if private companies took on this , wouldn’t that mean a toll at every road, and how would they know
where to build, don’t you need some government intervention for this?
I love taking about road privatization because it is rarely brought up. Now there are several methods to which urban centers and suburban areas. I personally like having bar codes or certain signal transmiters that annouce themselves when you drive onto a street. Like say you are driving down 4th avenue and you take a right onto Jefferson street. Well right when you are on Jefferson street, your car is scanned in some capacity and you can later be billed for utilizing that street. When I first heard this from Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, I litterally did a double take and thought that was the most interesting concept I had heard in a long time.
So what if there were tolls at every road?
How do you know when to buy a new pair of pants?
How would the government know where to build the roads?
Did Disneyland need the government to firgure out where to build its roads?
Haha… good one. [:P]
it would cost so much to be tolled every time, at least with government it’s not for profit and it’s a one off payment
Really? Let us test this theory. I take it by your name that you are a teenager and therefore do not pay taxes per say. There is nothing wrong with that, and I’m not making some argument saying you are too young to understand this. However, if you were a taxpayer and you diligently paid on April 15 whatever amount of money you owed the State…would you ever use the famous ‘bridge to nowhere’? Let us say you live in New York…would you ever utilize every single road in the whole entire United States in a single year? If not, why should you pay for all of them especially to an organization that builds without thinking of profit?
I work in the oil and natural gas pipeline construction industry and the government does not help us acquire land. Individual land agents are responsible for talking to land owners for the use of their land. Obviously, the land owners are compensated for their land. Often times te course of the pipeline is determined by which land owners will allow us to use their land (some refuse) and how much they want for the use. All of this is done with no help from the government. A private road could work similar to this. I guess the only difference is that a pipeline has the potential to produce a lot more revenue than a road.
I rather pay tolls than taxes…
…because there are highway engineers…?
You don’t realistically need a government intervention for anything…
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no, it does not imply that. such a solution would be impractical
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They would know where to build by the process of the market. Entreprenuers would make educated guesses on where people would like to have roads. If the roads are very popular, to the point of being crowded, they get expanded and/or additional roads in the same direction get built. If they aren’t, the roads are destroyed.
In a pure free market, who would build doors? Wouldn’t that mean a toll at every door?
lol. Nice one, but I like mine about the pants better.
But mine is more relevant, as a road is nothing more than a door into a place.
what about AAA? i’ve always thought that drivers in a free market road system could pay monthly dues to organizations like AAA that sign you up with various road companies, perhaps some deals like ‘first 3,000 miles free, with a 2 year agreement’ something like that. Also a system of road companies working with car companies, so when you go to the dealership and buy a new or used car you could be signed up with the roads.
Yeah, but mine is more “in your face!” [:D]
Also, mine is relevant, because it focuses on the question: “how do we know when to build/buy X, Y, and Z?”
Misleading analogy. A road allows you to transport yourself, and possibly other things from point A to point B in a shorter amount of time. You can travel between those two points without a road (I will leave out the issue of crossing properity), by walking through unpaved wilderness. Especially when combined with the correct technology (cars/bicycles), they can dramatically reduce time/energy.
in a pure free market, who would build the roads
The same people who built them before the government built them.
In his book on roads, Walter Block also points out that when a factory is privatised, it is not sold brick by brick, so in a similar vein, you won’t have to stop infront of every house to pay a toll.
P.S. The door anaology was a lot better.
The jews!
If this is sarcasm, it is of a very bad taste.
The analogies addressed different questions.
Not at all. Private businesses would want to build roads to their facilities in order to increase their customer base while neighborhood associations would want to build roads in order to increase the property and home values in those said assocations.
How does government know any better than private individuals?
The market allocates resources via prices. Without government, roads would be built where it would be the most profitable for them to be built. This would be the best way to build roads, since valuable resources would not be wasted building roads when they could be used for other things.
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You would not be tolled every time, since it’s in the interest of entrepreneurs to eliminate tolls in order to increase traffic to their businesses.
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Even if you would be tolled every time, it would cost less than government road construction. Governments not only build roads, but they maintain them. As we all know, government is inefficient and often rife with corruption. Moreover, governments pay above-market wages, increasing costs, and add many unnecessary jobs that would not exist in a free market (e.g. no legislators in the free market). This means that people pay more in taxes than they would in tolls for the use of roads.