Externality is a matter of encouraging the positive and discouraging the negative by taking true cost and benefit into consideration. In a market-based socioeconomic system, government is left to balance the equations that the market does not through such means a taxation, e.g., placing corresponding levies on negative externalities and providing credits for positive externalities. However, when government enters the picture so does politics, and in a market-based economy such as the US, politics is easily influenced by money, so true cost is rarely achieved owing to the corporate principles to capitalize profits, seek rents, socialize negative externalities, and privatize positive externalities. Getting the money out of politics is needed to deal with this.
Utility is an added dimension of this. In economics, utility is defined in terms of the relative satisfaction associated with various goods (products and services). This introduces the subjective concepts of social value vs personal preference, and ethical responsibility vs. self-interest. Utility is not merely a matter of individual satisfaction independent of other individuals and the functioning of the society as a community. For example, pollution is a negative externality because of its negative utility. In is not only an expense in terms of added health costs, lost productivity and lower RE values, but it reduces the quality of life for many people in vast regions.
Some goods have greater public utility than others, in relation to their vital necessity in contrast to their mere ability to satisfy nonessential wants. Here government also has a role to play to foster positive utility, discourage negative utility, and, especially, to prevent negative utility from reaching crisis proportions and threatening society as a whole or large segments of it. The most negative condition is, of course, an attack upon the nation, and therefore, it is the government's responsibility to maintain an adequate defense force. Similarly, internal security, education, electricity, vital infrastructure, and a social safety net are also encompassed in the government's mandate. The nation's money is also considered a public utility and the Constitution makes it subject to governmental control and administration. Many other goods, like a legal and judicial system, and regulation of commerce are also considered public utilities that ought to be managed by the government.
However, the line here is not clearly drawn and vested interests continually attempt to draw this line in their favor. And they are not shy about using politics (read "money in politics") to their advantage.
In a laissez-faire capitalistic system where "free" means the absence of governmental intervention there is no room for government to address negative externality and negative utility, and the agenda of the private sector is to privatize positive externality and utility, thereby capturing more profit and rent. Hence a narrative is created that promotes myths created to transform specious assumptions into norms of discourse.
In the US there is a considerable literature on this, both critical and constructive, but it is marginalized if not demonized by the corporate media as "leftist" and anti-American.
Whether this can be countered remains to be seen.
