The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

342 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
sense they are not, if voluntarily entering a government highway
ipso facto constitutes a waiver of liability claim against accidental
fatality. In a sense they are, if government has legally
prohibited potential highway entrepreneurs from offering
alternative roads. 28
Again, White takes on the role of apologist for governmental
depredations. Of course the apparatus of the state “has legally
prohibited potential highway entrepreneurs from offering alternative
roads.” 29 The road socialists could scarcely maintain their
monopoly over this vital command post of the economy were
this not true. This being the case, it is exceedingly difficult to see
how motorists can be considered to be “voluntarily entering a
government highway.” Nor is it possible to see how an act taken
under duress can “constitute a waiver of liability claim against
accidental fatality.”
Here is the scenario. First, the government banishes, by legislative
fiat, all chance at relatively safe private roads, leaving as
the only alternative governmental, hell-hole highways. Then,
given that it would be impossible for masses of people to travel
on nongovernment road and street options such as helicopters,
motorists venture out onto these booby trapped traffic arteries
and are slaughtered like flies. Along comes White who asserts
that, since the put upon public “voluntarily enter[ed] a government
highway, [this] ipso facto constitutes a waiver of liability
claim against accidental fatality.” Using “logic” of this sort, we
can conclude that if a gunman forces a victim to jump to his death
off the roof of a skyscraper by threatening to shoot him if he does
not, the latter “voluntarily” plunged to the concrete below. No.
When government precludes private highways by threatening
violence against all those who would provide these services, and
as a result the people have little or no alternative but to patronize
these death traps, we may not at all conclude that their
28Ibid. 29Ibid.