Roads in a Stateless Society

[rebelq1]

Quit sniffling your nose or talking like you have something in your mouth when making videos!

Seriously! It's annoying!

[kirby4d]

roads are extremely inefficient for any distance over about 25 miles. its quite obvious that people travelling such distances can be more efficiently be served by a bus or more likely a train. Note that not a single highway was ever built by private interests. Particularly the destructive (to society, the economy, the environment, etc) Interstate system, which needed massive government subsidy to create.

I love trains: another reason to hate the state.

[meadowsirl]

there is always a monopoly on the one road outside you home. Government wants you to have access to roads so you can get around, work and generate taxes. A private company doesn't give a shit about anything other than profit margin.

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl If they price it too high, they wont get customers. They do care about profit margin. Thats why they cant price the use fee too high.

The road outside your house will probably be paid for by your neighborhood as a collective and maintained by fees assessed to each house. Alternatively, each house can be allotted a piece of road they are responsible for paying the maintenance to. Private roads doesnt mean a toll. Local roads will almost certainly involve an annual maintenance fee.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d "probably" isnt good enough, given that private property must always be making money, aka toll. The truth is most will be owned (or eventually owned) by Tyrannical LTD (a monopoly or cartel) and massive restriction will occur. You have just traded a mandatory tax with a mandatory annual fee but now there are tolls on other roads, you have just made things worse. Thats the thing about libertarianism, all you are doing is trading one set of problems for another. Venus Project much better.

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl Private property need not always be making money. Does your computer need to make you money? No.

It is virtually certain that all local roads will be owned by the local residents and businesses. They will pay an annual fee for maintenance to some company. Alternatively, a company may own the road and charge an annual fee for upkeep. They cant charge too high because no one will pay it. You think the residents are a captive audience? The company is just as captive to them.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d in relation to your computer metaphor, if its a business asset then YES it does have to make me money and private roads are indeed a business asset, so they will be obligated to earn a profit. It is not certain AT ALL that roads will be owned by locals, perhaps initially but later will be traded to Tyrannical LTD. Local residents will indeed pay whatever the rate is, as Tyrannical LTD owns enough roads to set the rates, No escape. Why create an environment where protesting is necessary?

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl Tolls or an EZPass type of thing will exist on arterial roads because that is the only practical way to do it. Or again, it is plausible that local collectives will pay for them on behalf of themselves and visitors. Highways will probably not exist to the extent they exist today because railroads are much more cost efficient.

The point is that this is a free and voluntary way of running things. No one is FORCED to pay for something they dont wish to use.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d who doesn't use roads? so we are creating a system with nomads in mind?

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl The Venus project is just a nutty fantasy that will never happen. The free market can happen right now, person by person. You just withdraw from the main economy and enter the countereconomy. Visit agorism.info.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d Open source is far more appealing to me, it works for software projects, why not for everything? The problem with the free market is the only thing free about it is the market, everybody else is a slave to it. Its anti human, its designed only with profit in mind and forgets about people. Over and over, i ask the question, what about the poor, the vulnerable, the needy, the have-nots, the exploitable? The only answer i get is fuck them, thats capitalism baby.

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl Im switching over to PMs because of this absurd character limit.

[thegreatfish]

There's a lot of assumptions here. The problem I see with most voluntarist writings on roads is they focus on "Will there be roads?", but the problems really rest with the operation of the roads, and not their existence. For example, you noted how monopolies on a roadway system create numerous problems, but even in a privatized society, roads will still be monopolized. How many roads can there possibly be from my house to the grocery store? It's not like I have options if the price is too high.

[227Morgan]

I have to disagree with part of this. Road construction and maintainence is paid for with gasoline taxes. Therefore if you don't buy gas and don't drive you are opting out of paying for them. I support the message anyway. Keep it up.

[MoneyIsSilver]

Great video, but I think it will be too confusing to the average statist.

[rebelq1]

Quit sniffling your nose or talking like you have something in your mouth when making videos!

Seriously! It's annoying!

[kirby4d]

roads are extremely inefficient for any distance over about 25 miles. its quite obvious that people travelling such distances can be more efficiently be served by a bus or more likely a train. Note that not a single highway was ever built by private interests. Particularly the destructive (to society, the economy, the environment, etc) Interstate system, which needed massive government subsidy to create.

I love trains: another reason to hate the state.

