> Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their fair share of road wear? The cost is already there, it's just

> Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would cost, if everybody were paying their fair share of road wear? The cost is already there, it's just extracted through taxes rather than through increased prices of transported goods. The advantage of shifting maintenance costs over to those creating those costs in the first place is that it allows the market to properly optimize for those costs. If transporting those tomatoes by rail is actually cheaper overall once you factor in road maintenance costs, but you aren't charging those costs to the trucking companies, then they're just going to keep shipping tomatoes by truck even though it's less efficient. The invisible hand of the market cannot optimize for costs it doesn't know about.