3 posts tagged “roads”

There is a time and place for more scholarly and rigorous books, for example, Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism and Mises's Socialism, but there is also a time and place for more popular works.

The Economics of Liberty edited by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is one of those books, filled with little treasures.

Mr. Rockwell in this 1990 book collected essays from a variety of authors, including essays authored himself. (His articles are a little more "punchy" than the normal article Rockwell writes today.) The essays range from "the truth about economic forecasting," "the source of the business cycle," "government garbage," to ending "the war on drugs." And for only $5 at the Mises Institute's online store it is a bargain.

Below are a few topics from the book, with an emphasis on the importance of why markets and its price system must exist. (The reason I did not review or summarize any of Rothbard’s essays is because I read them before. I decided to review/summarize "new" material.)

Free-Rider
[“The Free-Rider Confusion” by Tom Bethell, pp 35-41.]

A common attack on free markets is the alleged "free-rider" problem. The irony is, however, when the issue is looked at wholly it clearly is a government problem dealing with collective, public ownership and areas of the market where undefined or ambiguous private property rights exist.

Certain goods, it is said, on the market produce "positive externality" because their benefit is difficult to restrict to those directly paying for them. They therefore produce free-rider problems, and State or collective ownership is claimed to be the solution.

What is never looked at or talked about in statist textbooks, argues Bethell, is how this condition applies in spades to collectivism, not capitalism. A community that is communally owned allows men to benefit from those communally owned goods while not contributing to production. They can "free-ride" at the expense of everyone else. This kind of community will make laziness less expensive and those inclined to be lazy will increase. Why work, if you can get the good for free?

In contrast, environmentalists complain that the overutilization of fishing lakes is a free-rider problem in the free market. But it is precisely that they are owned collectively that causes these kinds of problems. No one suffers capital loss if fish disappear. The only ownership of the fish is the fish one person or company takes right now. Someone that does not take as many fish as they can get now might not have the opportunity in the future. Thus, overutilization.

Solution? Privatize----"internalize the externalities." A private owner would then not just own the value he can derive from the lake in the present but also in the future. The incentive would then be to derive present income without destroying the capital (future) stock. It is only private ownership and private calculation that makes this possible.

Commercial radio gets along just fine in the market place, even though it would be classified as producing "positive externality." Lighthouses have historically been private, despite the misleading propaganda.

So instead of statist textbooks talking about market failure, why not government failure? Even, hypothetically, if it is a large problem in society, it seems the State can only compound the problem by doing what States do, i.e., collectivizing. Moreover, these textbooks often claim "market failures" using examples which are government failures: e.g., overutilization of fishing lakes---a clear government failure!

Road Socialism
[“What To Do about Traffic Congestion” by Walter Block, pp 207-211.]

Walter Block, no coward he of the free market, is the libertarian authority on privatizing the highways and streets. An entire book, by the way, on the subject is coming out from the Mises Institute this year by Block.

In Rockwell's book, Block argues that congestion "is not unique" to traffic. On the market we are dealing with different forms of congestion at different places all the time. When we go to a restaurant, bowling alley, movie theater, etc. we are dealing with congestion. So are the owners of these private establishments, who have to pander to consumer demand.

We have to choose between private establishments which offer low costs but high congestion of people to ones that offer low congestion but high costs. Most of them have "peak-load congestion." Meaning there are certain times of the day or days of the week where they are busiest. Bowling alleys, Block says, cut prices "during the less busy hours" to solve this. "The fast-food restaurant," he writes, "with long lines hires additional workers." A movie theater charges according to peak-loads. And if that is not enough to meet all of the consumer demand, the owner seeks additional profits by expanding it. There is always a drive to meet the needs, and then reap the awards, of consumers.

Thus for the free market, unlike governmentally run operations, "'congestion' is a golden opportunity for expansion of output, sales, and profits." The trouble with State roads is that they do not have to meet the demands of the consumers. There is no way that they can register those demands because there are no market prices or competition. Without this, it is impossible. There cannot be a real market test to see if there are some consumers that are willing to pay more for less congestion and see if some would be willing to save money by paying less for more congestion. And there is no way to see if running roads one way is more efficient (more profitable) than other ways.

Drug War
[“End the War on Drugs” by Joseph Sobran, “Drugs and Adultery” by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, “Would Legalization Increase Drug Use?” by Lawrence W. Reed, pp 221-234.]

