4 ms·

I don't buy it, and he starts off eloquently on the tired argument that a privatized company could never handle the burden of maintaining roads. Ah yes, big go

by dlsx 13y ago

I don't buy it, and he starts off eloquently on the tired argument that a privatized company could never handle the burden of maintaining roads. Ah yes, big government. We would never had the ingenious ability to tar and pave roads without your bloated schemes to pocket large percentages for politicians. Politicians ladies and gentleman are the big problem in Washington. They are expensive, and if you look at their net incomes year over year astoundingly they continue to make absurd profits regardless of the functioning American economy or not. If politicians were willing to volunteer their "Services" then I would agree with the sentiments. However, as long as they are able to be bought relatively easily, it allows more corruption and extortion to take place. There is a libertarian solution to everything, and in every instance a free market perspective should be applied to government officials who can't seem to cut the fat out of their vicious diet.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
>There is a libertarian solution to everything Oh my.. I must have missed the part of your argument where you conclusively prove that the "libertarian solution" is the best option in this instance.
- agorabinary 13y ago
  He doesn't need to prove the libertarian alternative. You need to first show how our present road system isn't a complete nightmare. Touting the road system as a government success. Please.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    > You need to first show how our present road system isn't a complete nightmare. This is reversing the burden of proof. You are the one who wants to alter the status quo, you should have to prove why your solution would be "better". From my perspective, I can get anywhere I need to, and anything I need can get to me, consistently, reliably, and at the cost of a tiny fraction of my income. Seems fine to me. I see no reason to radically alter the system, and doing so introduces obvious risks I am not willing to accept. So not only is the burden of proof on you, it's a very heavy burden.
- dlsx 13y ago
  Roads are payed for already by ticket fines, and freight/shipping deliveries. So, not tax money. http://www.dailypaul.com/268271/but-who-would-pave-the-roads http://www.dailypaul.com/268271/but-who-would-pave-the-roads There's many different solutions, but of course you are a liberal who prefers to be spoon fed. It's as if you automatically assumed the government solution is the best option sigh
  - nimble 13y ago
    From your link: > The only thing that will be different is that we will have MANY different roads that will compete with each other. LOL
    - huxley 13y ago
      To be fair, they might also compete by having wider lanes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMq3w7RVnvc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMq3w7RVnvc [Seinfeld - The Pothole]
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    of course I am! Because otherwise you'd have to use logic. Why don't you do me a favor then and "spoon feed" me an argument not full of generic tropes and relevant to the issue?
  - mikeyouse 13y ago
    Roads are payed for already by ticket fines, and freight/shipping deliveries. What? Almost all of the federal money for road construction and maintenance comes through the Federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF). It's a standard PayGo operation, but the entirety of their budget comes from taxes. Primarily the $0.184/gallon tax on gasoline and a $0.244/gallon tax on diesel. The remainder from an additional tax on tires and on the sales of industrial vehicles. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/fifahiwy/fifahi05.htm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/fifahiwy/fifahi05.htm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/onh2p10.htm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/onh2p10.htm
pmorici 13y ago
I would think the acquisition of the land on which the road is built would be a larger problem for a privatized company than the actual construction and maintenance of the road.
- Apocryphon 13y ago
  And where's the incentive for private corporations to build infrastructure for the public? Government isn't the answer to everything, but neither is the free market.
  - pmorici 13y ago
    um, they collect tolls?
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Toll roads run into the problem of positive externality. Specifically, transportation creates large positive externalities. A road creates economic benefits not just for people who use them to get from point A to point B, but direct economic benefits for stores, developers, and employers along the route. Tolls capture only the part of the benefit felt by people traveling on the roads. As a result, if you fund roads using only toll revenues, you'll end up building less roads than your economy needs.
      - natosaichek 13y ago
        So ask the stores / developers / employers along the route to buy-in on the road. Ask them to help pay for construction and give them a cut of the tolls proportionate to their investment. This lowers external capital requirements to create new roads. Tolls could be used primarily for maintenance and upgrades, but may have some profit associated to pay back the initial investment. If the associated nearby economic interests are invested in the road, incentives seem pretty well aligned to me. Thoughts?
        13y ago
dasil003 13y ago
What's the libertarian solution to corporations raping the environment in order to siphon the value of the commons into the pockets of a few executives and investors?
- msandford 13y ago
  Under what regulatory regime is a corporation able to rape the environment and siphon off the money? Who says that corporations as they exist today should exist in libertarian-land? Perhaps you'd have only LLCs where the limitation of liability is actually rather small and as such management would take an active role in ensuring that they weren't personally liable for the rapacious behavior that some corporations exhibit today. Up until Glass-Steagall was repealed Goldman-Sachs was a relatively well run bank that was entirely privately owned and all the partners there made sure people weren't doing crazy subprime stuff because it would negatively impact the bottom line over the next decade or more. Nassim Taleb talks about "skin in the game" as a requisite for moral decision making. Perhaps libertarians would say that you can't perform in a managerial role at a company without having some meaningful skin in the game. Would people find a way to dodge that? Sure. But companies who did dodge it would tend to be short-term greedy, not long-term greedy and as a result they would tend to go bankrupt faster thus ridding us of the unpleasantness of their existence.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > Perhaps you'd have only LLCs where the limitation of liability is actually rather small and as such management would take an active role in ensuring that they weren't personally liable for the rapacious behavior that some corporations exhibit today. This highlights the bizarre statist-libertarian cognitive dissonance where they hate on government but then argue that lawyers and lawsuits are the solution to everything.
    - agorabinary 13y ago
      Mediating disputes =/= Government You need to understand that libertarians are not against mediation or even courts. If someone commits fraud, or pillages the environment, there are plenty of ways of punishing them without government. Appreciate the value of reputation.

