The reason I was looking this up is because one of my friends who is a Ron Paul supporter was ranting about the state of roads in the area and how it would all be better if they were privately owned.

Seriously I just read a huge forum war between some Ron Paul libertarian douchebag and a liberal and I still don't get the logic behind the libertarian concept of private roads. Granted the guy didn't put forth a very good argument but apparently Ron Paul himself has sponsored bills to get this through in his home state (failing of course!). I don't mean like, private HIGHWAYS; I literally mean private roads like the street in front of your house.

Someone play devil's advocate for me here and explain how there is ANY LOGIC AT ALL behind the idea of nationwide competitive private road networks because I am just not seeing it at all.

Eh, I'm sure someone could do better, but I hear a lot of my anti-UHC anti-gov friends talk about how the government's influence and effect on such things simply destroys it. I have a friend who argues for privatized school systems, where there is actual competition and incentive for teachers TO BE GOOD AT TEACHING, HOWEVER, there is some federally mandated curriculum requirements that any privatized school must follow. Therefore, better quality schools, parents have choice in schools, etc, similar to the school system in Germany which apparently works beautifully. Same for UHC (apparently) where my friend calls for -more- privitization of HC, thus increase competition, lowering of prices, etc. (IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE THOUGH THESE COMPANIES MAKE BILLIONS COGNITIVE DISSONANCE ARRGGGGG).

edit, sorry that has nothing to do with the roads thing, but it's somewhat similar to the ron paul perspective

ron paul has never passed a single bill btw.

also I guess the argument is that THEY CAN DO IT BETTER but there's not a jot of evidence for this and to say privatized roads is hilarious because unlike other services everyone has to use certain roads and you aren't going to pick the allstate patch over the kerr drug one if you aren't going to drive over them.

basically you need new friends.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv25n3/v25n3-6.pdf

cato is a libertarian think tank btw.

also none of this fucking parses, it makes no sense.

So how does libertarianism work with things like DAMS. There wouldn't be competing dams, where the "free market" of dams would lower the "cost" of each, and improve the quality. I sort of understand the perspective, but it seems to be assuming that free market principles and benefits can be applied to anything.

"Private" roads benefits:

• No need for new taxes to finance the bot projects.
• Having the same firm in charge of construction and maintenance provides better incentives to build a road that lasts longer.
• Private firms usually are better at managing and more efficient than state-owned companies.
• Cost-based tolls are easier to justify to the public when infrastructure providers are private.
• Those who benefit from the infrastructure pay for it.
• In stark contrast to public provision, the bot scheme uses the market mechanism instead of central planning to screen projects, which reduces the probability of white elephants.

As for the "competition," the article puts it that "competition for the field substitutes for competition in the field."

I think the article makes a pretty good argument.

wait you don't actually think that's a good argument.

Sure why not?

(*braces self for beating*)

first ask yourself the question: will the private sphere do the job better? if the answer to this is no, ask the next question: does it have the potential to do it worse?

"Private" roads benefits:
No need for new taxes to finance the bot projects.
Having the same firm in charge of construction and maintenance provides better incentives to build a road that lasts longer.
Private firms usually are better at managing and more efficient than state-owned companies.
Cost-based tolls are easier to justify to the public when infrastructure providers are private.
Those who benefit from the infrastructure pay for it.
In stark contrast to public provision, the bot scheme uses the market mechanism instead of central planning to screen projects, which reduces the probability of white elephants.

first there is the idea of "bot projects" and taxes which is somewhat misleading. ask people if they are okay with their taxes paying for roads, and you'll be hardpressed to find anyone horrified by it. roads are important and if a private company does them, they can do shit like lock out access to certain people if they want (much like how a driveway is your property, so you can seal it off with a gate).

secondly, the concept that the same firm doing construction and maintenance will result in better roads is wrong. I worked in road maintenance for a year (I've only last night realized how much ridiculous experience I have on GW, everyone probably thinks I go visit the UN and rap stars while paving roads and working hospitals) and they do a damn fine job of it. more importantly, why would it result in better roads? tell me, if a meat company kills your cow does that also mean it's going to be good at grilling it? a stretch but you get the picture. they are two different ideas and there's no real correlation between building a road and maintaining it as to suggest it will be better under one roof.

private firms are not better than state owned operations. this is a lie libertarians like to trot out. I said this in another topic, but Charles Goodsell's infamous polemic, The Case for Bureaucracy, does a full and indepth study and confirms that there is no bias in either direction in regards to who can run aspects of industry better.

the justification argument is so laughable I'm not even going to seriously address it. people will feel better about tolls if they know it goes to KFC instead of GOBMINT. please.

the BENEFIT argument is bizarre. everyone benefits from roads and via taxes, everyone pays for them. doesn't this argue the other side? the other way to see this is some "people who maintain roads will get money to maintain roads" which is what happens anyways, there's no extra incentive. road maintenance workers aren't LAZY.

the last argument about BOT contracts ignores that there are ALREADY problems with BOT style contracts. when I worked RM we had a chemical sprayer company that we hired out for a road repaving, but we discovered quickly that it was eroding asphalt because of a formula switch. they refused to reimburse the state. were this completely privatized, no one would have said anything and the road would break down earlier. also the idea that this won't create white elephants may be true, but it will create investors that might want to cut and run and leave a major highway full of potholes or maintained poorly.

we use BOT contracts for initial construction sometimes anyways, and I just provided one example where the bureaucracy had to watchdog the private enterprise; privatizing roads would reduce that watchdog to nothing and we'd end up with shittier roads by far.

I think the desire to shift to private seems purely ideological

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673288-1,00.html
But here's an example of government dealing with the private sector for roads issues, though I don't think it's as extreme as a purely privatized road system.

oh there's definitely possibilities, but I would try to reform bureaucracy instead of going to privatizing.

secondly, the concept that the same firm doing construction and maintenance will result in better roads is wrong. I worked in road maintenance for a year (I've only last night realized how much ridiculous experience I have on GW, everyone probably thinks I go visit the UN and rap stars while paving roads and working hospitals) and they do a damn fine job of it. more importantly, why would it result in better roads? tell me, if a meat company kills your cow does that also mean it's going to be good at grilling it? a stretch but you get the picture. they are two different ideas and there's no real correlation between building a road and maintaining it as to suggest it will be better under one roof.

I think the implication of this argument is 'if the guys who build it have to maintain it too then they'll be more committed to building a better road in the first place'. The problem with this is that the government already does this too.

the BENEFIT argument is bizarre. everyone benefits from roads and via taxes, everyone pays for them. doesn't this argue the other side? the other way to see this is some "people who maintain roads will get money to maintain roads" which is what happens anyways, there's no extra incentive. road maintenance workers aren't LAZY.

I think the idea is that people who use roads the most will pay more in tolls. When applied to highways etc. this is reasonable but it's absolutely crazy to suggest streets, etc. shouldn't be free.

The problem with this is that the government already does this too.

man this one quote is all i needed to respond to that whole list, thanks a lot ass.

yeah yeah yeah you're all bark and no bite

I'm impressed that you guys are able to prove this idea to be terrible logically, because I can't get past the idea that this is the dumbest fucking concept I've ever heard.


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