The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Aiding and Abetting Road Socialism 401
Poole is very far from advocating the complete elimination of the
highway bureaucracy. Instead, he is indeed giving aid and comfort
to what I can only consider to be the enemy.
THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD
Let us posit that Reason is actually reducing the number of
traffic deaths. 45 In contrast, since no bureaucrat, we may suppose,
will ever read any radical free enterprise material such as
the present book, it can have no such beneficent, practical effect
whatever. Nor, it may readily be conceded, will libertarian privatization
efforts succeed any time in the near term. 46
Poole might then argue radical privatization schemes are all
well and good in theory, but that he is undertaking efforts with
actual payoffs in the present. Part of a loaf in the hand, to mix
metaphors, is far better than a total loaf in the bush.
It cannot be denied that there is something to this argument.
Getting into bed with the state can sometimes pay off in tangible
benefits. Of course, these will only be short run. As far as the Reason
strategy is concerned, state control of roads will endure
indefinitely; that organization certainly does not oppose it. It is
45Actually, a search of their material does not reveal any such concern.
However, they are vitally interested in traffic congestion, their suggestions
to our rulers on this matter are eminently reasonable, and overcrowded
conditions on the highways may exacerbate their danger. Thus, it is not
entirely unreasonable to suppose that Reason may be properly given credit
for reducing the number of road deaths by a small amount.
46I am tempted to say, “will never succeed.” Even within the libertarian
community, this issue is far from being the number one concern. To think
that the NHSTA and the DOT will one day be forced to cede their authority
to private road owners would appear to be the stuff of fantasy. And yet, and
yet. There was a time, too, when the mighty Soviet Union seemed impregnable
to change. And then one day Communism was swept away into the
dust-bin of history, a place it so richly deserved. Who is to say that our present
institutional arrangements, on the basis of which people are dying like
flies, will endure forever?