I’m just curious more than anything else. I think speed limits on highways and ‘middle of nowhere’ roads are just about the stupidest idea ever, but I can at least understand the intent of having them ‘in town.’
I wonder if all roads were privately owned would the owners put speed limits on them? How exactly would that be enforced?
Voting with feet, or wheels as it were.
No running in the mall.
We’ll have to give it a try then, and find out.
They would if there were accidents. I’m sure a lot would right off the bat, though. It would be enforced however they desired. It wouldn’t take long before the ideal system would be figured out.
I like speculating about these things. One idea that comes to my mind is that roads could be “speed-rated” by road-insurance companies. By that I mean a road-insurance company could inspect a road that it insures and give a rating of the maximum speed that they deem is safe to be driven on it. There’d probably be tonnage ratings on roads as well.
Speed ratings would do two things. First, they’d provide cut-off points for claims of negligence against road owners. The corollary to this is public posting of the speed ratings. Second, they’d help determine liability in car accidents on the roads. Here the corollary is that cars must somehow be monitored for speed. A few ways to accomplish this are: human observers (“road watchers”), cameras, and black boxes in the cars themselves.
As far as “enforcement” goes, there’d need to be a person somewhere in the loop for monitoring. This person could identify the car as it drives past (or review the automated observation). Either he or his superiors could report it to the insurance company registered with the car and/or its owner. Presumably the car-insurance company doesn’t want to insure flagrant violators of speed limits.
I lol’d
Sure, it is possible that there would be speed limits. But frankly I would expect to see stricter enforcement of no passing in the right hand lane, no talking on cell phones than speed limits per se. That and probably different types of drivers licenses.
I’dl ike to see road companies restrict people who are driving egregiously too fast. They could reprimand those types of irresponsible people because nobody would want to drive on a road with an unlimited speed limit. Companies that get carried away with “fining” people wouldn’t last long and I’m sure they would be more leinient than the police who see it as a quick way to get money without a realistic appeals process, considering they are a coercive monopoly.
There would be no speed limits, and also no brakes.
I’d guess that most companies would give up any road regulation and just require all drivers to be insured at all times. Let those who can manage 150 mph go their merry way, without having to ‘pay’ for the inability of the rest of us.
On private roads, drivers who do not follow the policies and terms for use of the road could be trespassed by the road’s owner.
On public thoroughfares, customary law would have to develop to regulate it. From Wikipedia:
I don’t think this speed limit had anything to do with safety - sounds at first brush like it had a lot more to do with preventing automobiles (“light locomotives”) from presenting competition to the Establishment’s trains. Automotive speed limits have been around basically as long as automobiles have been around, so there has been no opportunity for customary law regarding operation of automobiles on public thoroughfares to emerge.
If I had to guess, I would say that a standard of “reasonable caution” would emerge. But then you have to ask what this means in terms of action. Of course, if there’s a collision, you’ll have a legal case against whoever was in the wrong. But it’s absurd to suggest that no sort of driving activity can be lawfully censured no matter how reckless. There probably wouldn’t be any traffic police on public thoroughfares. But what you could have is PDAs employed by commercial freight insurers to protect cargo vehicles or even “aggression insurers” that provide protection for individual travelers. These PDAs might keep armed vehicles on the road to be in a position to protect distressed drivers from reckless drivers. So, if you have a black Cadillac Escalade with gold rims swerving recklessly over the road, you could dial 911 on your cell phone (which translates to your PDA’s emergency line) and have an armed vehicle vectored to your location. I can imagine vehicles that regularly travel public thoroughfares might have stronger front- and back-bumpers and possibly even side-bumpers.
A more serious problem than reckless drivers would be road blocks. Road blocks are common in poorer parts of the world. Some thugs park a van across the highway and wait for the next vehicle to come along. They pull whoever the next hapless victim is out of the car and fleece them for whatever they have of value, then escape.
Clayton -
That, of course, presumes that public thoroughfares would exist. So what makes you think that they would?
Also, what do you think of my speculations? I’m curious.
I don’t think road companies would care if you are insured and I don’t believe there would be any such thing as “liability insurance.” The only kind of car insurance in a natural order society would be insurance against damage to the vehicle. The concept of being insured against liability is odious and socialistic. Hoppe has explained why.
Clayton -
Um, because there have always been public thoroughfares. You really think that every stretch of road in the New Mexico desert could be profitably owned and maintained by a private road company? I doubt it. Public thoroughfares would likely be un-maintained stretches of “use at your own risk” roads, as they were in the past.
You could be right but I think your ruminations would apply to high-end freeways more than the regular highways, country roads and city streets that make up the vast majority of road surface. Roads are insanely expensive to build so certain roads (i.e. interstates) would naturally exist in a pretty thin market, not unlike 19th century railroads.
I had an idea sometime back for a tent-enclosed freeway to provide protection from the elements for the vehicles and the road itself (no ice). It would be expensive to cover a road but not more expensive than the road surface itself and if you were building a German-style no-speed-limit Autobahn with very tight road surface tolerances, it might be profitable to build such a thing. Imagine 80K trucks running along at 120 mph. Of course, if the rail and road industries were privatized, rails would probably be a lot tougher competition and we probably wouldn’t see as many heavy trucks on the freeways.
Clayton -
A guy walks onto my property under the condition he doesn’t touch my stuff.