There was a time, a freer time, when hard painkillers and other drugs were readily assessable to the public on the open (legal) market, and there was no discussion of any major national problem or crisis.

"Informal social sanctions, as always," writes Sobran, "did most of the work of governing society." Then the so-called "war on drugs" became a priority for the State. Like the war on poverty, it is only a "war" in an abstract sense. This gives it the benefit of eluding a definition of "victory." (Sound familiar?)

But now there is talk of a national crisis. And, despite trying, society is not a fairy tail where drugs can be waved away by the State or any other institution. "The choice," as Rockwell writes, "is not between a society that is drug-free or drug-ridden." A drug-ridden society is what we already have.

Instead of eliminating them, all the State has done is surged the price of these drugs making drug dealing artificially more lucrative. Even within prisons, the pure essence of socialism in action, the drug war has failed. A conservative or liberal seeking evidence of the futility of this war should look no further.

And the State will always fail, because its attack is on the supply side, to lessen drug usage because it is a demand problem. Because it is a demand problem attacking the supply side will only worsen the issue.

Prohibition did not evaporate the supply of alcohol, but instead pushed it into the black market, much to the delight of Al Capone and other friendly characters. Lawrence Reed, in the book, reports that in Rochester, NY the number of licensed saloons numbered 500 and during Prohibition the number of underground speakeasies was twice that. In Detroit, he says, "drunkenness arrests increased steadily."

Liquor was made "much more potent (as with drugs today)." "Alcohol-induced deaths," in addition, "increased." And, naturally, crime rates went up.

More or less it has been the same with today's Prohibition.

If the drug war were to be ended, then, in a free market, the prices of these newly legalized drugs would fall to their market price and move out of the black market's criminal aspect. That means away from the hands of gangs and thugs, and would restore a healthy hierarchy of wealth. Addicts would be less likely to enter the criminal world to get their "fix" with lower prices. (Wealthy drug users, Rush Limbaugh for example, generally do not enter criminal activity to pay for their drugs and are able to live productive lives.) This would also give them a greater chance to seek help.

Cutting crime down alone should justify ending this needless and evil war. Also note that the usage of such narcotic drugs generates less violence from individual users than alcohol. Narcotics lower these tendencies and alcohol raises them.

As for children, tobacco and alcohol often is more difficult for the young to get than hard illegal drugs. Reintroducing these drugs to the free market would likely bring the same (relative) result because the price would plummet making the risk of public backlash too high.

Finally, we must all understand that there is a difference between morality and legality. It may be immoral to waste one's life away using drugs (and it is), but this is true for other things as well which are considered legal. We cannot make all immoral acts illegal. This is a recipe for tyranny.

Enforcing morality, says Rockwell, should be "the job of families and churches" and not the State. The importance of their authority and responsibility should be restored. (Collectivizing it, I say, only leads to increased immorality, the "freeing" of the individual from these institutions into unnatural atomism, increased hedonism, and increased all-around social decay.)

(One question I have asked myself is if drug usage would increase. While I believe the answer, if history on the Prohibition, the market incentives against high time preference lifestyles and the increased role of intermediate institutions under less statism are to be any judge, is a definite no in the long-run; it is also true that there probably would be some initial "blowback" if the war were to be ended tomorrow. So short-term usage might indeed increase, but that is what happens when the State gets into this business in the first place.)

Civil Rights
[“Civil Rights and the Politics of Theft” by Sobran, pp 182-187.]

Civil Rights and its logical consequence, affirmative action, introduce a new type of discrimination. This makes voluntary discrimination the only kind of discrimination the left (and neoconservatism) hates. They are thus all for discrimination, as long as it is based on State compulsion.

Now granting some of the premises of the left, the left becomes all wet on the idea that somehow affirmative action can "correct a wrong." Something, for instance, that is truly evil----i.e., violence against man's person and property----is to be outlawed, period. Slavery, of course, was one of those things. It was a grand deficit in our originally classically liberal society. But the point is that we must end and not redirect evil.

Accordingly, when murder happens the murderer is gone after. We do not try to "correct a wrong" by redirecting evil to allow descendants of the victim to create a "balance" by murdering a descendant of the murderer.

