[401] in libertarians
Re: Road Privitization
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Travis Corcoran)
Mon Nov 14 15:24:33 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 94 15:18:53 EST
From: tjic@ICD.teradyne.com (Travis Corcoran)
To: pde@sd.inri.com
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199411142010.AA01823@zymurgy> (pde@sd.inri.com)
> From: "Paul D. Eccles" <pde@sd.inri.com>
> Date: Mon, 14 Nov 94 12:10:02 PST
>
>
> It's hard for me to imagine if all the roads in the US were privitized, that
> we would be better off. What more incentive would a private comapany have
> in maintaining the road? Could each company make their own rules to drive
> on their roads?
A private company would have the normal incentive of profit to
maintain its roads.
The profit motive would also dictate against each company having a
completely new set of rules for driving, in the same way that the
profit motive resulted in a standardization of IBM PC clone
architecture. If someone has to do a lot of learning to utilize a
product, that product won't sell as well as competeing products.
Of course, in the same way that there *ARE* competing computer
standards ( Unix vs PC/Windows, etc. ) we'd probably have competing
road standards: normal lanes optimized for car traffic on some roads,
30 wide lanes with a 100 mph minimum for quadruple-decker
tractor-trailers on other roads, etc.
--
TJIC (Travis J.I. Corcoran) TJIC@icd.teradyne.com
opinions(TJIC) != opinions(employer(TJIC))
"Buy a rifle, encrypt your data, and wait for the Revolution!"
