I think the incentives wouldn’t work out. Capitalism and private enterprises only work well when there is a healthy amount of competition —- a fantastic example

I think the incentives wouldn’t work out. Capitalism and private enterprises only work well when there is a healthy amount of competition —- a fantastic example is consumer electronics, which has tons of competition leading to rapid tech development and cheaper devices. Just think of how cheap a 4k TV is compared to 5 years ago. A bad example is healthcare, which has very little competition, which leads to extremely high costs. Capitalism simply cannot work towards society’s benefit when competition doesn’t force prices to be cheaper for higher quality products. If roads were private, I really do not think different companies could compete for better service. Your home will only attach to a single road after all. The consistency of road design and laws across the US is a huge win as well; that could be problematic if it was privatized. Over time, monopolies would also develop. We see this with ISPs all the time: you have a single provider in a region, and prices are very high relative to the very poor service. It’s very easy to imagine one road company purchasing all roads in a region and having complete price control, driving costs up without making service better. And probably avoiding maintenance. Eventually, citizens would probably get tired of roads being privatized and have the government make them public again. On the flip side, with driving being much less convenient, maybe people would look into more efficient modes of transportation!