Here we see the folly of the left's view. Their goal is not to "end" discrimination or something of this nature, but seek, what Sobran calls, "tribal revenge." Moreover, their attempt at redirecting what they consider evil is not even analogous to the murder example. Instead they wish this tribal revenge to be enforced collectively on those who do not all fit the permanents of this redirected revenge attack. And obviously trying to "correct" the truly evil history of slavery today could only be done on people who were born far after slavery.

Anti-Human Environmentalism
[“Government Garbage” by Rockwell, “The Environmentalist Threat” by Rockwell, pp 197-201 & 289-312.]

Recycling, to its most basic level, is a question of economics, which is the social science of human action and his allocation of finite resources. To separate or not to separate is a question of economics, nothing more. For the question to be answered there must be in place the pricing system to allocate resources in efficient ways. But, as you guessed, the only way this can be done is to privatize the whole operation first. So if it is best to allocate paper (or anything else) away from landfills and into recycling, then there will be a market price that shows it. It will show the costs involved---that is what is needed.

This is lost on environmentalists because their philosophy is socialist at heart.

The history of environmentalism and politics started with Teddy Roosevelt, according to Rockwell, with the help of special interest groups. "[T]imber and railroad interests associated with J. P. Morgan, Roosevelt's mentor," he writes, "cheered on establishing national parks because this, neighboring the lands of these interest groups, artificially increased their values."

Like all areas of life politics gets its hand into, this was not enough political involvement, and another Republican administration opened the door wider. This was Richard Nixon. By executive order he (unconstitutionally) created the Environmental Protection Agency. "Not surprisingly," says Rockwell, "the EPA's budge has been dominated by sewage-treatment and other construction contracts for well-connected big businessmen."

Different governmental programs, for example, the Clean Water Act, puts Mother Nature, the goddess Gaia, ahead of humans. Wetlands have been made sacrosanct by it, as an immigrant from Hungary found out. By buying some old junkyard land and putting topsoil on it, he "face[d] three years in prison and $200,000 in fines" because it has been "classified as wetlands under" this act.

The much talked about topic of conservation of resources is also an economic issue. Free markets act like traffic signals with their prices. Something that become scarcer, i.e., the supply lowers, results in higher prices signaling consumers to conserve. If oil (one of the most heavily regulated and statist areas of the economy, btw) is about to run out, then, without any statist interventionism, prices will go up and force consumers to be more fiscally wise and give businessmen an incentive signal to look for substitutions. That is to say, the market will direct people out of oil, if needed.

And no matter what the merit of, for example, acid rain as a subject, its primary causes, and its impact the issue of this and cases like this have to be dealt as private property issues. It was government and big business alliances that took pollution off the table as being an issue of property and trespassing. But government is the place that these environmentalists want to turn to?!

(Say, for example, that a stream of water runs through my property. Later a factory moves into town and then dumps waste in this stream. Now if this waste enters my property then the issue is one of trespassing. Likewise, if I am a farmer and then a factory moves into town and its pollution destroys my property [some of my crops], the issue comes back to being a property issue. But these natural property laws were deliberately changed by the State---the supposed solution to environmental issues.)

There is, however, one good thing about environmentalists, says Rockwell:

The environmentalists are forever telling us to be poorer and use less water, less gasoline, less toilet paper, etc. But if they reduce their consumption, it lowers the price for the rest of us, and we can use more. (P.S.: don't pass this on to the environmentalists; it's the one favor they do the rest of us.)

America First!
[“A New Nationalism” by Patrick J. Buchanan, “Time for An American Perestroika” by Robert Higgs, pp 363-368 & 211-216.]

Buchanan says that today we have an "extra-national" agenda from left-liberals and neoconservatives that extends our national interests into other nations and their internal affairs. It uses "our Republic as a means to some larger end." Instead, he says, we must return to a nationalism of the founding fathers.

The advice from George Washington, Ben Franklin, and John Quincy Adams was basically taken until the Philippines. Making the world safe for democracy led the U.S. to join the ranks of empire. The world wars came and went. Demands from the public called for the return to an America First position. Next the Cold War came.

That too ended and the justification of American troops in Europe diminished. Likewise in Korea---the South, FYI, "has twice the population, five times the economic might of North Korea." But troops are still there.

Economic resources continually bleed for empire, spending that includes bases in economically wealthy nations. Propping up dictators here and there also continues---a recipe for "endless conflict." Nonetheless, empire is still excused. A chief reason being the "democratist temptation."

