[405] in libertarians
Re: Road Privitization
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Travis Corcoran)
Mon Nov 14 16:26:50 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 94 16:20:08 EST
From: tjic@ICD.teradyne.com (Travis Corcoran)
To: pde@sd.inri.com
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199411142106.AA18835@zymurgy> (pde@sd.inri.com)
> From: "Paul D. Eccles" <pde@sd.inri.com>
> Date: Mon, 14 Nov 94 13:06:51 PST
>
> > A private company would have the normal incentive of profit to
> > maintain its roads.
>
> That assumes the company has some worthy competitors. If I want to get from
> San Diego to Los Angeles currently there is only 1 freeway for about half the
> distance. Who ever owns it owns it has the primary route to LA. Unless
> another company want to come in and build a better road with better service
> I am stuck. Of course if the service got so bad I could take a roundabout
> way adding some 50 more miles.
Competition always exists in the form of alternate roads, trains,
planes, etc. It might be that there are some direct roads which do
not support enough traffic to justify their existance. Of course,
there might be more than enough traffic to support a road, which
could lead to an incread in roads in the area.
It is also not guaranteed that roads under a private system would be
better than they currently are: the only guarantee is that the system
would allocate resources better. The average person might not, when
he has to pay for it himself, demand the same level of quality in his
roads. He might settle for a slightly lower quality road, if it were
much cheaper.
--
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!"
