Can good be used as a singular noun in this context?

[ThatsNicer]

Today Friday 19 June Ritullah Shah writes in The Thunderer Column of The Times about the BBC being a public good. My query is can good be a singular noun? It sounds clumsy and I think good as a noun does not have a singular.
Your opinion please

I thinks it sounds awkward but okay. 'the public good' is reasonably common and also singular.

Yes it can.

I go running for the good of my health

She started a charity for the common good

I gave my teenager a curfew for their own good

So, yes.

Public good means a crowd.

@Wigeon , Are they all nouns?

I can't think of a sentence where "the public good" would mean a crowd. I don't think it does.

Yes

The public is more than one person, is how I was thinking.

It annoys me when they try and make it singular in 'goods and services'

OP - it is listed in Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

Thanks @Wigeon and others. I now know.
But I still think her phrase would have been better if she had said benefit.

No it doesn't it means for the good of the public

@BacksToTheFuture Eh? Not for the good of the public?

I don’t think describing the BBC as ‘a public good’ is correct usage at all. An organisation can exist in the interest of the public good, but it can’t be a public good. That doesn’t make sense. In other uses where ‘good’ is a noun - the good of my health/his own good/the common good, it is prefaced by a dynamic verb - I run for/he gave up smoking for/he acted for. The BBC is a public good sounds really clunky. The BBC is a public asset, I would say.

Sounds fine to me.

This is an extremely common usage, especially in economics. Its been around forever. it means an institution or service that is for the benefit of people in general - i.e. no one is excluded from benefiting from it - and is generally funded by taxation rather than by profit-seeking mechanisms.

There isn't anything ungrammatical about it. It just sounds strange to you because you are unfamiliar with it. Perhaps you think it is a new expression and that is what antagonises you? But it isn't at all new.

The public is a singular noun meaning several people. The public good is a singular noun qualified by the adjective public.
And what about 'The good, the bad and the ugly'?

I question you use of antagonise @MyThreeWords .

The good, the bad, and the ugly. 😉

Indeed…that’s what I learned at school way back in the ‘80s. GCSE economics!

I suppose it is a bit quirky that we tend not to refer to private goods in the singular; whereas we often do with public goods. Perhaps that is because public goods are more likely to be large-scale singular pieces of infrastructure or amenity like "the road system" or "clean air" or "the BBC" -- rather than boringly multiple things like apples or biscuits.

The public, the audience, the aristocracy, the team, the population - all singular nouns with more than one person.