"Like all idolatries," writes Buchanan, "democratism substitutes a false god for the real, a love of process for a love of country."

Even with the Cold War ended (which was when this book was published) empire was still pushed by special interests dependent on the war machine. Cutting back military spending, for them, would put them out of a job.

The "military-industrial congressional complex" (MICC), which includes congressmen, contracting firms that sell weapons and the military, could not have that, as Robert Higgs writes. . . . There must be a bogyman to justify the MICC!

The MICC is a statist operation. After all, it's fully dependent on the government and, hence, has nothing to do with the free market or capitalism. They give millions to the campaigns of politicians and do other special favors to those in power in their symbiosis relationship.

This has pushed defense spending out of genuine national security. No one, though, can say exactly to what extent or degree. Some money has been squandered into weapons that are not needed. There is money that goes directly into defense and other that just benefits the MICC. The result being a poorer society with rich and powerful special interest groups.

Obstacles to Liberty and the Path to It
[“Back to First Principles” by Sobran, “Why Government Grows” by Rockwell, “Breaking Up the Opinion Cartel” by Rockwell, “Mises’s Blueprint for the Free Society” by Sheldon L. Richman, pp 159-174 & 280-284 & 359-362.]

Ronald Reagan has been presented in public discourse, by both conservatives and liberals, as a revolutionary president who turned the tide of big government and its growth. Yet during his administration "Federal spending," Sobran writes, "had doubled across the board." There was not the hint, in action, of anti-statism. (Reagan was not an improvement from Carter, but deterioration.)

Nevertheless presenting Reagan as a "radical" was beneficial for the powers that be in two ways. First, it was beneficial for Reagan himself. He got the glory of being a radical who accomplished something. Reagan could also continue to lull the public with his pseudo rhetoric of limited government. Second, it was beneficial for the establishment of statists because now they had a "bogeyman." Someone that they could point to and say "additional" cutting (or deregulation) of any program would go too far and that there needs to be a cooling down period from the "radical" Reagan administration.

As a whole anti-statist ideology has become complacent with left-liberal philosophy, reasons Sobran. Supply-side economics is a perfect example. It presents the goal of lower taxation and increase government revenue. In this way anti-statist conservatism and libertarianism presents its ideology as a "superior methods for achieving collectivist goals."

Today a liberal program is matched by a conservative one. For this reason the goals of leftism are not challenged principally, and consequently conservatism has helped spread left-wing ideology and the growth of government. Instead what is needed is "an independent rival principle to collectivism."

(For those that want that, look no further than the tradition to be found in the libertarianism of Lew Rockwell and company.)

A number of other things have insulated the growth of statism, you will read in the book.

Earning wealth can happen in two basic ways: voluntarily in the free market or coercively through politics.

Special interest groups have chosen the second method so they can use the government to fund their own interests at the expense of everyone else. They will fight tooth and nail if their funding is to be cut.

Indeed, 8% of the money in politics goes to the poor directly and the rest goes to the politically well-connected and the bureaucrats in on the deal. (Power is a rich man's game, despite left-wing fantasies of a pure egalitarian State.) And that which does go to the poor, and (mainly) the bureaucrat managers, has created a dependent class, and, Rockwell writes, "[t]hanks to [this] welfare state, there is virtually no social mobility from the bottom."

Those filling the seats of bureaucracy want to increase their position, wealth, and power authority. But by not operating in a free market they do not need to respond to profit and loss. Overspending is not penalized. In fact, it is encouraged. So what is the expected result from that? Bureaucracy increasing in size!

States have also grown in power "thanks" to times of crisis.

Politicians can claim that they need more money and power from society and the public, looking for answers, is easier to be lulled in. Opposition is crushed, since power and money is on the side of the State and its friends. (Interestingly enough if it is an economic crisis, when people have less money on hand, the government demands more money! And when government fails to protect "its" citizens the government then demands a bonus of more money. Imagine if private enterprise worked that way.)

Obviously the media franchise, a pro-establishment franchise, is another contributor to the increasing power of the State, since they generally work hand-in-hand. Talking points and press releases they are dependent on. Government officials patronize the media outlets that give soft-ball interviews and who propagate statism.

Through the process of increased statization come distortions in the pricing system and a host of unintended consequences. Politicians then use this to call for more interventions. One intervention is followed by another.

