The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Homesteading City Streets:
An Exercise in Managerial Theory 253
sector, these important elements of our economy will be managed
in the same rational manner as all other goods and services
subject to the consumer check of profits and loss.
This is not to say that there is no pattern we can use, even in
broad brush strokes, to guide the privatization process: it is to
imagine the contrary to fact conditional wherein city streets were
always provided-by-private enterprise, and then to tailor the
present situation to resemble that as much as possible. This, by its
very nature, is difficult. Imaginary constructions cannot be relied
upon without misgivings. And yet, as we have seen, there are
rough shapes that may be discerned through the fog. One is that
the people responsible for our present plight should be excluded
from the process of privatization; another, is to as closely as possible
approximate real world private road conditions. When a
thoroughfare is very long, thin, and isolated, as in the case of a
private railroad, adopt that as a model: one owner for the entire
avenue; e.g., the one dimension model. When the public sector
amenity resembles, instead, a relatively large landholding, e.g.,
Disneyland, then one owner might be more appropriate for an
entire neighborhood of streets.