Index:
Highways
Rent Control
Urbanism
Zoning
Environment
Abolishing Government Improves the Roads
by Brad Edmonds
All roads do not lead to congestion
by Jim Peron
Congestion and Road Pricing
by Walter Block
Free Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads
by Walter Block
Gasoline Taxes, Keynes, and Macroeconomics - Econtalk Podcast
Russ Roberts Interviews Gregory Mankiw
33 min into the podcast they begin to discuss gas taxes and other pigouvian taxes to address externalities of congestion and polution.
Government Highways: Unsafe at Any Speed
by Richard Barbarick
Government’s killer roads
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Highway Robbery
by Bruce Benson
Homesteading City Streets: An Exercise In Managerial Theory
by Walter Block
Liberate the Roads! The Benefits That Will Come From Road Privatisation
by Martin Ball
The Mythology of Holdout as Justification for Eminent Domain and Public Provision of Roads
by Bruce L. Benson
New Directions in Road Privatization
by Laurent Carnis
No More Government Roads
by David M. Woods
A Note About Roads
by Richard O. Hammer
Observations on the history of roads.
Overcoming difficulties in privatizing roads
by Walter Block
The present article considers, and rejects, four arguments against the privatization of roads, and in favor of our present system of road socialism.
A Practical Proposal for Privatizing the Highways (and Other Natural Monopolies)
by Bryan Caplan
This proposal involves giving every adult citizen (1) a common stock certificate that entitles him to a share of the privatized road corporation’s profits and (2) another certificate that allows the individual to operate one motor vehicle on the highways in exchange for an annual fee.
Private highways: a solution whose time has come (again)?
by Daniel Klein
Private ownership of ‘public’ resources may be an idea whose time has come. There are proposals for the privatization of Grand Coulee Dam, Dulles airport, Conrail, and Amtrak. State and local governments are studying private urban transit, garbage collection, and prisons. If privatization maintains its momentum, we will have to consider a logical candidate: the roads.
The Private Ownership of Public Space: The New Age of Rationally Priced Road Use
by Brian Micklethwait
Private Roads, Competition, Automobile Insurance and Price Controls
by Walter Block
Shows that the benefits of competition for improving roadways cannot take place unless the roadways are privatized.
Privatization Further Down the Road
by Daniel B. Klein
Private roads may sound far-fetched, but a familiarity with American history casts the idea in a different light, There was a period when private enterprise was able to provide such “public goods.” Private turnpikes engendered important social benefits even though returns on investment were small, primarily due to legal restrictions on toll rates and on the placement of toll houses.
Protecting the Streets
by Murray Rothbard
What we need to do is to reorient our thinking to consider a world in which all land areas are privately owned.
Protection from Mass Murderers: Communication of Danger: A Formulation
by Richard O. Hammer
A nation in which individuals make the rules of conduct on their own property and where most property, including roads, is privately owned, would evolve into a social network that is better able to control psychopaths than the present system.
Roads Are Too Important to be Left to Governments
by Gabriel Roth
Toll roads were privately supplied two hundred years ago on a large scale in both the U.S. and the UK. Their private provision today is even more practical because modern technology enables customers to pay for road use without tollbooths, and even without vehicles having to stop.
Road Socialism [pdf]
by Walter Block
Road Socialism
Lew Rockwell Interviews Walter Block for The Lew Rockwell Podcast
Roads to Serfdom
by Jim Davies
Roads Without the State
by Peter Samuel
It is possible to bring some of the benefits of the marketplace by introducing tolls while maintaining state ownership. That is what the Germans plan for their autobahn system, and it seems to be the major British approach. But full privatization would transfer ownership to investors and allow the assets to be traded, introducing the additional market discipline of competition in both consumer and capital markets. By allowing takeovers, consolidations, and spin-offs of highway assets, the markets would ensure that highways are managed for the best return on capital—the dynamic that gives us our food, our fuels, our housing, our electric power, and all the rest of what goes into our standard of living.
Road Warrior
by Robert W. Poole, Jr.
A review of Roads in a Market Economy by Gabriel Roth.