He touches my stuff.
I get my gun and tell him to leave.
Same thing works for roads.
This really is a question for markets to decide, as cliche as that sounds. There are certainly at least a couple of different logical ways this could pan out.
That said we are in custom and culture to think in terms of speed limits. If I was forced to bet on the issue, I would guess there would be speed limits similar to as we know them today, at least in the beginning.
I don’t think road companies would care if you are insured and I don’t believe there would be any such thing as “liability insurance.” The only kind of car insurance in a natural order society would be insurance against damage to the vehicle. The concept of being insured against liability is odious and socialistic. Hoppe has explained why.
Clayton -
Every risk that may be influenced by one’s actions is therefore uninsurable; only what is not controllable through individual actions is insurable, and only if there are long-run frequency distributions.
I’d like to hear prof. Hoppe explain why than, do insurance people stare blankly at you in disbelief if you claim you have no experience rating in your premium. I’ve heard this fallacy so many times that I’m not even surprised anymore.
In contrast, take for example the risk of committing suicide. Would it be possible to insure oneself (to pool one’s risk with others) against suicide? The answer should be quite obvious: such a thing is not a viable venture for an insurance company.
Well, surprise you can insure against suicide. Plus waht is this ‘can’t be done’ attidude, and by a free-market economist. Anything can be done, some willy entrepreneur has just to figure out how.
Here is an example that begins to take us in the direction of the health insurance question: the risk of not feeling good in the morning and not getting out of bed. No insurer could ever cover such a “risk,” because people do have at least some control over how they feel in the morning.
Yes they would, but you premium would fly off after two occurrences. Insurers offer anything if one is ready to pay the premium.
Assume that we could insure ourselves against not feeling well enough to get out of bed in the morning. You can easily see that this would create a class of malingerers and would discourage people from getting up, regardless of what their physical condition might be.
Who’d pay more in premium while other less. End of story.
To a large extent health insurance has become a form of welfare, the machinery of income redistribution. How has this happened? Insurance regulation.
In my own tiny Albania, we have no regulation of health care insurance, or of employers benefits regarding health care (I work in insurance regulation, I’d know) , yet I can walk 200 meters form where I sit now and I can find 3 Austrian insurers willing to insure my health fully. How’s that?
For someone who places such a huge (and well deserved) trust on insurance to ‘run’ an anarchic society, Hoppe surely knows little of it. Actually he would seem to have stayed with basically what Mises wrote back in the day. That insurance is a competitive industry that changes by the year, no one has noticed?
So trust me, liability can and, I believe, would be largely purchased in an anarchist society. I, for one, would allow no one in my property if no one guaranteed to pay for damages he could cause. I really cannot see how is any different from what credit card companies (indirectly insuring clients form their own default) or bonders do.
If you have driving experience, that places you in a different insurable class with other similarly experienced drivers.
Well, it’s not so much “it can’t be done” as it is that it isn’t insurance. Liability “insurance” really exists but it’s inaccurate to call it “insurance”. It’s just another form of socialism for the rich (it subsidizes drivers of expensive vehicles… think about it).
But what you’re really talking about is a mutual aid association, not insurance. The Somalis actually have a mutual aid system where a group of 4 or 5 men who are members of the same clan share liability for each other’s torts. Damages levied on any one member of the this mutual aid group can be collected on any and all of the members of that group. To call this “insurance” is, perhaps, true in a colloquial sense but in the technical sense, it can’t be called insurance.
Clayton -
If you have driving experience, that places you in a different insurable class with other similarly experienced drivers.
This is rating and is widely practiced. But what I meant was that if you’ve cost the company 10’000 dollars so far, your premium will jump by, say, 40%, no matter how experienced a driver you are. So your own actions, being careless while driving, driving drunk, do have a financial repercussion and you do have incentive to be careful. Every company does this where it can, because they all seek to eliminate ‘moral hazard’, which is what Hoppe is talking about.
Well, it’s not so much “it can’t be done” as it is that it isn’t insurance. Liability “insurance” really exists but it’s inaccurate to call it “insurance”. It’s just another form of socialism for the rich (it subsidizes drivers of expensive vehicles… think about it).
Again, you assume that no matter how careless or careful, everyone would pay the same amount of premium. No company would do that without ending with all the maniacs and killers as clientele. Actuaries go to great lengths to find out what are you likely to cost the company in the future given how much you have cost already. It all depends on what you yourself do. In a sense you can imagine it as the insurer lending you money for you to pay for your blunders, and than you paying back with the increased premium.
But what you’re really talking about is a mutual aid association, not insurance. The Somalis actually have a mutual aid system where a group of 4 or 5 men who are members of the same clan share liability for each other’s torts. Damages levied on any one member of the this mutual aid group can be collected on any and all of the members of that group. To call this “insurance” is, perhaps, true in a colloquial sense but in the technical sense, it can’t be called insurance.
True, the Somali system and countless others are mutuals, not insurance. But what I’m talking about is insurance. In a mutual all pay for John’s blunders, even if he’s a known serial killer. An insurer would charge him a million dollars a year for that. No one subsidizes him, he pays for himself in increased premiums. The ability to change price according to how likely are you to hit someone, based on your past experience, is what allows insurer to write risks that are even completely under the insurer’s control.