• Complain

Walter Block - Privatization of Roads and Highways

Here you can read online Walter Block - Privatization of Roads and Highways full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2009, publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Walter Block Privatization of Roads and Highways
  • Book:
    Privatization of Roads and Highways
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Ludwig von Mises Institute
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2009
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Privatization of Roads and Highways: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Privatization of Roads and Highways" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

The Mises Institute is pleased to introduce Walter Blocks remarkable new treatise on private roads, a 494-page book that will cause you to rethink the whole of the way modern transportation networks operate. It is bold, innovative, radical, compelling, and shows how free-market economic theory is the clarifying lens through which to see the failures of the state and see the alternative that is consistent with human liberty.He shows that even the worst, off-the-cuff scenario of life under private ownership of roads would be fantastic by comparison to the existing reality of government-ownership of roads, which is awful in ways we dont entirely realize until Block fully explains it (think: highway deaths).But that is only the beginning of what Professor Block has done. He has made a lengthy, detailed, and positive case that the privatization of roads would be socially optimal in every way. It would save lives, curtail pollution, save us (as individuals!) money, save us massive time, introduce accountability, and make transportation a pleasure instead of a huge pain in the neck.Because this is the first-ever complete book on this topic, the length and detail are absolutely necessary. He shows that this is not some libertarian pipe dream but the most practical application of free-market logic. Block is dealing with something that confronts us every day. And in so doing, he illustrates the power of economic theory to take an existing set of facts and help see them in a completely different way.Whats also nice is that the prose has great passion about it, despite its scholarly detail. Block loves answering the objections (Arent roads public goods? Arent roads too expensive to build privately?) and making the case, fully aware that he has to overcome a deep and persistent bias in favor of public ownership. The writer burns with a moral passion on the subjects of highway deaths and pollution issues. His Open Letter to Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a thrill to read!People have known that Block had been working on this book for many years, and some chapters have been seen in journals here and there. But there is something thrilling about seeing it all put together in one place. It comes together as a battle plan against government roads and a complete roadmap for a future of private transportation.Publication Information Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama: 2009Updated 8/23/2011

Walter Block: author's other books


Who wrote Privatization of Roads and Highways? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Privatization of Roads and Highways — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Privatization of Roads and Highways" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
The Privatization of Roads and Highways The Privatization of Roads and - photo 1

The Privatization

of Roads and Highways

The Privatization
of Roads and Highways

Human and Economic Factors

Walter Block

LvMI

MISES INSTITUTE

This book is dedicated to my fellow Americans some 40000 of them per year who - photo 2

This book is dedicated to my fellow Americans, some 40,000 of them per year who have died needlessly in traffic fatalities. It is my sincere hope and expectation that under a system of private roads and highways in the future, that this number may be radically reduced.

2009 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and published under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ludwig von Mises Institute
518 West Magnolia Avenue
Auburn, Alabama 36832
www.mises.org

ISBN: 978-1-933550-04-6

Contents
Foreword
Abolishing Government Improves the Roads

L ook on the back of your ATM or debit card. Check your credit card, too. Whoever your bank is, on the back of the card youll see the logos of other firmsCirrus, Plus, Star, maybe others. Cirrus is an ATM network management system owned by MasterCard, Plus is owned by Visa, and so on. There is cooperation between companies, and the network managers are somewhat independent. For example, Visa debit cards often have a Cirrus logo on the back.

This means you can use your debit card, the one from your little, three-branch local bank, to get instant cash from an ATM clear across the country. Yes, each bank charges you a dollar or two. They should. A single ATM costs $100,000 to install, costs money to maintain and manage (people have to put money in it and take money out daily), and it costs participating banks to hire Cirrus to move the money around.

More important is what we learn about the markets capabilities. One of the objections to privatizing roads is that wed have to stop at a toll booth at every intersection. A five-minute commute to the grocery store would require, for me, three toll booths, seventy-five cents, and become an eight-minute commute, according to this objection. But its not so, and heres why:

Our time is worth a few pennies to us. Cirrus and Pulse would charge us, wild guess, three dollars a month or less to provide magnetically encoded stickers for our cars. Machines scattered about the roads, or sensors under the pavement, would record our comings and goings. That information would go to Cirrus and Pulse, and from them to our road providers. We might get three or four monthly bills, or just one, depending on the wherewithal of road owners. Some road owners, out in the woods, would still have toll booths, which would work perfectly wellless traffic and a slower pace of life make it no big deal. I use a toll booth occasionally in Atlanta, and the delay is only a few seconds.

