The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Aiding and Abetting Road Socialism 391
But more. An unholy alliance of public and private tends to
obliterate the crucial line between them. As there is no more
important distinction in all of political economy than that which
divides coercion and non-coercion, such combinations tend to
blur this crucial difference. To see such perversions advocated by
a self-claimed libertarian organization is surely problematic.
OUTSOURCING
Poole is on record as supporting contracting out: the cooperation
of public and private authorities wherein the former subcontracts
with the latter for support and services. 28 In his article,
“Outsourcing Repairs Can Speed Up Road Improvements, Cut
Costs: Guide Highlights Most Successful Road Privatization
Methods and Contracts,” this author advocates just that.
One difficulty is that such endeavors only further entrench
government involvement in this industry. If, thanks to such outsourcing,
governments are able to more efficiently run projects
which should have been private in the first place, then it will
become just that more difficult to promote overall privatization.
Another is that outsourcing is but a subset of PPPs, and thus heir
to all the shortfalls of that mode of business. Blurring the line
between public and private will hardly promote the latter at the
expense of the former, the presumed goal of the libertarian.
Here is a direct quote from this initiative:
State, county, and city governments are grappling with severe
budget deficits and looking for ways to cut costs. To assist in
this cause, a new Reason Foundation report demonstrates the
savings that highway and road maintenance outsourcing can
acts characterized by mutual consent. In fact, strictly speaking, probably the
majority of their time was not spent on mass murder. We only see them as
the mass murderers they were, not because most of their waking days were
given over to such acts, but because, compared to other people, these acts
were disproportionately overrepresented.
28www.rppi.org/020403.html.