Originally posted by: Dissipate
Uh ok, way to completely ignore Block's main argument.I'm not ignoring his main argument; I'm pointing out that the starting point for that argument, upon which it rests entirely, is fallacious.
It is not fallacious. However, Block's thesis really has nothing to do with that point. All Block was doing was leading up to his main argument by pointing out that today's economists ignore the true cause of traffic fatalities: government mis-management and they completely ignore the possibility of privatization of the roads.
Yes, it IS fallacious, and yes it is the main point - if Block can't show that governments cause traffic fatalities, then that portion of his argument for why governments provide roads inefficiently fails completely! He can't show this, because it isn't true, so the argument fails!
No, you did not hear the word externality. This is a simple concept, under a system of private road ownership the managers of such roads would seek to eliminate drunk driving on their roads. The government "seeks" to do so as well, but since the government is not governed by the principles of profit and loss, it does a much poorer job. It has little incentive to stop drunk driving.
If I didn't hear the word externality, then you didn't answer the question based on any understanding of 'the way the world works'.
Why, pray tell, would private road owners want to eliminate drunk driving? Are you going to plead absolute moral imperative on this one? Because that is not only not part of the profit motive, but wasn't part of any moral imperative even 10-20 years ago. Go ask some of your 40 year old aquaintances just how unacceptable drunk driving was when they were 20. The incentive to stop drunk driving is profit and loss;
therefore private companies will try to stop it to the extent that it reduces profit, and not one bit more.
No, free markets do not necessarily bring "morality," whatever you may define that to be. What free markets bring is what people want it to bring. That is what they do, nothing more, nothing less. If the customers want safe roads, the firm providing those roads will have to provide safe roads. If it does not it goes out of business. Safety then becomes a part of the profit motive, automatically. Of course, customers probably won't demand 100% safety, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is that the firm will provide as much safety as the customers demand.
As I said before, Walter Block's point is that the government is a much less responsive entity when it comes to people's demands and he applies this to publically owned roads. Public choice theory pioneered by James Buchanan supports this claim.[/quote]The public won't demand 100% safety, just like they don't demand it now... what is your argument? The firms will provide as much safety as maximizes their profit - customers don't demand an absolute level of safety, they have a willingness to pay that is partially based on safety, which is a very different thing. Your chosen argument here is absolutely terrible.
Last I checked, drunk driving, while tragic, doens't cause all that many road closures, and therefore will have little effect on profits, unless you are proposing a regulated, penalty-based set of rules for the road owners, in which case you defeat the thrust of your argument anyway.
That doesn't make any sense at all. Under your theory hoards of drunks could be driving down a particular privately owned road, and not a single customer would stay off that road. This is absurd. A road doesn't need to be closed in order for people to stay off it.
But hoards of drunks won't be driving down a particular road, at least not any more than they do now. Oh wait.. I forgot, you have private police who I can pay to let me drive drunk, because there is no higher authority to appeal to at any time.
If you disagree with this claim I suggest you read up on Buchanan's work on public choice theory.
I don't need to read up on public choice theory to know that there will only ever be one shortest way to get from A to B, and that no one will spend more money to select a different route to avoid a miniscule chance of being affected by drunk-driving externalities. Therefore road owners will lose nothing by failing to stop drunk driving; therefore they by and large won't do it.
Well, in highly populated business districts what you would probably have are businesses jointly owning roads, just like you have jointly owned easements today. If the roads are unsafe those businesses are going to lose business, period. As for freeways and highways there certainly could be more than one freeway or highway built to go pass through a particular location. In fact, different owners could own particular lanes of a certain freeway. In any event, very few freeways/highways are a perfectly straight line from point A to B.
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No, there can't be - there is limited land, and limited land sufficiently undeveloped to allow the profitable building of roads. Therefore competition will be highly limited. Oh, I forgot that you don't believe in a difference between competition and no competition. Your argument is completely idiotic, and ignores the thrust of my own entirely.
You haven't successfully defended a single argument that I have made against your heroes. You appeal to authority, then I read the 'authority' and present criticisms of the thought processes and assumptions represented, then you appeal back to the same authorities in defense of my real arguments. You have been backed down from an argument about the whole economy to an argument about crescents and
cul de sacs and you can't even defend that with any legitimacy.
You sir are an ideologue, and a highly uneducated one at that. I'm done here.
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