The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

16
Roads, Bridges, Sunlight,
and Private Property:
Reply to Tullock *
On September 1, 1992 at the Mont Pèlerin Society meeting
in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Gordon Tullock approached
my young son (then, aged fourteen) and I in the hallway.
He had a bone to pick with me. He stated he had heard that I
favored the privatization of roads streets and highways, and that,
if this were true, he was going to show me the error of my ways.
I confessed that this was indeed the case. 1 He proceeded to outline
his objection.
*This chapter first appeared as Walter Block, “Roads, Bridges, Sunlight
and Private Property: Reply to Gordon Tullock,” Journal des Economistes et
des Etudes Humaines 8, no. 2/3 (June–September, 1998): 315–26.
1At that time I had already published on this topic: Walter Block, “Free
Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads,” Journal of Libertarian
Studies 3, no. 2 (Summer, 1979): 209–38; Zoning: Its Costs and Relevance for the
1980s (Vancouver, B.C.: Fraser Institute, 1980): 299–330; “Theories of Highway
Safety,” Transportation Research Record 912 (1983): 7–10; “Public Goods
and Externalities: The Case of Roads,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 7, no. 1
(Spring, 1983): 1–34. Subsequently I have published, Walter Block, “Road
Socialism,” International Journal of Value-Based Management 9 (1996):
315