This is an important and thought-provoking book. It is bizarre that Americans have so uncritically accepted a central-planning model for our transportation infrastructure, while developing the world’s best telecommunication infrastructure using a (largely) free market model. Indeed, one of the unexpected delights of this book is a heretofore unpublished essay, included as an epilogue, by Milton Friedman and Daniel Boorstin, dating from the early 1950s, proposing both private ownership and market pricing for roads. As usual, Friedman was way ahead of most of the rest of us. Fortunately, with the publication of Gabriel Roth’s book, these ideas will gain the kind of hearing they have long deserved.
Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads
Edited by Gabriel Roth
Street Smart examines private, market-based alternatives for road services, both in theory and practice. The book explores at least four such possible directions for private services, including testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned road facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. The book further traces the history of private roads in Great Britain and the United States and examines contemporary examples of entrepreneurial innovation in road pricing, privatization, and marketization in environs as diverse as Singapore, California, Ghana, Norway, and England.
Theories of Highway Safety
by Walter Block
Explains why privately owned highways would be safer.
What price parking?
December 18, 2006
Boston Globe
A fledgling service that would let people find and reserve parking spaces via their cellphones could make life easier for those who use it.
Rent Control
by Walter Block
Rent Control Abomination>
by Walter Block, Joseph Horton & Ethan Shorter
International Journal of Value-Based Management
Rent Control Lecture (mp3)
by Walter Block
First section of lecture is one rent control. Afterwards, lecture continues on other topics.
Economics in One Lesson: The Lesson Applied - What Rent Control Does
by Henry Hazlitt
Video: 5.2 - Rent Control
by Richard McKenzie of UC Irvine
From Microeconomics for MBAs lesson modules
The High Cost of Rent Control
by National Multi Housing Council
Nevertheless, a number of communities around the country continue to impose rent controls, usually with the stated goal of preserving affordable housing for low- and middle-income families. Rent control does not advance this important goal. To the contrary, in many communities rent control has actually reduced both the quality and quantity of available housing.
Rent Control and Housing Investment: Evidence from Deregulation in Cambridge, Massachusetts
by Henry O. Pollakowski
This study, authored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economist Dr. Henry O. Pollakowski, tracks the effects of rent deregulation on construction and repair-related housing investment in Cambridge, MA since rent control ended there in 1994. Dr. Pollakowski finds that rent deregulation in Cambridge led to a 20% increase in construction and repair related investment in formerly rent-controlled buildings. This study suggests that similar deregulation in the New York City housing market should lead to significant new investment in both affluent and modest income neighborhoods, thereby increasing housing quality.
Rent Control and Unemployment Duration
by Michael Svarer, Michael Roshlom, and Jakob Roland Munch
Particularly, we focus on the effect of rent control on the length of individual unemployment duration
Video Lecture: Price Controls
by Joseph Salerno of The Mises Institute
A fourth in a series of ten lectures, from “Fundamentals of Economic Analysis: A Causal-Realist Approach.” [1:25:30] The first 45 min is dedicated to rent control. Includes segments on how a landlord became a “serf” to his tenants, “Bomb Damage or Rent Control?”, and celebrity beneficiaries of rent control.
How Rent Control Drives Out Affordable Housing
Cato Policy Analysis No. 274
by William Tucker
The Career of Robert Moses: City Planning as a Microcosm of Socialism [pdf]
by Gene Callahan and Sanford Ikeda
The career of Robert Moses, which had a tremendous impact on the day-to-day life
of tens of millions of people, presents a paradigmatic example of the fatal conceit of
constructivist planners. All of the major pitfalls of constructivism pointed out by
Hayek, Mises, and other critics of interventionism—unintended and unwanted consequences,
the inability to calculate rationally what means to apply to achieve an
end, the abandonment of ordinary morality, and the extreme disregard for the
wishes of those whose lives are being planned—appear in sharp relief in that career.
City Views Urban studies legend Jane Jacobs on gentrification, the New Urbanism, and her legacy.
by Bill Steigerwald - Reason Magazine, June 2001
If I were to be remembered as a really important thinker of the century, the most important thing I’ve contributed is my discussion of what makes economic expansion happen. This is something that has puzzled people always. I think I’ve figured out what it is.
