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With a “public good,” by contrast, my consuming it doesn’t reduce the benefit — in the case of the hockey gold medal, the joy — you get from it: It’s a hockey victory for both of us, for all 35 million of us, in fact. But it’s not something you can easily trade in a market. I could donate to Team Canada but I could just as easily not donate and still enjoy the victory. With a hamburger, by contrast, if I don’t pay, I don’t get.

When goods are public in this way, economists argue that markets may fail to provide enough of them: We’d all like to have more but we’d all prefer that the other guy pay for them. One solution to this “free-rider” problem is to buy them with tax revenues and use the police power of the state to punish those who don’t pay their taxes.

Public goods may come to be provided in other ways, however. Professional hockey players may donate their time and risk injury, as they do, for the honour of playing for their country. Or businesses may provide funding in exchange for official sponsor status and lots of reflected glory if the team does well. (Any resulting boost to their bottom line would be “gilt by association,” you might say.)

Which brings us to soccer. Canada actually won gold in men’s soccer in the 1904 Olympics but since then has languished. We did qualify for the World Cup in 1986 but lost our three first-round games without scoring a goal. We are currently 110th on FIFA’s world ranking and just last month ended a 958-minute scoreless streak. In effect, we are the (men’s) soccer equivalent of the Jamaican bobsled team, though without their charm.