The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Foreword
Abolishing Government
Improves the Roads
Look on the back of your ATM or debit card. Check your
credit card, too. Whoever your bank is, on the back of the
card you’ll see the logos of other firms—Cirrus, Plus, Star,
maybe others. Cirrus is an ATM network management system
owned by MasterCard, Plus is owned by Visa, and so on. There
is cooperation between companies, and the network managers
are somewhat independent. For example, Visa debit cards often
have a Cirrus logo on the back.
This means you can use your debit card, the one from your
little, three-branch local bank, to get instant cash from an ATM
clear across the country. Yes, each bank charges you a dollar or
two. They should. A single ATM costs $100,000 to install, costs
money to maintain and manage (people have to put money in it
and take money out daily), and it costs participating banks to
hire Cirrus to move the money around.
More important is what we learn about the market’s capabilities.
One of the objections to privatizing roads is that we’d have
to stop at a toll booth at every intersection. A five-minute commute
to the grocery store would require, for me, three toll booths,
seventy-five cents, and become an eight-minute commute,
according to this objection. But it’s not so, and here’s why:
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