Privatization of Roads

[BrianAnderson]

I kind of understand what would happen if roads were private (at least I think I do), so I’ll generally describe my understanding:

Basically, as far as roads for suburban areas go, people would purposefully - as a type of etiquette, so to speak - leave space in front of their house/yard so that people can drive through the neighborhood and not have to run over someone’s nice grass/garden and won’t have to do a complete circle around their house to get through a back-road. Hopefully this is making sense so far. Assuming two houses faced each other like they commonly do now, they’d maybe (voluntarily) split the costs of building up a concrete road (pretending for now that the unused ground in front of them is just dirt or grass) so that cars can drive by.

Now, I have two questions:

1. If someone wanted to make a road with concrete in front of their house so people can drive through but someone else didn’t want concrete in front of their own house, what would happen?

2. How would highways/etc. be built since there aren’t usually houses around highways like in the neighborhood streets I wrote about above this? I’m guessing there’d be more ‘payment offices’ throughout the highways like in New York and stuff, but I don’t know. I’m kind of confused.

I understand how bridges would be built and how they’d work with payments and all, so maybe highways would be the same. Hopefully you guys can help me out with understand it. Thanks.

[ClaytonB]

More than you could ever wish to know about privatizing the roads.

Clayton -

[BrianAnderson]

Hahaha. Thank you, Clayton. That’s awesome it goes through theory, applications, process, etc. I appreciate it!

[Nielsio]

Privatizing Roads (by Walter Block)

[Stranger]

You’re not thinking of roads at the right economic scale.

[Snowflake]

How are we to determine today if a city or county is a government, or just an enterprise? If it can legislate, that is to say rule the conflicts that it itself creates.

Nonsense. Pizza hut resolves its own conflicts created by its employees under its rules.

Similarly, a city is not a government, but is an enterprise, if its shares can be bought and sold, subdivided and merged, like all other forms of private property.

So if I attack a city, and then auction it off piece by piece, its private property?

The distinction between states and regular organizations is on the basis of aggression. It has nothing to do with land-property rights.

From this point of view, a program for the privatization of roads can easily be promoted even within the current state political system: simply open up the ownership of cities to the capital markets.

You can’t end slavery by auctioning off slaves…