| | I wrote,
What difference would it make whether you owned the portion of the road directly in front of your house? The problems you're raising would still exist, even if you did. If you're assuming that they could deny you access to that portion of the road, they could deny you access to the portion that is directly adjacent to it. But the point is that they wouldn't, because it wouldn't be in their interest to do so, any more than it's in their interest to neglect to maintain the roads in good condition.
Teresa replied, My problem with lots of owners is lots of billers, and trying to keep up with that issue. And no, it's not possible to access another street without taking down a fence or two and driving through my neighbor's backyards. Why are you assuming that there would be lots of owners? There would probably be a single owner for a large network of streets, possibly for an entire city. I can understand how it would be in an owner's best interest to keep roads in tip top shape, and not screw around with anyone's ability to move freely, that the threat of people leaving an area wouldn't be very profitable. Exactly!
No, a privately owned street (or network of streets) would not be a government controlled monopoly like a public utility in which the government dictates the rate structure and forbids competition from other possible producers of the good. It would be private property that is managed according to the profit incentives of the owners. This is very hard for me to imagine, because with so many existing small 12 foot wide roads, it's not possible to have any competition. Again, the competition would come from other communities or other muncipalities. If the streets were poorly maintained in one location, there'd be an incentive for at least some of the residents to move to another location, just as there is an incentive for residents of high crime areas to move to safer neighborhoods. I'm trying to think of it as some kind of unique product for which government has no control whatever, but that's really hard. Right or wrong, government has a say so in what one can legally drive and how. I'm wondering if that would change at all, if the owners of a road system would or could change what could or couldn't be driven legally on their systems. The owners, not the government, would set the speed limits and regulate the flow of traffic. The only role of the government would be to prosecute those who violated the owner's rules. And would a company be required to hire and train their own police/security patrols, or would a city or town be charged for police and emergency vehicles to patrol private property? There could be different methods of policing private streets. Government police could do it, as they do now, or private police could be hired to do it. University campuses now have their own police, so there is no reason to think that the owners of private roads couldn't do likewise. The private police would, of course, enforce the same laws as the government police do. I have no idea how it works on current toll road systems, but I'm pretty sure the government has a say in how they're run. Of course, the government has a say in how public roads are run, because the government is the owner. But they would have no say in how private roads are run; that would be strictly up to the owner, who could set whatever rules and regulations he or she wanted.
Are you suggesting that the state itself should own and operate your electricity, gas, water and cable service -- that these services should be socialized? And if not, then what are you suggesting? I would say that they should be privatized completely -- that they not be government sanctioned monopolies, but private businesses. No, oh no, what I'm saying is that when there's no competition, the chances of a company getting outrageous with their fees is a real concern. Yes, it is a concern, and that concern might make private homeowners associations more attractive, in which the maintenance and use of the streets were priced into the fees that the homeowners were charged. Many upper-middle- and upper-income suburbs have private road systems, maintained by a local homeowner's association to which all homeowners belong as a condition of buying into the community. In his book Cutting Back City Hall, Robert Poole notes that New York Cilty has private streets in all five of its boroughs. Rockefeller Plaza is privately owned by Columbia University and leased to Rockefeller Center. The city also has residential streets that are privately owned by local block associations made up of homeowners, who hire private contractors to pick up their garbage and maintain the condition of the streets. David Beito notes that since the middle of the nineteenth century, St. Louis and its suburbs have had an extensive system of privately owned and maintained residential streets. See his article, "The Private Places of St. Louis: Urban Infrastructure through Private Planning," in The Voluntary City, Ed., David Beito, Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok. And if people don't or can't pay them, I suppose their assets could be seized. These companies can't exactly turn the road off just to a few people who don't pay. On the contrary, you can be denied the right to drive on them in the same way that you can be denied to the right to drive if you're found guilty of drunk driving or for failure to appear in court on a traffic citation or for failure to maintain insurance or for any number of other violations. Your license can be revoked or suspended in all these cases. They'd have to collect via other means, like court ordered property seizure, I'd think. That doesn't make me very comfortable, either. Why not? If you don't pay your rent, you can be evicted; if you don't pay your mortgage, you're subject to foreclosure. If you don't pay your debts, you can be sued; if you don't pay child support, your wages can be garnished. How is this any different?
