I see 2 interesting situations here:
How does one get to own a piece of road?
What if I want company X to take care of the road in front of my house, but all my neighbors use company Y?
Will each road-owner decide his own rules? Isn’t that just like the state system, seing as the drivers won’t have much of a choice on whose road they use?
This topic has already been brought up about five times this month
Hey. First as one who believes in free markets we dont know how these would be handled but of course we can offer some suggestions.
A. “How does one get to own a piece of road?”
Well several ways but most of all they build it. When new housing communities are built then roads would be built as well and the company who builds the home would own it. I would think in those situations though there would probably been an association made that would own those roads and that community would pay a fee per home to use it.
Another way is to buy an existing road from someone already, while the last would be to build a road by purchasing land from home owners.
B. “What if I want company X to take care of the road in front of my house, but all my neighbors use company Y?”
I would think that you would never just own the piece of road in front of your house. It would either already be owned by a road company when you move in or buy your association. Unless of course you lived in some extremely wooded area than I would think it wouldnt be a problem since you would own the entire road.
A “Will each road-owner decide his own rules?”
Well yes simply put each road-owner would decide his own rules since its his property.
B. “Isn’t that just like the state system, seing as the drivers won’t have much of a choice on whose road they use?”
Well no its not like a state system because in a state system you have one governing body that has ultimate control over the roads. In this case you could have several road owners in the area who make different rules and you would drive on the one you like. On choice you would still have choice’s on what road to use because there would still be other road companies out there providing alternate routes.
community would pay a fee per home to use it.
You mean road tax? That’s just nasty.
An alternative would be for roads to remain un-owned, and those who use them regularily would hire road workers for repairs and maintenance. The problem now is that those who haven’t paid will benefit just as much as those who paid, so those who paid might have the right to claim ownership.
That is not an alternative that agrees with basic facts of economics.
I dont think that is too logical though because then if we get shares then we are forcing them into the stockmarket which cost tons of money which would reduce the amount of shares the taxpayers get. Maybe the best way is to just sell the rides to the highest bidder and send checks back to the taxpayers proportional to what they paid in. If there is any left over after they pay off all their debt of course.
The reason I’m asking is that I’ve only got 1 road connecting my house to the civilised world. There seems to be no way of avoiding monopoly in this case, whether it’s the state or the private owner.
Hmm. Well it is interesting on how it might initally be converted over. In a already free market world I would think that when you initally bought a house you would probably bought some road insurance or something that says you will always be connected you know but when the government is just converting over. I guess it would just be hectic. It might be better to just initally sell the entire road system of a city to the highest bidder and then as time goes on things would get better you know. If the current road monopoly starts hiking price’s too much people will start moving a lot and new private roads would start getting built to private competition.
This also has already been asked this month.