And finally the trends of growth are shaped by the government in the education system. They are the masters of opinion making----education and State should then be viewed as a dangerous thing.

What must be done to fight for liberty?

Rockwell writes, that we (1) must relentlessly show all government crimes and abuses; (2) understand that compromise and moderation doesn't defeat evil, instead abolishment of government programs must be fought for; (3) support alternative news sources and not the mainstream media; (4) get free market thought in higher education.

The only way to beat today's "opinion cartel," displayed in the media, is to spread ideas around it.

It then might be possible to move to a truly (classically) liberal society.

What would that look like? For Ludwig von Mises, writes Sheldon Richman, this means an understanding that private property is the foundation to society.

As Mises wrote, "the program of liberalism . . . if condensed into a single world, would have to be property, that is, private ownership of the means of production. . . . All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand."

This means, as a necessary result, the freedom for man to interact with others in a voluntary setting.

In addition, a liberal society means the backdrop of peace and impartiality of law.  It is only under peace that a division of labor is possible. Tolerance must be a cultural trait. And for tyranny, from the left and right, to be limited a liberal society thrives at applying justice and law to all men equally.

Governance that goes beyond protection of property will let loose oppression, wrote Mises:

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail.

For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard

Listen to this [MP3] lecture on "Roads, Education, and Waterways: The Case Against Public Services."

Walter Block Links:
---Official Website
---LRC Archives

Libertarians are many times confronted by people with the question: "But who would build the roads?!"

Since us libertarians firmly believe that each and every person owns his own physical body and justly acquired physical property (which can be legitimately obtained either by homesteading or voluntary exchange), we do not believe that anyone has the right to coerce others. It is simply a view that the only just relationships between persons are voluntary relationships. We libertarians reject all (involuntary) relationships based on violence: Robbery is robbery-----even if it is under the name of "taxation." Slavery is slavery-----even if it is under the name of "conscription." Two wrongs do not make a right. Government does not and cannot make a wrong, right; neither does the sacrosanct democratic doctrine of mob rule. Furthermore, we do not believe in a grand ruler or a central plan. Freedom has no central plan. Free markets have no central director. (Roads should not either.) But the free market is not not only the most ethical system with equity. It is also the most efficient system. Capitalism, private property, free markets bring efficiency and are the very means that sustain life. Only production (free market activity) brings wealth. Draining from that will only diminish wealth or destroy future production.

Now every Friday, unless Pat Buchanan is not there, I watch The McLaughlin Group on television. What this show very badly needs is a consistent defender of liberty, like Lew Rockwell. (I will not hold my breath.) This was demonstrated on a couple of shows ago (8/3).

One of the central topics was the state of the nation's infrastructure. The tragic collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis spurred this topic up. Accordingly Mr. McLaughlin gave a report on the awful state of "Roads, bridges, levees, power grids, water systems," and so on. My reaction was: Does anyone see a pattern here?

An observant viewer would notice with his report that each and every infrastructure in which McLaughlin spoke of is basically run under the same management. That is, government. It controls and manages them all. Is it just a coincidence? I think not...

(See: "The Wrong Lessons of the Bridge Collapse" by Brad Edmonds.)

Statists claim that private roads (and other such "public property" or "public goods") could not be built (or run) due to such things as the so-called "free-rider" problem, but this overlooks the fact that the majority of roads and canals were private in the nineteenth century. As Thomas J. DiLorenzo writes in his superb book How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present in chapter five, even in 1800 there were a total of 69 different turnpike (privately funded road) companies. This belies so-called "free-rider" problems.

If there is a demand, they will be built. Plus, roads are great investments. Imagine a new developing area and say a Wal-Mart goes up. Surely Wal-Mart wants easy access for potential customers to flock to their store. The same goes for any other store. Easy access makes good business. (If they had to build it, they would do it. In a free market we might see "Wal-Mart roads." ... Take that Wal-Mart haters.) Roads also increase property value. Residents and business folk alike have an interest in good roads. Because in a free market people would be tied directly into the position of wanting to maintain high property values, they will have an incentive to keep the roads well-maintained and attractive. It is something they could affect. This is because they would be in a privately owned state that has to meet the demands of the free market. Currently it is impossible for this to happen. Right now it is almost as if the public roads were "un-owned" or in a semi-state of "anarchy." Maintenance to keep them running well and looking attractive is largely arbitrary when they are run by the government. There exists no effective means to allocate scarce resources under the current environment because, by definition, there are no prices and hence no economic calculation. For prices and economic calculation to exist, the prerequisite is private property. This is what makes socialism fatal: be it road socialism or socialism in medical services or anywhere else.