[meadowsirl]

there is always a monopoly on the one road outside you home. Government wants you to have access to roads so you can get around, work and generate taxes. A private company doesn't give a shit about anything other than profit margin.

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl If they price it too high, they wont get customers. They do care about profit margin. Thats why they cant price the use fee too high.

The road outside your house will probably be paid for by your neighborhood as a collective and maintained by fees assessed to each house. Alternatively, each house can be allotted a piece of road they are responsible for paying the maintenance to. Private roads doesnt mean a toll. Local roads will almost certainly involve an annual maintenance fee.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d "probably" isnt good enough, given that private property must always be making money, aka toll. The truth is most will be owned (or eventually owned) by Tyrannical LTD (a monopoly or cartel) and massive restriction will occur. You have just traded a mandatory tax with a mandatory annual fee but now there are tolls on other roads, you have just made things worse. Thats the thing about libertarianism, all you are doing is trading one set of problems for another. Venus Project much better.

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl Private property need not always be making money. Does your computer need to make you money? No.

It is virtually certain that all local roads will be owned by the local residents and businesses. They will pay an annual fee for maintenance to some company. Alternatively, a company may own the road and charge an annual fee for upkeep. They cant charge too high because no one will pay it. You think the residents are a captive audience? The company is just as captive to them.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d in relation to your computer metaphor, if its a business asset then YES it does have to make me money and private roads are indeed a business asset, so they will be obligated to earn a profit. It is not certain AT ALL that roads will be owned by locals, perhaps initially but later will be traded to Tyrannical LTD. Local residents will indeed pay whatever the rate is, as Tyrannical LTD owns enough roads to set the rates, No escape. Why create an environment where protesting is necessary?

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl Tolls or an EZPass type of thing will exist on arterial roads because that is the only practical way to do it. Or again, it is plausible that local collectives will pay for them on behalf of themselves and visitors. Highways will probably not exist to the extent they exist today because railroads are much more cost efficient.

The point is that this is a free and voluntary way of running things. No one is FORCED to pay for something they dont wish to use.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d who doesn't use roads? so we are creating a system with nomads in mind?

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl The Venus project is just a nutty fantasy that will never happen. The free market can happen right now, person by person. You just withdraw from the main economy and enter the countereconomy. Visit agorism.info.

[meadowsirl]

@kirby4d Open source is far more appealing to me, it works for software projects, why not for everything? The problem with the free market is the only thing free about it is the market, everybody else is a slave to it. Its anti human, its designed only with profit in mind and forgets about people. Over and over, i ask the question, what about the poor, the vulnerable, the needy, the have-nots, the exploitable? The only answer i get is fuck them, thats capitalism baby.

[kirby4d]

@meadowsirl Im switching over to PMs because of this absurd character limit.

[thegreatfish]

There's a lot of assumptions here. The problem I see with most voluntarist writings on roads is they focus on "Will there be roads?", but the problems really rest with the operation of the roads, and not their existence. For example, you noted how monopolies on a roadway system create numerous problems, but even in a privatized society, roads will still be monopolized. How many roads can there possibly be from my house to the grocery store? It's not like I have options if the price is too high.

[227Morgan]

I have to disagree with part of this. Road construction and maintainence is paid for with gasoline taxes. Therefore if you don't buy gas and don't drive you are opting out of paying for them. I support the message anyway. Keep it up.

[MoneyIsSilver]

Great video, but I think it will be too confusing to the average statist.

[BlueSkyHunter]

Libertarian pipe dreams...

[Anon1696]

Explain why.

[CDRaccoon]

I think you meen anrchist bullshit ^^

[ProfEngelhardt]

Well said.

An odd thing to me - many in the economics profession claim that roads are a "public good"... that is, they are nonexcludable and nonrival. Personally, I think anyone who believes that roads are nonexcludable really needs to consider why they are paying to renew their driver's license and car registration. Anyone who believes that roads are nonrival has clearly never sat in a traffic jam.

So, even if we buy the general public goods argument (I don't), it doesn't apply here.

[oneofthefew82]

Transportation is sparse and expensive because there are so many pointless government regulations stifling competition and keeping qualified people (anyone trained to operate a bus or van even) from setting their own rates, their own routes and their own timelines... I find any arguments against stateless transportation basically moot, considering how wildly ineffective all state subsidized and regulated transportation has been thus far.

