The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Compromising the Uncompromisable:
Speed Limits, Parades, Cigarettes 205
advocated by one side, adding them to the other, and perhaps,
dividing by two. 7
This privatization compromise is the only one compatible
with the libertarian perspective on rights. 8 In that view, government
nationalization of private property is tantamount to a taking,
9 or, more accurately, theft. 10 For the only legitimate role of
government11 is to protect persons and their property from
aggression, and while courts, armies and police are at least relevant
to this task, highways are not.
7Any such procedure, moreover, would encourage “strategic” behavior:
each side would have an incentive to exaggerate its real goal, so as to bring
the judgment closer in conformity to its own wishes.
8See on this Bruce L. Benson, “Land Use Regulation: A Supply and
Demand Analysis of Changing Property Rights,” Journal of Libertarian Studies
5, no. 4 (Fall, 1981); Antony Flew, “Could There Be Universal Natural
Rights?” Journal of Libertarian Studies 6, nos. 3/4 (Summer/Fall, 1982):
277–88; Tibor Machan, ed., “Against Nonlibertarian Natural Rights,” Journal
of Libertarian Studies 2, no. 3 (Fall, 1978): 233–38; Douglas B. Rasmussen,
“A Groundwork for Rights: Man’s Natural End,” Journal of Libertarian Studies
6, no. 1 (Winter, 1980): 65–76.
9 Richard Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent
Domain (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
10Lysander Spooner, No Treason (Larkspur, Colo.: Pine Tree Press, [1870]
1966).
11If indeed it has one. For support of this contention, see Robert Nozick,
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). See Epstein, Takings;
for a critique see Rothbard, For a New Liberty; Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics and Ethics (Boston:
Dordrecht, 1989); idem, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies
in Political Economy and Philosophy (Boston: Kluwer, 1993); David Friedman,
The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed. (La Salle, Ill.:
Open Court, 1989); Bruce Benson, “Enforcement of Private Property Rights
in Primitive Societies: Law Without Government,” Journal of Libertarian
Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter, 1989).