| | Maybe this warrants a separate thread, if there's enough interest in debating it. Anyway, I wrote, If roads were privatized, they'd be a lot more efficiently managed.
Teresa replied, I see 100% privatized roads as a component of anarchism, and a threat to personal freedoms. It gives me the creeps.
But privatized roads are an expression of personal freedoms -- the personal freedoms of the people who build them. Why shouldn't the producers of the roads have a right to own them, just as much as the producers of any other good or service? More to the point, why do you think that privatized roads would be a threat to personal freedoms, if the private ownership of other goods and services is not?
I wrote, The reason that charging a profit maximizing toll would even out the flow of traffic is that during peak periods, the owners would raise the toll in response to the increased demand, which would thin the traffic by weeding out those drivers who didn't have to use the roads during that time of day.
I haven't really thought about this in years, but I fancy the idea of driving for no apparent reason unencumbered by someone else's motives for my desire to drive. So do the police, ambulance companies, parents of sick children, love struck couples, job hunters, tourists, and countless others who own or rent automobiles.
I don't follow your argument here. Could you elaborate a bit? Under private roads, police, ambulance companies, etc. would find it much easier to get where they're going, because there would be less traffic congestion. Or is your point that a private owner could deny them the right to drive on his roads? But that objection would apply to any private business, which would have the right to deny service to anyone it chooses. But, of course, private businesses don't deny service to people arbitrarily and capriciously, because they're in business to make money. The same would apply to the owners of private roads.
I wrote, Under public ownership, there is no profit motive to build new roads, which is another reason we have a shortage of road space. Remember the Soviet Union with its long lines of hapless consumers waiting to purchase items that were in short supply? Well, that's the equivalent of what you have today on our publicly owned roads -- long lines of cars waiting to go somewhere.
I understand that in some huge urban hubs, New York, L.A., Chicago, ect., traffic jams are an annoying, time consuming issue. I live in Michigan, which is relatively free from any of these problems. As the birthplace of the automobile, municipalities and the state had the good sense to accommodate them extremely well.
When the actual size of government is reduced, I have a hunch you'll see traffic backups reducing as well. Why? Because government will be forced to be more efficient, using tax money to maximize constituents' freedoms, which translates into maximized productivity, which means more alternative routes. I'm an optimist, what can I say??
Even if that were true, a government still wouldn't have the same motive to engage in marginal-cost pricing -- to charge tolls that would maximize profits in response to variations in demand -- which is the most efficient way to ensure against traffic congestion. Governments are also subject to the perverse incentives of bureaucratic management and the political pressures of organized interest groups, so there is no guarantee that they will remain dedicated to efficiency. The tremendous growth of government at all levels over the past century can attest to that.
Anyway, in 50 years, our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be worrying about air traffic, not ground traffic.
Yes, hopefully, there will be more private air travel, but I still think ground traffic will still be a large part of private transportation.
The last thing I want to worry about is some troll who thinks women shouldn't be driving before noon charging me 10 times more to do so because he's free to.
Oh, I see. So you're concerned about private owners practicing arbitrary and capricious discrimination. But if that works as an argument against private roads, it works as an argument against any private business. No corporation that spends the kind of money required to construct a private road is going to do something that foolish and uneconomic. Business owners are seeking a return on their investment; they're interested in making money, so they're going to charge the profit-maximizing price to drivers regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender or religion. In that regard, private roads would be no different than any other private business.
I'm probably just an old fuddy duddy so used to the way things are that I can't see a workable competitive means that also won't impede the freedoms I love.
Yeah, I don't see how your freedoms would be curtailed by the existence of private roads. We have private roads already, and the sort of thing you're worried about (e.g., arbitrary discrimination) has not occurred. Nor is there any reason to think that it would. Much has been written on the economics of discrimination as it pertains to private business. All the incentives are against it. See Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker in this regard. If anything, private roads would make automotive travel much more convenient than it is today.
- Bill
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