a solution to gender inequality, as it can increase women’s hours of paid employment, reduce their need to stay close to home, and make it easier for families to migrate to areas with more economic opportunities (Folbre, 2021). I argue that analyzing and promoting policies for their ability to promote participation in the formal market fails to address the root problems of inequality and misses the bigger picture. We should not support policies because they allow for economic participation; we should support policies because they allow for individuals and communities to center their lives around essential dimensions of care and thus wellbeing. While solutions for economic equality are not wrong, I feel a more long-term solution is to reconceive care as a public good.

Care as a public good

In classical economics, a public good is a good or service that is non-excludable (meaning that it would be difficult to prevent anyone from using the good, such as air) and non-rivalrous (meaning that one person using the good does not take away from someone else using the good, such as national security) (Samuelson, 1954). There are few true public goods, as many goods that may be considered public are in fact handled by the market: roads can be private and financed by tolls, public television and radio are funded by sponsors and advertisers, and public facilities, like restrooms in a mall, are financed by sales or other revenue (Cowen, 2021). Public policy practitioner June Sekera (2014) writes that the classic definition of public goods is too narrow and notes the many terms that have popped up to try and “fill the conceptual void” (para. 16): collective goods, social goods, impure public goods, and others. The original definition of a public good no longer serves today’s society.

The definition of a public good has evolved over time, as Sandro Galea (2016) writes in his argument for public health as a public good. He refers to works that have concluded that public goods are defined by other measures, such as economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1958) who wrote that public goods are goods that do not lend themselves to the market, must be provided for everyone, and must be paid for collectively. Others posit that public goods are supplied through non-market means and address something that is considered a public need, rather than through the principles of non-excludability and non-rivalry (Galea, 2016; Sekera, 2014; Wuyts, 2002).

While care may not easily fit the classical, narrow definition of a public good, it does fit with these newer interpretations. As discussed throughout this paper, care is an essential part of humanity and must be provided for everyone, aligning with Galbraith’s argument. Care is also a public need and although some care is currently provided in the market, this paper has argued that market-based care can be more harmful than helpful. Galea (2016) uses these new definitions to argue for health as a public good, writing that the adoption of universal health coverage and publicly financed health insurance would make health “non-excludable and non-rivalrous, better approximating a public good” (para. 5). I make the same argument for care: the adoption of universal care provision and publicly financed care services would make care closer to a traditional public good.

If the U.S. treated care as a public good, that would necessarily mean that society would be recentered around – or at least shifted toward – care. It would allow people to organize their lives around caring for themselves, others, and the world, rather than organizing their lives around work and production. To redefine care as a public good would mean protecting individuals’ ability to care in the multiple ways discussed in the introduction: to care for others, to receive care, and to care collectively with others (Tronto, 2013). It would also mean preventing exploitation of care and engaging in distributive justice for those who have historically been exploited. Glenn (2000) argues for making care central to social citizenship in three primary ways that also align with care as a public good: “establishing a right to care as a core right of citizens; establishing care giving as a public social responsibility; and according caregivers recognition for carrying out a public social responsibility” (p. 88). The skill of care is in itself a public good; improved abilities to care for self, others, and the planet, increased willingness to provide care, and attentiveness to the needs of others provide benefits to all. Care as a public good means that care is conceived as a public need, must be provided for everyone, and paid for collectively.