The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

240 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
control. Again, we will not justify this perspective, but rather
apply it to the case at hand. 6
How would it work? First, if there were any case of a privately
owned street seized from its legitimate owners and
brought into the public sector (e.g., nationalization, or, in this
case, municipalization), those with first claim on it would be its
former owners. 7 For example, in the New York City case, while
there never were any private streets condemned by City Council,
there were two other transportation modes which were: the Independent
Rapid Transit Corporation (IRT), and the Brooklyn-
Manhattan Transit Company (BMT). When these are privatized,
they will be given back to their former owners, not to those that
traveled on them, or lived next to them, or above or below them,
nor, even, to those who owned such surrounding properties. Borrowing
a leaf from this experience, then, the first claimants on
public streets are the taxpayers who were forced to finance them.
These are the real and rightful owners of the streets: those who
paid for them.
6Homesteading is the process of mixing human labor with land by farming
it, or using it, or, in our present case, building a road on it. The classical
justification for this form of establishing ownership over virgin territory is
John Locke, “An Essay Concerning the True Origin, Extent and End of Civil
Government,” in Social Contract, E. Barker, ed. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1948). For improvements and refinements, see Rothbard, Reconstruction
of Utility and Welfare Economics and The Ethics of Liberty and Hans-
Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in
Political Economy and Philosophy (Boston: Kluwer, 1993).
7Seized means commandeered, or taken over by eminent domain,
whether or not this taking was in any way compensated. (If there were full
compensation, presumably there would have been no need for the state to
condemn the property. City governments purchase paper, pencils, etc., on
free markets every day.) See Richard Epstein, Takings: Private Property and
the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University
Press, 1985).