The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Aiding and Abetting Road Socialism 393
are no mean tasks. But the same entrepreneurial abilities, if
not more difficult ones, are required of roads authorities to
subcontract tasks in that arena. Is it written in stone somewhere
that state bureaucrats have some sort of comparative advantage
in such responsibilities? Poole vouchsafes us no answer to this
question.
MEGAPROJECT FAILURES—AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT THEM
States Poole:
We all know at least some of the projects: the Channel Tunnel,
Boston’s Big Dig, Japan’s Kansai Airport. These and many other
megaprojects (costing over one billion dollars) all too often cost
fifty to one hundred percent more than initially estimated. And
their usage is often less than half as much as forecast. These are
not necessarily boondoggles—I happen to think there was a
good case for all three of the above—but there’s a very real
question of whether they, and other megaprojects, would have
gotten built at all had the true cost and usage been known
beforehand. 30
In other words, what is needed regarding these megaprojects
is not to leave the decision over whether to embark upon them or
not solely to individual investors, but, rather, for the government
to continue to make these determinations, only on the basis of
more accurate information. However, there is good and sufficient
explanation for the fact that government was operating in the
dark in these cases, and shall necessarily continue to do so for the
expected future: it does not benefit from the automatic feedback
mechanism of the market, which weeds out those economic
actors who operate on the basis of incomplete or erroneous information,
and encourages those who do not. Then, too, Hayek 31
30www.rppi.org/surfacetransportation10.html. 31F.A. Hayek, “Socialist Calculation I, II, & III,” Individualism and Economic
Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 119–208.