The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Public Goods and Externalities: The Case of Roads 151
public goods are properly paid for by the public at large, for
their benefits cannot be charged to individual consumers or
small collective groups. However, from this reasonable
arrangement, it is easy to leap to the unwarranted implication
that public goods paid for by the public through payments to
the public tax collector must be provided to the public by a
public agency through public employees. There is no logical
reason for the mode of payment to bear any relation to the ultimate
mode of delivery of collective goods. 76
Here, again, we find the government, seemingly basing
its actions on the “scientific” arguments from externalities, somehow
overstepping these bounds. And we know that this trend is
widespread. Modern government has undertaken a myriad of
tasks unrelated to the collective good argument (or any other
arguments we have discussed here), as Peterson has indicated.
As Savas suggests, even when the collective goods argument
does apply, the ensuing state involvement monumentally oversteps
the bounds set by it. In how many cases does the government
limit its activities merely to ensuring that the good is produced?
Quite to the contrary, in the transportation sector, as in
many others, the government has undertaken the direct provision
of the service by a public agency, through public employees.
Given this state of affairs, it behooves us to question the role
played by the collective-goods argument. Is it, as is implicitly
maintained by its adherents, an intellectually sound defense of
government activities? Or is it no more than an apology for programs
which would have been embarked upon regardless of the
availability of the argument—and which were actually begun
long before the argument was conceived?
76Savas, “Municipal Monopoly vs. Competition in Delivering Urban Services,”
p. 483.