The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Homesteading City Streets:
An Exercise in Managerial Theory 251
property within a city. Some way must be found, then, to mimic
the market in streets which would have existed under free enterprise
from day one, but which did not.
One final caveat, whether for street privatization or any
other: it is important to be thorough. In many of the Eastern
European countries, even including Russia and other parts of the
U.S.S.R., something along the lines advocated here has been followed.
Shares of stock have been created for a number of properties,
collectivized farms, factories, etc., and have been divided
up widely among taxpayers, citizens, former employees, and
other reasonable ownership candidates. Moreover, also much to
the good, the law has allowed these shares to be traded on organized
exchanges (foreigners have been precluded from taking
part, which is a shortcoming of the system), so that they naturally
tend to flow toward those who value them the most. The problem
is, in all too many cases, the direction in which they flow is
right back toward the very people responsible for the communist
debacle in the first place: ex apparatchiks, goons, thugs, banking
authorities, former military officers, etc. As a result, Eastern
European and former Soviet “capitalism” has come to resemble
nothing so much as “free enterprise” mafia style.
It would be a shame and a pity were road privatization efforts
in the U.S. to come to a similar, sorry end. In order to obviate any
such occurrence, steps must be taken to be thorough in the privatization
effort, one, to ensure that vestiges of state control are
eliminated, and, two, that those responsible for the present disarray
do not succeed in taking any positions, let alone leadership
ones, in the new regime. To wit, shares of road stock should not
be given to those road managers responsible for our present
astronomical level of traffic fatalities, nor should they be allowed
to purchase any (in much the same manner that those convicted
of certain crimes are not allowed to own gambling establishments).
Indeed, the question should not be so much whether
such persons should be allowed to regain control over street
management as much as a debate over which criminal penalties
should be imposed upon them.