Lest you think your money would be going up in exhaust fumes, remember that market firms, who must please customers to stay in business, provide everything better and less expensively than government, without that nasty moral hangover of forcing people to pay for things they may not use or want. Your gasoline price already includes forty to fifty cents per gallon in taxes for road building and maintenance. This means Im paying twenty-five to thirty-three dollars per month for road use now. With privatization of roads, that cost would go down, probably considerably. It happens every time anything is moved from government hands into private hands.

There are other benefits that would follow road privatization. The private roads that exist now have fewer accidents than public roads, probably in part because theyre better maintained: If private road builders let potholes remain, get reputations for high accident rates, or do repairs during rush hour, they have to deal with complaints and with people choosing other roads.

Pollution and pollution controls on automobiles would also be handled by road privatization. If auto pollution were to grow too thick, people living near the offending roads would sue the biggest, most obvious target: the road owners. Road owners would therefore charge higher fees for cars without up-to-date inspection stickers. Auto manufacturers would build pollution-control equipment into cars, and advertise how cleanly they run. Automakers do this already, but under the gun of a government that mandates pollution levels and what kind of pollution controls manufacturers use. Without government interference, engineers would be free to compete to provide different technologies to reduce costs and improve horsepower while providing cleaner burning engines. With the inspection stickers being coded to your automobiles age, manufacturer, and model, there might be a separate pollution rider on your monthly statement. Drivers of new Hondas might see a discount, while drivers of old belchers would pay fees that might be higher than the road tolls themselves.

Isnt the market grand? Im just one person describing likely market solutions; imagine how efficient solutions would become with 280 million minds working on the issue. Reality continues to provide apparent (but not real) obstacles in the mind of the statist: What about new roads, and the thorny problem of eminent domain? Again, the market comes to the rescue. First, since roads are already there, getting started would involve nothing other than entrepreneurs bidding to take over. (Who would they pay when they buy the roads? U.S. government creditors. Once the government sells all its land, the governments vote-buying debt might be paid off.) Even so, new roads are being built everywhere today, by developers who buy land and convert it to new uses.

Land alongside interstates is cheap in some places, and expensive in others. Widening rural interstates wouldnt be a problem. (There would be some correlation between road tolls and road quality/congestion.) Prices would be higher where road owners face little competition, such as in Alaska, but lower where people have alternatives. If prices for rural stretches of interstate get too high, people will use planes, trains, and buses, and road owners will be forced to lower their prices. If you think youre getting the interstate for free, think again: Those gas taxes mean youre paying one to two cents per mile now.

Anyone who wanted to build a new interstate would face the huge task of buying up land crossing perhaps hundreds of miles. Widening existing highways would be more likely. In Los Angeles and other large cities where traffic is consistently choked, road owners would have the incentive, and plenty of funds, to buy property along highways so they could widen them. Owners would also have incentives to improve interchanges, such as Spaghetti Junction in Atlanta. Roads would improve overall. (I interviewed a county road engineer years ago, and he told me they design circular entrance ramps deliberately with varying radiiexperienced as odd changes in the curve, which force you to constantly readjust the steering wheelto keep drivers awake. How many of us have trouble keeping focused for fifteen seconds on a curving entrance ramp?)

Without having had forcible government the last two hundred years, would the interstate system have come about? We cant know, but we shouldnt care. Without an interstate system, we would still have plenty of commerce; probably more than we have now (when railroads were builtlargely with the help of government subsidiesmuch of the land between the coasts was unclaimed, and thus open to use. Much would still be unclaimed today without government.) We have what we have. Abolishing government is the way to improve what we have.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Privatization of Roads and Highways»

Look at similar books to Privatization of Roads and Highways. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Privatization of Roads and Highways»

Discussion, reviews of the book Privatization of Roads and Highways and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.