Conservatives and the New Urbanism
by Ruth Walker
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)
an attack of current city planning and rebuilding
The Economics of Skyscrapers [ppt]
by Prof. Jason Barr, Rutgers University
Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner
by by Gene Callahan and Sanford Ikeda
Jane Jacobs is one of those intellectuals who seem ever on the periphery of the libertarian movement. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, can be found on the shelves of many a libertarian, though often unread.
…
In the works of Jacobs, the order present in a well-functioning urban area emerges as the result of human action but not human design. It arises from a myriad of individuals each pursuing their own interest and carrying out their own plans, within a framework of rules that encourages peaceful cooperation over violent aggression.
Why Sprawl Is a Conservative Issue
by Michael Lewyn, John Marshall Law School
The conventional conservative wisdom, as of early 2000, seems to be that
1. sprawl is merely the result of the free market at work,
2. therefore conservatives need not oppose sprawl, and
3. even if sprawl is somehow problematic, it cannot be limited without implementation of the liberal or environmentalist agenda of larger and more intrusive government.
This article rejects all three assumptions. Specifically, I argue that
1. sprawl is in fact a result of runaway statism rather than the free market;
2. conservatives should fight sprawl as a threat to conservative values such as limited government, freedom, the work ethic and social stability; and
3. conservative, free-market solutions can limit if not eliminate sprawl.
Urban Planning (FEE 2008 Applying Liberty Lecture) [mp3]
by Sanford Ikeda, Foundation for Economic Education
In Defense of Property Rights (6 parts)
by Warren Ross and J. Brian Philips
National League of Zoning Speach
by Mike Lewyn
The answer is politically difficult, but easy in principle: dismantle the government policies that cause the problem. Dismantle the zoning laws, dismantle the parking requirements, dismantle the whole bureaucratic empire of sprawl….
Private Cities
by J. Brian Phillips
In a free, competitive market, developers must compete to attract customers. Excessive regulations or inefficient land use will discourage potential buyers, and detract from the developer’s long-term economic self-interest. Protecting property values through deed restrictions and providing highquality, low-cost services make master-planned communities an attractive housing alternative. Thirty million Americans call them home; advocates of freedom call them a step in the right direction.
Private Cities (FEE 2008 YSC Lecture) [mp3]
by Sanford Ikeda, Foundation for Economic Education
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (Economics, Cognition, and Society)
A refreshing challenge to the orthodoxy that government alone can improve community life, The Voluntary City will be an essential reference for anyone interested in the future of cities, including scholars and students, policy-makers, civic and business leaders, and urban citizens.
Why is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise of House Prices [pdf]
by Edward L. Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Raven Saks (Harvard University)
In Manhattan and elsewhere, housing prices have soared over the 1990s. Although rising incomes, lower interest rates, and other factors can explain the demand side of this increase, some sluggishness in the supply of apartment buildings also is needed to account for these high and rising prices. In a market dominated by high rises, the marginal cost of supplying more housing is the cost of adding an extra floor to any new building. Home building is a highly competitive industry with almost no natural barriers to entry, and yet prices in Manhattan currently appear to be more than twice their supply costs. We argue that land use restrictions are the natural explanation for this gap. We also present evidence that regulation is constraining the supply of housing in a number of other housing markets across the country. In these areas, increases in demand have not led to more housing units, but to higher prices.
Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use
by Jonathan Levine
The U.S. puts a lot of faith in the free market and the ability of consumers to choose, but when it comes to transit-friendly, walkable neighborhoods and other ‘Smart Growth’ solution, current zoning regulations mean that Americans don’t have many choices.
Zoning is Theft
by Jim Fedako
From an Austrian Economics perspective.
Zoning’s Steep Price
by Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko
The bulk of the evidence that we have marshaled suggests that zoning and other land-use controls are more responsible for high prices where we see them… Measures of zoning strictness are highly correlated with high prices. While all of our evidence is suggestive, not definitive, it seems to suggest that land-use regulation is responsible for high housing costs where they exist.
