ManusJustus said:
Roads being provided by the private market is laughably stupid. Here is a right-wing economics professor talking about Public Goods on a pre-Economics 101 level. Governments rely on bureaucracy, respond to poorly informed voters, and have weak incentives to serve consumers. Therefore they produce inefficiently. Furthermore, politicians may supply public “goods” in a manner to serve their own interests rather than the interests of the public; examples of wasteful government spending and pork barrel projects are legion. Government often creates a problem of “forced riders” by compelling persons to support projects they do not desire. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicGoods.html He then goes on to explain why your economic ideas are asinine. |
you do realize that all construction companies hired to pave roads are private companies right? And there is no fundamental difference between paving a road and paving a driveway past length?
I have a limerock road next to my house, guess what, the DOT constantly hires a paving company to pave the road several times a year to grate it. Due to the piss-poor money management of the DOT the road could have been paved 5 years ago and included minor repair work if needed and saved money. The government is inefficient at making market decisions.
Yes, we all have the option to hire a paving company to come in and pave the road for a fee. It is a high fee, but we are considering the cost. This is an example of the private sector discussing and considering paving a road (properly mind you). If we do this it means the private sector built a road that was controlled by the actions of the people and not the government. But this isn't all. Think about communities that are built by housing construction firms. All the roads built within the community are privately funded roads. The government has nothing to do with it past selling the land to the developers.
Paving an interstate highway or city block is easily managed by people and companies willing to fund the projects similar to the paving of the limerock road next to me. If we as residents feel like paying a few thousand each to have the entire road paved, since the DOT is to stupid to figure out they would save millions a year by doing this, we can. If two cities want a road placed between them or a road upgraded to more lanes, they can fund it both by the individual budgets, public, and private funding. Both cities then would price out multiple routes and make offers for the land for the roads, versus the worthless "lets just buy homes and land out and hope someone isn't a dick and jack up their asking price because they are one of the last people that needs to be bought out" that the DOT is notorious for doing. Once all offers from one route is accepted, than you buy the land to build it.
Did you even bother taking sometime out to listen that episode of Free Talk Live at all? Its not all about this topic we are discussing, but maybe you will understand different views on things. But if its "to long" for you I guess I could go edit the audio for you and give you just the part on roads if you want.
edit: I edited the audio anyway. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=J7OOK9DE 11mbs, 12 minutes long.