[metalschooldrill]

In Murrieta, It is taking "forever" to get on with road projects that are in progress compared to LA. If it were LA it would be done in 2 weeks max. So far it's been over a year. They are mostly immigrants so pay is as low as it gets but the quality, you say, is higher is not right. In many other areas of work life, the work quality has gone down as if repeat business makes more money not comparing the pay at all. Don't blame the worker for anything, its a scam. Roadside gardening is a waste

[izauze]

the 20 second side note you post about the poor is pretty unconvincing. It's amazing how conservatives can apparently get even the most radically minded people to espouse free market capitalist ideas.

[MotionFur]

"The poor," or people without much wealth will still have a demand for travel, so companies will still attempt to provide to them a service that "poor" will deem worth the money.

[izauze]

bad "answer."

(putting random things in "quotes" is fun!)

[MotionFur]

It's in quotes because you didn't define what "poor" means. No money? Low Income? I make only slightly over 11.4k annual income [poverty line in the US,] am I "poor?"

Or do I need to make less than 11.4k? I can tell you that if toll roads would be like anything they are now, I would have no problem paying for them. Keep in mind, the money that I'm currently paying for roads [taxes] I get to shift over to private roads.

[ShaneSaw83]

Yeah, and right now the poor have a demand for big houses and fancy cars and preventative healthcare, and that's why they get it...oh wait no, that's not how that works at all. They don't have money you moron, they're "poor" (in " " for some reason). The "demand for travel" won't get them shit. In the free market system, demand gets you nothing, money does. And the poor don't have money, remember?

[MotionFur]

Demand creates supply. Poor is in quotes because the person who I was talking to did not define the term, and is used in different ways. The 'poor' will not get what they can not afford. There are all sorts of possible payment systems that could be used for roads, some may even be "free" [run on donations or maintained by large companies and open to the public because they think it will help them in the long run.]

[MotionFur]

But if we're assuming that the "poor" have enough income to buy cars and gasoline, tolls are not too bad. Maybe we should have a government program to tax everyone so we can make sure all the poor have their own vehicles and gasoline too. It's probably cheaper to take a bus [like a greyhound] or go by rail anyway if you can't afford your own car. But this is no concern really, you're defining poor as those "without money." With no car, roads are useless to the poor.

[gamerman2360]

Yes, some would have their roads open for free.. Other companies would be driven out of business because they can't compete with free, then the toll on all the roads goes through the roof.. Wonderful. Which mega-conglomerate should we give the road systems to?

[MotionFur]

I doubt any substantial amount of roads would be free. I was thinking more like maybe a large amusement park picking up the tab for some of the road way on the way to their park to make sure their customers always have a way to get there.

Also, when it comes to this "predatory pricing" type idea, of trying to get a monopoly on something by undercutting then jacking up the price afterwords on everyone has historically not worked.

[MotionFur]

For one, if you owned a road and were being undercut [by free] you could simply shut down your road until the main company can't maintain the free cost anymore.

And also, if roads were to become really high priced, you could make some pretty good profits by providing other alternatives, and busting the big cartel.

[MotionFur]

But there are a few videos that talk about this that you might find interesting, one called 'Thomas Woods - Predatory Pricing" Ladyattis also did a video on this, and also it came up in Confederalsocialist's 4part video series The Truth About the "Robber Barons."

[gamerman2360]

Well.. The first video was interesting.. I'll have to watch the other four eventually.

[gamerman2360]

In that first video, the person was talking about predatory pricing and some kind of chemical, but it doesn't always work like that. Console manufactures have been selling their consoles at a loss, they can't sell each other's consoles in the manner the chemical was. Would be interesting if they could disassemble the other's console and reuse the parts for something else though.... Hmm...

[gamerman2360]

In that first video, the person was talking about predatory pricing and some kind of chemical, but it doesn't always work like that. Console manufactures have been selling their consoles at a loss, they can't sell each other's consoles in the manner the chemical was. Would be interesting if they could disassemble the other's console and reuse the parts for something else though.... Hmm...

[gamerman2360]

Sure you could shut it down, but that would only minimize your costs. If your not pulling in any money and you can't make payments on your loans everything collapses.

Meanwhile Google can pour as much money into their YouTube highway, which they allow people to use for free so that everyone including government agencies are using it, then turn around and bilk all of the people for cash because they are so far ahead of the competition. :(

You could really say this about any industry though.

[MotionFur]

I'm not sure why you would assume that road owners are in debt. But predatory pricing just hasn't worked historically, and I don't think it will work in the future.