Just as important, private roads are not subject to politics. Instead they are subject to market demands and conditions of the "real" world of scarcity. Private investors will be more fiscally conservative and wise because (1) the funds are not coercively collected; (2) they can lose money or go bankrupt unlike government; and (3) there is open entry into the field of producing, buying, and/or selling private roads. With every penny they spend they will want to make sure it is used wisely and will do their best not to incur extra costs. Compare this to when government hires out a company to work for them (or if they "do it themselves"). Mercantilism will develop and entrepreneurship will be political and not market based. The company will be nowhere near as constrained with money. They will have an incentive to get as much money as possible for the least amount of work. Quality will suffer as a result. They will overextend and eat up capital. Calculation problems will arise.

How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present

Thomas Dilorenzo

Here is what Dr. DiLorenzo has to say in his book:

In private, competitive markets, investment in businesses is directed by the wishes of consumers. With government-funded projects, however, the whims of politicians tend to replace the desires of consumers, and the result is always economic inefficiency and political corruption. The early-nineteenth-century America transportation entrepreneurs proved that the “market failure” rationale for government transportation subsidies (that is, the free-rider problem) was essentially a myth. In contrast, the real failures in early American transportation came from government-funded projects that were spectacularly wasteful.

One direct example DiLorenzo uses (in chapter seven) is with the railroads----which applies just as well to a comparison between private versus public roads. More specifically, he takes a look at James J. Hill. This man was a free market entrepreneur, and thus not a political (anti-market) entrepreneur. He built his transcontinental railroads, the Great Northern Railroad, with privately funded money and never trampled on anyone's private property rights. Compared to other railroads, which were subsidized by government, his is the only one that never went bankrupt.

DiLorenzo:

The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 created the Union Pacific (UP) and the Central Pacific (CP) railroads . . . For each mile of track build Congress gave these companies a section of land----most of which would be sold----as well as a sizable loan: $16,000 per mile for track build on flat prairie land; $32,000 for hilly terrain; and $48,000 in the mountains. As was the case with Jay Cooke’s Northern Pacific, these railroads tried to build as quickly and as cheaply as possible in order to take advantage of the governmental largesse. Where James J. Hill would be obsessed with finding the shortest route for his railroad, these government-subsidized companies, knowing they were paid by the mile, “sometimes built winding, circuitous roads to collect for more mileage,” as Burton Folsom recounts. . . .

. . . The wasteful costs of construction were astonishing. The subsidized railroads routinely used more gunpowder blasting their way through mountains and forests on a single day than was used during the entire Battle of Gettysburg.

Back to the roads...

For a New Liberty by Murray Rothbard

Given that we do not live in a free market, but rather a statist market, lobbying groups, as the late Murray Rothbard wrote in his For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, used the government (while they were using them to benefit in the process too) to overproduce highways. This cut into the railroads and over-stimulated truckers. Also, as Rothbard wrote this at the time, "urban expressways have been built at a cost of from 6 cents to 27 cents per vehicle-mile, while users pay in gasoline and other auto taxes only about 1 cent..." Hence, "[t]he general taxpayer rather than motorists" pay the bills. And, hence, we see yet another incentive distortion. And here "the users of the low-cost rural highways are being taxed in order to subsidize the user of the far higher-cost urban expressways."

Beyond these distortions and mis-configurations, government has created a mess in running them with traffic congestion. In effect, the state has put into place a price control. Cooling down traffic congestion needs the rationality of the pricing system in the free market. In a free market highways would develop "peak load pricing." Rush-hours would charge higher tolls than off-hours. Prices and traffic would move towards an equilibrium.

Here is what "Mr. Libertarian" has to say:

But people have to go to work, the reader will ask? Surely, but they don't have to go in their own cars. Some commuters will give up altogether and move back to the city; others will go in car pools; still others will ride in express busses or trains. In this way, use of the roads at peak hours would be restricted to those most willing to pay the market-clearing price for their use. Others, too, will endeavor to shift their times of work so as to come in and leave at staggered hours. Weekenders would also drive less or stagger their hours. Finally, the higher profits to be earned from, say, bridges and tunnels, will lead private firms to build more of them. Road building will be governed not by the clamor of pressure groups and users for subsidies, but by the efficient demand and cost calculations of the marketplace.

