...you could build a road. It would switch back and forth and back and forth, and there would be bridges every few hundred meters -- really scary bridges, with sheer drops on one side and, like, much bigger empty air terrifying sheer drops on the other -- and then those would alternate with tunnels and with alarming-looking cuts where thousands of tons of rock were very crudely blasted out of the mountain. It would skip from ridge, over chasm, and to ridge again like a mountain goat, zigging and zagging as it rose towards the crest. It would be expensive and it would be dangerous and it would be completely pointless, but you could do it.
If you had a country at your disposal, and no restrictions but your own sovereign whim.
And you sometimes wonder why libertarians would like to take road building out of government hands. Congratulations for finding exhibit #1 in the libertarian case.
Posted by: TM Lutas | Jan 27, 2005 at 08:37 AM
TM Lutas.
That dictatorship makes idiotic investments does not prove that road building should be taken out of government hands.
It simply proves that dictatorship doesn't work very well because it doesn't allow feedback -- whether from the market and/or from the general populace through a legislature. The genius of capitalism is not that it promotes or allows expression of greed but that it promotes expression of opinion through prices. The genius of democracy is not some theoretical notion that "everyone should get a say" but the very practical one that the free expression of ideas leads to better decisions.
Conflation of dictatorship with democratically-elected government is incorrect, even preposterous.
Posted by: David Sucher | Jan 27, 2005 at 10:03 AM
Regrettably conflation of dictatorship with democratically elected government seems to be an increasing part of libertarian rhetoric.
Posted by: ian | Jan 27, 2005 at 12:59 PM
Exhibit #1 is the head of a very long parade of horribles and is useful for scene setting. It does not tell the whole tale. Sure, democratically elected governments have superior feedback mechanisms to dictatorships.
Here's a personal transportation story from Westchester, NY outlining how the essentials don't necessarily change.
I worked for a candidate from Port Chester, NY for a county election many years ago. I was driving him about and was going North on I-87. At a certain point, the pol points to a certain road sign and says to me "you see that sign? Mr. X got that sign put up because he'd always forget to make the right turn and the old one said Connecticut on it. He got them to put up a new sign that said Port Chester instead so he'd get off at the right exit." And then he laughed admiringly at the fellow's power and political cleverness.
It's something of a funny story but my parents helped pay for that sign along with all the other taxpayers. While there's a great deal of difference in quantity of waste and stupidity involved between exhibit #1 and exhibit #2, there's no difference in kind. A politician decides that some transport expenditure must be done. It is done, even though it is wasteful of money and not actually needed.
The trans-fagaras highway is an awful lot more impressive and clear while the sign at the exchange between I-87 and I-287 on the west side of Westchester County is a lot more indicative of our real life problems. The first shows how bad it can get. The second shows that we have baby forms of the same problem here.
Transportation will always be built to suit certain interests. It's inevitable that this happens. What is not inevitable is that my pocket has to get picked to satisfy personal whims. As soon as we can figure out a practical way to get from here to there, we should take it. If we never forget that public financing of personal whim is an integral part of our current system, I'm convinced that we'll eventually come up with something better.
Posted by: TM Lutas | Jan 28, 2005 at 11:14 AM
As soon as we can figure out a practical way to get from here to there, we should take it.
Daring as it may appear, I certainly agree.
Posted by: David Sucher | Jan 28, 2005 at 11:18 AM
You know, Ceaucescu's Romania was a near-perfect Libertaria... for Ceaucescu. He built exactly what he wanted, and no dead hand of government could stop him. No zoning, no annoying legalities, no oversight to check or balance his desires.
Until they put him against a wall, of course.
Bucharest was a lovely city once. Parts of it still are.
C.
Posted by: Carlos | Jan 29, 2005 at 07:43 PM