[hitssquad]

Rail is efficient in Japan because of this:

images. google. com/images?q=japan+train+pushe­rs

Most Americans are not like the Japanese.

[tigerone1970]

Also, the world over has 'roads to nowhere', not because of misallocation of funds by politicians, but because the reason why the road was built by business no longer exist. Leaving you with a 'road to nowhere'.

For instance, let's say a major road is built to a mine. When the mine is exhausted, there is no one left to maintain the road to the mine.

You need the state to build and maintain infrastructure that is in the public interest, not the private interest.

[tigerone1970]

The problem with the theory is that roads are not a commodity. You either need to go to a specific destination, or you don't.

Roads are part of the commons - they are the infrastructure business needs to do business. Take away roads, and business stops working.

In fact we have seen the delapidation of infrastructure, whenever the state is no longer involved in building it - which is what happens when neoliberals come to power the world over.

[tigerone1970]

They leave it to 'the private sector' to build and maintain roads, and of course the private sector never does. They don't move to do things in 'the common good', because they are only concerned about their bottom line. Which is how once again we are drowing in a sea of overproduction and a hollowing out of demand.

[DarthKazi]

I never really worry about the "roads" argument, since a minuscule amount of your taxes go to that. The majority of taxes go to social welfare, corporate welfare, war mongering and public (doesn't)works programs.

[ofowningyourself]

why would companies have an obligation to pay more in wages? Couldn't the CEOs just boost their own salaries?

[drewmandan]

Sure, but how long do you think a company that just pays the Board more and more will last in a free market? How would they be competitive against companies that don't do that?

[PeacefulDemon]

plus that if the employees get pissed then they can just say i dont want to work for you anymore because you pay the board to much. Its not like they have unlimited money we're not talking about banks after all ;-)

[migkillertwo]

I like trickle-down economics, hell I like it a LOT. but I think even you are grossly misapplying it. Its not like the demand for lower-class workers will rise while the supply of lower-class labor go down if we lower taxes on the employers.

[drewmandan]

Trickle-down is just a catch-phrase used by republicans in the 80s to advance their extremely anti-market policies. You will never catch people like confed using a term like "trickle-down", so don't make a fool of yourself trying to strawman him.

[rockinpablo]

I'm not paying .07 cents a mile to get to work. Seriously though, why? Why all this? I'm not sure. Cheer-io's for using the old noodle there though pal. Keep it up.

[rainskullvids]

Well, you either pay for it in tolls or in taxes. "There is no free lunch." Your pick.

[alphafirewolf]

You are paying for roads in the form of taxation.

[clawdfrawg]

It looks like a midevel system of toll roads,probably very good for the envirement becouse it kills trade.

[rainskullvids]

It doesn't kill trade, it just increases the cost of long-distance shipping, thereby promoting local production and small businesses over large corporations, whose low prices depend on the low shipping costs provided to them via subsidized transportation.

[whiteire]

well in fact it would probably lower the cost of all shipping in the long run, since the whole thing would run much leaner and cleaner under private incentives. but i agree the reduced tax burden would benefit local producers the most.

[whiteire]

well in fact it would probably lower the cost of all shipping in the long run, since the whole thing would run much leaner and cleaner under private incentives. but i agree the reduced tax burden would benefit local producers the most.

[rainskullvids]

Overall, yes, I do think that roads would be less expensive. It would just be more expensive for those who use them more (i.e., large corporations.)

[kitrana]

the problem i see here is that there is a finite space to build roads on. in a normal supply demand scenario if someone is charging to much for a product or service someone else can always open up shop next door or downthe stret or nearby and provide it cheaper or for better quality. but with roads you quickly run out of space to open up a new road at least new roads to go somewhere you want to go in a distance efficient route.

[SaviorOfLogic]

Please explain the logistics, ie how do you decide routes, buy land, acquire money for upkeep, etc. of building roads.

[XericJager]

Brilliant video.

[MHSGene]

The problem with your analysis is that roads, like land, act as a monopoly regardless of the situation. You can restrict demand regardless of what that demand is - this is especially true for built-out areas.

[fephisto]

He has a video addressing the question of monopolies I think.

[lukeev]

Awesome.

[tryingtobereal]

Isn't there agas tax already built in with every gallon of gas you buy that goes to roads?

[XericJager]

yes in some states, not sure about federal.