The Great Rothbard

Continued:

While many people can envision the working of private highways, hey boggle at the thought of private urban streets. How would they be priced? Would there be toll gates at every block? Obviously not, for such a system would be clearly uneconomic, prohibitively costly to the owner and driver alike. In the first place, the street owners will price parking far more rationally than at present. They will price parking on congested downtown streets very heavily, in response to the enormous demand. And contrary to common practice nowadays, they will charge proportionately far more rather then less for longer, all-day parking. In short, the street owners will try to induce rapid turnover in the congested areas. All right for parking; again, this is readily understandable. But what about driving on congested urban streets? How could this be priced? There are numerous possible ways. In the first place the downtown street owners might require anyone driving on their streets to buy a license, which could be displayed on the car as licenses and stickers are now. But, furthermore, they might require anyone driving at peak hours to buy and display an extra, very costly license. There are other ways. . . . .

An objection someone might have is that the various owners of these roads would decide on chaotic rules for their customers. In retrospect, that should occur to anyone as silly. They would be in the business of pleasing their customers. Many of the things we are accustomed to are very uniform and un-chaotic. They are not this way by the government, but out of the market. We buy CD, MP3, DVD players and they have the same basic template (same pictures) in regards to which button refers to play, pause, stop, etc. And look at computer software and hardware. It is not chaotic.

The railroads, in this case, without a central government plan or directive, came together to design uniform rules and made sure that their tracks inter-connected. As Rothbard wrote, 6,000 regional freight classifications were worked out without government. The timezones, too, were hammered out:

In order to have accurate scheduling and timetables, the railroads had to consolidate; and in 1883 they agreed to consolidate the existing 54 time zones across the country into the four which we have today. The New York financial paper, the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, exclaimed that "the laws of trade and the instinct for self-preservation effect reforms and improvements that all the legislative bodies combined could not accomplish."

This objection also leaves aside how the very first private roads worked. They were not chaotic or inefficient. Actually, they had a very complex and wonderfully elaborate system.

I take it that the great and wonderful Dr. Walter Block is the privatize road guru. If you have the time, I highly recommend you listen to THIS [MP3] lecture on privatizing the roads. (At least, listen to some of the beginning.)

One of the things that Dr. Block covers is how the first roads----private roads----worked very well. Walkers were charged the least amount of money to travel through them. By horse was a little more. Wagon a little more. In fact, there was a variety of ways the businessmen charged the wagon users: They would charge by the number of axels---how much stuff was in the given wagon---heaviness---and even the width of the wheel because they determined that a narrow one, while it would move faster, caused more damage to the road compared to a wider one, etc.

Another thing Block talks about is how 40,000 people die on the government roads per year! Needless to say, that does not make good business. Road entrepreneurs would compete over the fact that less people die on their road than on their competitors. A competitive environment would tend to thus lead to lower number of deaths per years. As Block reasons, this staggering number is just the result one should except under road socialism.

From this discussion we all have to remember that there is a fundamental difference between public property and private property. Government-run property (i.e. public property) does not have to respond to the demands of the market place. The above market signals do not apply to government property. Market efficiency will always be outside of government's reach. Any well-run public property will not be rewarded through profits. Thus there is no incentive or reason for the government workers to run them well. In addition, everyone is forced coercively into paying for all public property. This includes public property that one may not even use or desire. Furthermore, when a management-caused accident or disaster happens, government is once again not subject to the normal market forces of the profit-and-loss system. It cannot lose money or go out of business. When someone under this kind of circumstance gets injured (or worse) on public property (and not of their own doing but because of bad infrastructure of property itself), they (or their families) will not be compensated, demonstrating once again the inferiority of public property versus private.

Contrast all of this with private property. When I enter a local shop it is generally well taken care of. There is no talk about "infrastructure problems." There is a direct incentive to take care of it. It is voluntary. It responds to the profit-and-loss system; hence, the likelihood of an accident occurring is less. Private property is more secure. Where would you rather be? At Wal-Mart or Central Park at night? Or at Disneyland or Central Park? I think we all know the answer to those questions, if we are honest.

So Just Say No To Commie Roads!