The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

366 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
must remain speculative. However, this at least constitutes a reasonable
argument against blithely assuming that the goal of
social policy must necessarily be to marginally improve state
highway operation.
There is also, in addition to utilitarian concerns, a matter of
simple justice. Government simply has no business nationalizing
an industry that for many years was run under private auspices.
This smacks of the nationalization practices of the late and unlamented
“evil empire” of the Soviet Union. To add insult to injury,
the state manages highways on a coercive basis. With its compulsory
tax levies on gasoline, it forces people to pay for road
usage, whether they wish to do so or not. With its eminent
domain powers, it seizes private property from their rightful
owners.
EMINENT DOMAIN
Mohring states: “Assembling rights of way for . . . roads
would be prohibitively expensive unless the state could be
induced to use its powers of eminent domain on their behalf.” 25
There are several difficulties with this position. First of all, the
state need not be “induced” to do any such thing. Rather, this is
the very essence of government, to seize that which does not
belong to it. The history of the state is the history of such theft. 26
25Mohring, “Congested Roads,“ p. 147
26Is this too harsh a characterization of eminent domain? Not really.
Stripped of its legal imprimatur, there is no real difference between compelling
a person to “sell” his land at a price he is unwilling to accept, on the
one hand, and outright theft on the other. Suppose a criminal holds me up
at gunpoint, demanding my wallet. As I comply with his wish, I object, on
the ground that he is stealing from me. A philosophical robber, he is willing
to bandy words with me. “Theft,” he says, “not a bit of it. Don’t ever say
I’m stealing from you. On the contrary, I offer you the following ‘payment’
for your wallet.” Whereupon he hands me a paper clip, or a rubber band,
or a piece of tissue paper or a blob of used bubble gum. When he does so,
he converts what would otherwise constitute an outright theft into a forced