Much has been written on the nature and provision of public goods.' A central issue has been whether the market will lead to an over or under provision of public goods (see Borcherding, 1978).2 This note takes an entirely different approach by examining the incentive of entrepreneurs to convert the non-exclusionary characteristics of public goods into the exclusionary characteristic associated with private goods. The approach is best stated by way of example. In the 1960s there was a debate over the optimal provision of a public good called entertainment from a television signal (Minasian, 1964: 71; Samuelson, 1964: 81; Buchanan, 1967: 193). This debate preceded the marketing of video cassettes. The cassette is exclusionary with respect to time, space, and quantity. Entertainment in this form can hardly be called a public good. Yet the nature of the good, defined as entertainment from a tube, has remained the same. It is only the manner in which the good or utility is produced and distributed that has changed. Similar arguments can be made for a variety of other goods. Certain aspects of fire protection have been privatized by the introduction of smoke alarms, of police protection by the introduction of sophisticated electronic devices, of computer services by the introduction of mini computers, of education by the introduction of home computers, etc.3 That is, competing technologies arise that allow various degrees of exclusion. It is in the nature of the production and distribution process, not the utility that is derived therefrom, that leads to classifying some goods as public or quasi-public and others as private goods. All so-called public goods could be transformed into private goods if relative costs were ignored. This note examines: (1) the effect of differences in the relative costs of alternative technologies, (2) whether it matters which technology is introduced first,