If private enterprise can buy land, they should have the right to do anything that they damned well please with it - plant soybeans, build towns and sell lots, operate a casino, grow marijuana, process cocaine, offer sexual services - anything. If the previous owners sell it, it’s the buyer’s business what they do with it. If they’re selling residential and business lots to build a new city, I may well buy in - but I’ll want to see their plans for road-use before I sign a contract.
Danno, amazed at how often I need to say these things.
If you are going to dispute Austrian economic theory, you should at least acquaint yourself with it.
The fact that a road is the only possible road that can exist in its place is not a monopoly, it is a physical fact of the universe. This applies to any other property. You cannot physically be at Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts at the same time. You can only be in one property or the other. They compete with each other by compelling you to move there to eat.
The same applies for roads. Roads compete with each other by compelling you to move to them.
In other words, if the road that passes my house is poorly run, I’m just going to have to deal with it, or sell my property at a lower price to someone who is willing to deal with it, and buy another house elsewhere, hoping that the street there will continue to provide reasonable service at reasonable cost - there are folks who will lose, and I’ll be one of them.
The entities who own residential streets will be able to markedly influence the value of the homes they serve, and some bright kid will buy the road, intentionally let services drop and user fees rise until the houses there are as devalued as they think possible, buy the houses, improve the road and make the rates competitive, then recoup his losses by selling the houses served at a tidy profit.
Under anarchy, there will be no law to prevent this. In a rational society, it’d be a short-term strategy - people would learn of the tactic and the market for houses with improved roads would become minimal. Then again, in a rational society, there’d be very few USAian congresscritters being re-elected after they voted to approve the bailout - I don’t look for that to be much of a factor, either.
If we go to an anarchic system, I’m buyin’ roads - they’ll be a gold mine.
The same applies for government ownership of roads. Just look at the abandoned housing of Detroit. Those used to be someone’s mortgage.
What would you rather have? Government production of roads, or market production of roads?
So what you’re saying is that someone will invest a considerable sum of capital to purchase a city, wreck the value of his investment in order to buy even more valueless property, then return to the status quo and somehow that is going to be a profitable business venture?
I already pointed out how ridiculous this is earlier. Imagine a movie theatre holding all their customers hostage in the movie theatre and asking for a thousand dollars each to et them leave. Why do you think movie theatres don’t do that?
If you truly prefer a free market approach over government, then the question you should be asking yourself is, knowing that those nightmare scenarios you describe are theoretically possible, what could be done about them under a free market framework? Don’t stop at the problem, keep trying to find solutions. Use your imagination and I think you’ll be able to come up with realistic ideas.
It is not anarchy because the ‘city owner’ decides who can and who can’t move within the city.
edit :
It’s not anarchy because the city has only one owner and only one ‘government’. Also the idea that people won’t own their houses but will wish to remain tenants subjected to the whims of their landlord is rather ridiculous.
Perhaps but it it isn’t a monarchy. States have no legitimate claim to their holdings. Unless one wishes to hold all property owners are “monarchies” of a sort.
You acknowledge that people won’t choose to live as tenants ?
Anyway, you say a private city is not a monarchy - I say it’s not anarchy/a free society. What is it then ?
You mean legitimate claim to the land ? They don’t but that’s not the point anyway. Politicians believe they have a claim to the people they rule, not to the land.
Well that could be a figure of speech. The point is, I don’t think that in a free society private ownership of roads gives the road owner the right to dictate who can and who can’t use the road.
Private cities are not necessarily monarchies, but I do think the scenario in which a single person owns an entire city (of substantial size and population) is extremely unlikely to occur in a truly free market. Without some form of government (monarchy or otherwise) I just dont see it happening. But for those who do, do you think there will also be private nations; perhaps the entire planet will be owned by a single person or corporation? What would be the limit to the theoretically possible amount of land a single individual (or single corporation) could conceivably own?
Just to be clear, I’m not trying to discuss the ethics of such ownership.
The limit of an enterprise’s size is the size of the biggest indivisible capital good it has to produce. For example, a city that builds a large public park benefits from having a property as large as the land value generated by the park. (The good produced, in this case, is land value, and the more land it can improve, the more the investment pays out.) If two adjacent cities see that they could make a large land improvement together and both benefit from it, they will merge into one enterprise. Beyond the biggest land improvement imaginable, there’s not much point to concentration of property, although some managers may become so skilled at urban planning and operations that they buy out other cities and manage them as well.
Whether one could own a private ‘nation’ I think has more to do with security production than land production. A nation is a group of people that share a common language and culture, and from that it may be possible that they are more willing to help protect one another than other nations. From this it follows that a single nation would have lower security costs and that a business that makes a one-nation product could outcompete others.
If you and all your neighbors collectively own the roads in your neighborhood and contract out the maintenance to some third party then is this an evil, monopolistic relationship?
Ignoring any anti-car strawmen because this could easily be written into the HOA charter that the road is intended for automobile access and not someone’s political tool.
As it is in the best interest of all the neighbors to provide access to their homes for third parties such as friends and the UPS man it would seem likely that they wouldn’t charge a fee for people to drive on the roads in the neighborhood. They could even limit access to keep people using it as a shortcut because they wish to avoid the major roads if they wished.
The major thoroughfares and local highways are a different matter but could be dealt with in much the same manner.
Since everyone has an incentive to be able to go to work or shopping and businesses also have an incentive to have their customers and employees be able to get there it would make just as much sense for the roads on the regional level to be collectively owned by the ‘stakeholders’ (home and business property owners) and contract out the maintenance to a third party.
Perhaps user fees on this level would make more sense so they could institute some high-tech RFID black box that tracked how much you use the roads or it may be that the incentive for free access to all is better for everyone since the more people can travel, the more they can spend at local restaurants and stores.
How could this all work you may ask, one way I can think of off hand is to have your portion of the ownership of the HOA and regional road authority be attached to the property as part of the property title. You buy the property and the ownership stake in the road system and if you are stupid enough to buy a home without both then that’s your problem, I hope you enjoy your local monopolistic rent-seeking road monarch.
This is just one possible solution to the ‘monopoly paradox’ and the beauty of a free market system with competitive forces is that people who actually know what they’re talking about (as opposed to me just pulling this out of my ass) will come up with even better solutions and the ‘winner’ will be the one that best fits the local conditions and circumstances.
You live in a beach town that lives off tourist dollars and you’re going to do things differently than a sleepy little beach town who doesn’t want the vulgar herd tearing up the place and causing problems.
There is no single solution just like there’s no single way to successfully market soap.
And to start the imagination process, consider something like the Golden Gate Bridge as a model. Even though it is currently controlled by a government, consider it privately owned. The toll cannot be TOO high or users would drive around and/or ferry services would be re-created for that route and the Bridge owner would lose business and eventually be unable to pay for upkeep of the Bridge and would certainly have lower return on his investment than with lower tolls.
Apply the same principles to a locked-in residence(s). If the tolls are too high, one likely alternative is an air taxi service, another might be a bridge over the offending roadway. At some point, the stupid road owner will either lower his fees or slide into bankruptcy.