As Washington debates how many hundreds-of-billions of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus will go towards infrastructure or to other spending/tax cut schemes, pundits claim that spending billions on "shovel ready" public works projects can effectively create jobs that will lead to recovery. As … [Read more...]
Private Roads Work
Bart Frazier wrote a brief article for the Future of Freedom Foundation on private roads. He begins by discussing how most Americans remain strongly opposed to privately owned roads, while at the same time many have warmed to private education, medicine, and social security. This first part of the … [Read more...]
Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes
Recently, I came accross an article by Charles Johnson, who blogs at Rad Geek. The article had linked to a Market Urbanism post about how user fees and gas taxes fall well short of funding road use in the US. Charles' article further debunks the Urbanism Legend asserted by free-market imposters … [Read more...]
Irrationality Towards Shortages
Brendan Crain at Where tipped me off to a great post by Ryan Avent at The Bellows. Here's a little snippet of Shortage: For whatever reason, we’re not built to naturally internalize negative externalities. When riding on a crowded highway, no one (no non-economist, at any rate) curses the … [Read more...]
Block on Road Socialism
For quite some time, Economist Walter Block has been one of the more radical thinkers when it comes to advocating free market solutions. Many of his writings on roads and rent control are featured in the Links to Articles, Academic Papers and Books page. Today's Lew Rockwell Podcast features an … [Read more...]
CATO Podcast: Transportation
Today, I was listening to CATO's Daily Podcast about transportation with Samuel Staley of the Reason Foundation. I started listening to him talk about the best ways to plan highway systems and said to myself, "Oh boy, here we go again another so-called "free-market" person talking about how the … [Read more...]
Free Market Impostors
I subscribe to the CATO Institute's Daily Dispatch email. I enjoy ready the daily briefings of current events from a free-market perspective. But, once in a while, my capitalist stomach turns when they mention transit, usually accompanied by a quote from Randal O'Toole. Usually he bashes some … [Read more...]
Roads: US vs Europe
Pick Your Road: The U.S. vs. Europe, by Bryan Caplan In the U.S., we have low gas taxes, low car taxes, few tolls, strict zoning that leads developers to provide lots of free parking, low speed limits, lots of traffic enforcement, and lots of congestion. In Europe (France and Germany … [Read more...]