The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

406 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
very lenient. Then, the market would sort things out. That is, possibly,
consumer desires would impel road entrepreneurs into
either a more or less strict stance, I don’t know which. Or, possibly,
such diversity would endure. In some venues (bars, hockey)
there are less strict rules; in others (tea parties, basketball) there
are more strict rules. In hockey, for example, they allow and even
encourage the players to fight; this is strictly banned in basketball.
Some road owners might go one way on this, others, the
other way, and the market (the blessed market; the “magic of the
marketplace”) would confer greater profits on those who supply
consumers with a better product (rules of the road in this case) at
a lower price. I am trying to apply economic analysis as it is commonly
applied to ordinary issues (bubble gum, beans, beer) to an
area (roads) to which it is unusual to do so.
QUESTION: I have heard it argued that privatizing roads will
lead to cleaner air. Drivers having to pay the market price for
roads would find it more costly to drive, prompting a shift to bus,
trolley, train and car-pooling. I realize this is crystal-ball gazing,
but do you foresee an increase in driver cost, or a decrease? If, as
I’m sure you will suggest, the bottom line decreases making driving
more accessible to all, how will you answer the greens who
will condemn such an assault on planet earth?
WALTER BLOCK: I foresee a decrease in cost in road use compared
to now. This is the ordinary expectation when we privatize
things like garbage removal, postal services. There is even a general
“rule of two” promulgated by Steve Hanke, E.S. Savas, and
others: it costs the public sector roughly twice as much to do anything
as the private. I’d be amazed if roads were an exception.
Air pollution, with one exception to be mentioned below, is
entirely a separate issue. The reason we have it at all is due to a
government failure to uphold private property rights, in that pollution
is merely and simply an uninvited border crossing, a trespass
of dust and other particles, as it were. So, air pollution could
rise, fall or stay the same as we moved to road privatization. It all
depends upon the state upholding, or failing to uphold, private
property rights in this domain.