The textbook definition for public goods often fails to capture the reality that public goods or bads are largely a matter of choice. For example, people are allowed to throw garbage into the public domain—despite the fact that it might be technically and economically feasible to encourage and enable them to dispose of their garbage in another manner. Or, as another example, it costs little or nothing, for an extra individual to know certain statistical data. However, in actual practice, only some statistics are in the public domain—there for all to use—and others are made private, to be purchased for a price. In both cases, the publicness of these goods are not inevitable—something that the technical criterion of nonexcludability (i.e. the textbook definition) does not adequately reflect.

Therefore, it is important to distinguish between a good's potential publicness and its de facto publicness. De facto public are goods that are actually in the public domain and affect all, often leaving little choice for the public. Therefore, it is important to note that what determines a good's publicness or privateness is the nature of its benefits and costs—not how the good is produced. In addition, the very nature of these benefits and costs could be shaped in most instances by policy. (It will be shown later, in the answer to question 13, that the production of many public goods in today's world is often a multi-actor activity, involving the public at large, civil society organizations, private enterprises, and the state as well as markets.)