Libertarian Papers, Vol. 1 (2009), Article No. 28. “Why Pr. Block Is Not Entirely Right and Pr. Tullock Is Completely Wrong: The Case for Road Privatization,” by Laurent A.H. Carnis
Abstract: The private provision of road services and road privatisation has been extensively studied and has generated numerous debates among scholars. Block and Tullock exchanged on the possibility of having a completely privatised road system. Tullock defends the idea such a system is not viable, whereas Block shows a free market for road provision can be easily conceived.
This article proposes a re-examination of this debate and defends a pragmatic and realist approach. Although it shares Block’s conclusions on the possibility of having a free market for road services, it justifies them on a different ground. In fact, the ‘physical obstacle’ argument is less important that it could be previously imagined but it reflects more a socialist tendency to pose the problem.
{ 2 comments }
Synopsis: An Overpass/Underpass(Block’s solution) is a very unlikely scenario in the event of someone building a road from Boston to LA and not letting anyone use it (Tullock’s objection to private roads).
Roads and underpasses take time, and it’s sufficiently easy to sink a pole in the ground or in the air before those other roads reach over or under the impediment.
In reality, such an objection has to simply be called for what it is. A red herring. No business could ever profit from such a scenario (if they could, many would already be in place), and the only individual wealthy enough to create such an impediment would probably have to have already created another insanely useful product to acquire the money to build this “fence.” Aircraft companies designed to clear the imaginary impediment quickly would spring up and solve the problem at a very trivial price.
Maintaining the fence would take quite a bit of stored wealth and very few would work for the fence operator in fear of becoming a social outcast. The thousands of people required to protect and monitor the fence would would never materialize for any amount of time.
My thoughts: Just as our own border takes billions of dollars a year in federal funding and does little to stop people from crossing, the same situation would arise. Perhaps if enough wealth was devoted to defending the fence eventually someone would build and underpass in secret that may start quite a ways away from the site and dig sufficiently deep as to not be easily detected and quickly stopped.
Either way, it’s ridiculous for this to be the chief argument against private roads.
Indeed. Talk of building giant poles up in the air, and deep down into the earth simply shows how far the Soviet road advocates have to go to try and knock down road privatisation.
Comments on this entry are closed.