The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Road Socialism 185
of the state apparatus than are cars, railroads, subways, baseball
bats, lima beans or rubber bands. The former set of products can
and should be analyzed along the lines everyone agrees are
appropriate for the latter.
The purpose of this present chapter is to do just that, and to
focus on one aspect of the overall analysis: that having to do with
highway fatalities.
TWO ANALOGIES TO TRAFFIC SAFETY
Suppose that a gunman shot a person with a rifle. Hauled
into court, his “defense” was that the bullet killed the victim—
not he, the defendant. True, this man would concede, he aimed
the gun and pulled the trigger, but he was two-hundred yards
away from the victim when he died, so he couldn’t have been
responsible for his death.
Our reaction to this “defense” would properly be one of dismissal,
on the ground that the murderer was confusing proximate
with ultimate cause. We would mete out to this murderer
whatever penalties were accorded such behavior. The bullet was
the proximate cause of the death. But the gunman, in aiming at
the victim and pulling the trigger, was ultimately responsible for
his demise and therefore should pay for this crime to the full
extent of the law.
idem, Paying for Roads: The Economics of Traffic Congestion (Middlesex, England:
Penguin, 1967); idem, The Private Provision of Public Services in Developing
Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
5Walter Block, “Free Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads,”
Journal of Libertarian Studies 3, no. 2 (Summer, 1979); “Congestion and Road
Pricing.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 4, no. 3 (Summer 1980); “Theories of
Highway Safety,” Transportation Research Record no. 912 (1983); “Public
Goods and Externalities: The Case of Roads,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 7,
no. 1 (Spring, 1983); and “Road Socialism,” International Journal of Value-
Based Management 9 (1966); Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty (New
York: Macmillan, 1973); William C. Wooldridge, Uncle Sam, The Monopoly
Man (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970); Daniel Klein and G.J.
Fielding, “How to Franchise Highways,” Journal of Transport Economics and
Policy (May 1993); idem, “High Occupancy/Toll Lanes: Phasing in Congestion
Pricing a Lane at a Time,” Policy Study 170 (November 1993).