this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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What about the roads, who will pay for the roads?
Yesterday I saw a person say that they should all be privatized. Which is so insane I walked away and talked to someone else. Like I’m not going to convince a guy at a bar that his extremist ideology sounds like it wants to create just a godsawful way to live or that our country has tried the whole “minarchism” thing and it was a fucking disaster that led to us creating regulations, roads, etc.
Basically a bunch of toll roads where you pay to use them, right? But paying every time you use the road will get expensive quick, so road companies will offer subscriptions so you can save money if you frequently use their roads. Some companies will bundle subscriptions from many road companies together so you'll only pay for one subscription instead of dozens. They might even offer discount if you use yearly subscription. Viola! Now you have road tax except paid to private companies.
Yeah but to some people that sounds good. It confuses and frustrates me, like yeah I don’t like the government, but I also acknowledge that publicly run companies tend to be screwed over by legislators not by lack of profit motive. Say what you will about Amtrak, but if you’ve ever rode a train in the northeast corridor you understand that it’s a pretty good deal. And it encourages a more pro-social habit.
We’re facing catastrophes both ecological and social due to failure to govern. We could be doing fine, but we keep choosing as a country that instead of regulating and taxing and investing in things we want to make taxes into a dirty word, kneel at the feet of our corporate overlords. If we want our country to be worth living in we need to invest in it for real
My in-laws live on a private road. They're the fourth lot down from the main road (for the uninitiated, if your property would block access to another property, then there exists an access easement across your property, and you must allow people - principally the owners - to traverse your property so they can get to theirs). Everyone is responsible for (but not obligated to) maintaining the stretch of road in front of their houses. The first couple houses are owned by folks with a good chunk of change and the road is as nice as it gets. The third house down has never done a thing to their stretch of road and it's a piece of shit for that little bit. You're cranking the steering wheel from lock to lock to lock again to avoid holes 6 inches deep. Their house is in a sorry state so there's not a chance in the world they have the money to fix the road up. My in-laws throw some gravel in the holes from time to time to make things a little easier on themselves.
The municipality can't/won't do a thing. They don't own the road and it's not like the neighbors are blocking people in or out. The road is only nigh (not completely) impassable.
Someone I know is a libertarian and when I asked how stuff like road maintenance would work on his ideal society, and he was like, "well everyone would pitch in to pay a company to do it." Ok, so what if someone refuses, are there any mechanisms to penalize them? And who chooses the company and signs the contract and schedules the work? You guys gonna vote for people to do those things? Congrats, you just created government. He also had no real response to what happens if one neighborhood is full of good people willing to pitch in, and the next one says fuck it, we're not doing any of that, so the roads are great for a mile and are undrivable the next mile.
So yeah, sounds a lot like what your parents are dealing with. Paradise!
Sounds like the NPR model of funding. Even if you can get everything else to work, you still have a couple of weeks every year when you can't go anywhere without having to stop and listen to Nina Totenberg lecture you 20 minutes about how important it is for everyone to pitch in as much as they can afford.
Honestly fuck the roads.
Fuck roads! We want an advanced system of High Speed and Light Rail to make roads obsolete for traveling!
That's all well and good, but you're gonna need roads for last mile delivery of goods, and a transit path for people that service homes and businesses.
That's why I qualified my statement by saying obsolete for traveling.
I fail to see how debating the form of a transportation network is related to the necessity of funding one.
The slaves will be taxed, of course, FREEDOM B***