by dlsx 13y ago

AsymetricCom 13y ago

>There is a libertarian solution to everything Oh my.. I must have missed the part of your argument where you conclusively prove that the "libertarian solution" is the best option in this instance.

agorabinary 13y ago
He doesn't need to prove the libertarian alternative. You need to first show how our present road system isn't a complete nightmare. Touting the road system as a government success. Please.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  > You need to first show how our present road system isn't a complete nightmare. This is reversing the burden of proof. You are the one who wants to alter the status quo, you should have to prove why your solution would be "better". From my perspective, I can get anywhere I need to, and anything I need can get to me, consistently, reliably, and at the cost of a tiny fraction of my income. Seems fine to me. I see no reason to radically alter the system, and doing so introduces obvious risks I am not willing to accept. So not only is the burden of proof on you, it's a very heavy burden.
dlsx 13y ago
Roads are payed for already by ticket fines, and freight/shipping deliveries. So, not tax money. http://www.dailypaul.com/268271/but-who-would-pave-the-roads http://www.dailypaul.com/268271/but-who-would-pave-the-roads There's many different solutions, but of course you are a liberal who prefers to be spoon fed. It's as if you automatically assumed the government solution is the best option sigh
- nimble 13y ago
  From your link: > The only thing that will be different is that we will have MANY different roads that will compete with each other. LOL
  - huxley 13y ago
    To be fair, they might also compete by having wider lanes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMq3w7RVnvc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMq3w7RVnvc [Seinfeld - The Pothole]
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  of course I am! Because otherwise you'd have to use logic. Why don't you do me a favor then and "spoon feed" me an argument not full of generic tropes and relevant to the issue?
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  Roads are payed for already by ticket fines, and freight/shipping deliveries. What? Almost all of the federal money for road construction and maintenance comes through the Federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF). It's a standard PayGo operation, but the entirety of their budget comes from taxes. Primarily the $0.184/gallon tax on gasoline and a $0.244/gallon tax on diesel. The remainder from an additional tax on tires and on the sales of industrial vehicles. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/fifahiwy/fifahi05.htm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/fifahiwy/fifahi05.htm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/onh2p10.htm http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/onh2p10.htm

pmorici 13y ago

I would think the acquisition of the land on which the road is built would be a larger problem for a privatized company than the actual construction and maintenance of the road.

Apocryphon 13y ago
And where's the incentive for private corporations to build infrastructure for the public? Government isn't the answer to everything, but neither is the free market.
- pmorici 13y ago
  um, they collect tolls?
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Toll roads run into the problem of positive externality. Specifically, transportation creates large positive externalities. A road creates economic benefits not just for people who use them to get from point A to point B, but direct economic benefits for stores, developers, and employers along the route. Tolls capture only the part of the benefit felt by people traveling on the roads. As a result, if you fund roads using only toll revenues, you'll end up building less roads than your economy needs.
    - natosaichek 13y ago
      So ask the stores / developers / employers along the route to buy-in on the road. Ask them to help pay for construction and give them a cut of the tolls proportionate to their investment. This lowers external capital requirements to create new roads. Tolls could be used primarily for maintenance and upgrades, but may have some profit associated to pay back the initial investment. If the associated nearby economic interests are invested in the road, incentives seem pretty well aligned to me. Thoughts?
      - 13y ago

dasil003 13y ago

What's the libertarian solution to corporations raping the environment in order to siphon the value of the commons into the pockets of a few executives and investors?

msandford 13y ago
Under what regulatory regime is a corporation able to rape the environment and siphon off the money? Who says that corporations as they exist today should exist in libertarian-land? Perhaps you'd have only LLCs where the limitation of liability is actually rather small and as such management would take an active role in ensuring that they weren't personally liable for the rapacious behavior that some corporations exhibit today. Up until Glass-Steagall was repealed Goldman-Sachs was a relatively well run bank that was entirely privately owned and all the partners there made sure people weren't doing crazy subprime stuff because it would negatively impact the bottom line over the next decade or more. Nassim Taleb talks about "skin in the game" as a requisite for moral decision making. Perhaps libertarians would say that you can't perform in a managerial role at a company without having some meaningful skin in the game. Would people find a way to dodge that? Sure. But companies who did dodge it would tend to be short-term greedy, not long-term greedy and as a result they would tend to go bankrupt faster thus ridding us of the unpleasantness of their existence.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > Perhaps you'd have only LLCs where the limitation of liability is actually rather small and as such management would take an active role in ensuring that they weren't personally liable for the rapacious behavior that some corporations exhibit today. This highlights the bizarre statist-libertarian cognitive dissonance where they hate on government but then argue that lawyers and lawsuits are the solution to everything.
  - agorabinary 13y ago
    Mediating disputes =/= Government You need to understand that libertarians are not against mediation or even courts. If someone commits fraud, or pillages the environment, there are plenty of ways of punishing them without government. Appreciate the value of reputation.