The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Aiding and Abetting Road Socialism 389
which we can ever expect good results, given that there is no
market test of profit and loss to weed out under performing
entrepreneurs, and to encourage successful ones.
TRAFFIC DIRECTION
Poole has very strong opinions on the one way vs. two way
street controversy, heavily favoring the former. 23 His reasons are
only peripheral to our present concerns, so I will not rehearse
them here.
Suppose governments ran restaurants and there was a vociferous
debate over whether the tablecloths should be red or green,
made out of cloth or plastic, or should exist at all. Posit, further
that a group, call it Treason, ardently favored one or the other of
these alternatives, it matters not which. What could we deduce
from this one fact? My claim is that we could infer that this
group, whatever else it was, was not a libertarian one. For, any
organization worthy of that name would surely recognize a far
more important question that all sides to the controversy had
ignored: should government be running restaurants in the first
place, putting completely to the side the issue of, given that they
are, what type of tablecloth should they choose?
The same reasoning applies in the present case. Yes, there are
indeed important considerations that rest on whether streets are
one or two way. But there is such a thing as specialization and
division of labor in all things, political economy specifically
included. It is the task of those other than libertarians to involve
themselves in these issues. Regarding this one political philosophy,
the overwhelming question is not the direction of traffic
flows, but rather the propriety of a necessarily coercive institution
being placed in charge of making such a decision.
23 www.rppi.org/onewaystreets.html.