Nobody's going to be spying on you, Teresa. All that would happen is that when you passed a certain point in the road, you would be charged a fee electronically. I can think of a hundred reasons why private and public entities would be interested in collecting travel information from users of the system. It would be terribly tempting for a company to sell that information, especially if it's not over seen by the government. Look, businesses have information they can use if you shop on the internet. Telephone companies have records of whom you call; credit card companies, of whom you patronize; travel agencies, of where you vacation. Does that constitute an argument against the internet, telephone and credit card companies or travel agencies? No? Then why should it be an argument against electronic toll charges?
But a critical part of our defense system is already contracted out to private companies. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are private companies. And I'm happy they are, because I wouldn't want the government producing our defensive weapons, given its notorious inefficiency and incompetence. Would you? I knew you were going to bring up big defense contractors! They supply our military, but they aren't part and parcel of the military proper. Neither are the streets as they currently exist "part and parcel of the military proper." Would you want them to be? If Detroit were under attack by terrorists, the military just wants to get there and fast, not waste time negotiating for what price something can or can't be driven into the city. There would be no "negotiating" the price, any more than there would be for private citizens. The price would already exist and the users of the road would be billed accordingly, including the military, police, fire trucks, ambulances, whatever. The same argument could be made against private weapons contracting. Viz., if the army needs more weapons, it doesn't want to waste time negotiating with Lockheed. Therefore, the government should produce all the weapons. But that's nonsense. The price is already determined, and the government pays it. My computer has been giving me a lot of grief over the past couple of weeks because my network connection device is dying. I apologize for not being more explicit when and if I could. Privatizing every single road would seem to extend to mean privatizing other government functions as well. Police, courts, defense, etc. The consequences seem far far reaching. What should not be privatized is the framework of the legal system: the laws, legal procedures, standards of evidence, etc. -- in short, the legal rules governing the society. But that doesn't mean that ancillary legal functions cannot themselves be privatized. We already have examples of private police. Many block associations in our major cities hire professional security guard companies at annual fees per household, and many affluent suburbs hire private patrols via their homeowners's associations.
In San Francisco, there are 62 private police beats, patrolled by private police officers who are paid by their customers. The customers include businesses, apartment owners and homeowners. "The 'Patrol Specials,' as the officers are called, receive a complete police academy training, carry guns, and have full arrest powers. But they are fully private entrepreneurs who receive not a penny of tax money. Instead, once a Special 'purchases' a beat (from its previous 'owner') -- generally for ten times its monthly revenue -- it is up to him to negotiate contracts with as many of the beat's property owners as wish to purchase his services. Depending on what is provided, the fees can range from $10 to $1,000 per month.
"Some customers, such as the Japan Trade Center, want and pay for 24-hour-a-day foot patrol. Others want only periodic drive-by checks. Special Roger Levit charges homeowners from $10 to $20 a month to watch a house while the occupants are on vacation -- rotating house lights, taking in newspapers and mail, etc. For another $30 his men will make regular onfoot backyard checks. Small retail stores may pay as little as $35 a month, while a large apartment house wanting three to six nightly inspections may pay $450." (Poole, 39)
Private arbitration is another alternative to what is normally considered the sole province of government. The American Arbitration Association, founded in 1926, is a good example. Another private arbitration service is Lawyer Carl Person's "National Private Court" (NPC) based in New York City. In Minneapolis, the Citizens Dispute Settling Project seeks to settle domestic and neighborhood disputes without the involvement of police or government courts. (Poole, 55, 56) There are many other examples that could be cited.
In short, the idea of privatizing what has traditionally been considered the exclusive domain of government is not as farfetched as it may seem -- especially when it is taken out of the realm of mere theory and shown to exist and function successfully in the real world.
- Bill
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