06 Aug 2014

“But Without the State, Who Would Lay the Tracks?”

Economics, Noah Smith 124 Comments

Radical libertarians who spend a lot of time online (or do I repeat myself?) have developed a joke where they will say in parody, “But who will build the roads?” (Some of the Images in this Google search are funny, but your mileage may vary. Pun intended.) For a more recent example of when I myself entered this comedy genre, see this Tweet, which at least 40 people enjoyed.

The reason anarcho-capitalists find “Who will build the roads?” hilarious is that this is such an obviously silly justification for the State. Sure, it is reasonable for someone to ask, “How could there be a rule of law?” It’s perfectly understandable for someone to wonder, “Wouldn’t a small libertarian paradise be conquered by a neighboring State?” (Indeed, I considered these such good questions that I published a pamphlet in grad school addressing them.)

But to wonder how a fully privatized economy would build roads?! C’mon. Such a question doesn’t require a pamphlet (though Walter Block, as is his wont, has written an entire book). It can be settled in three sentences from Tom Woods: ““Who will build the roads?” is the question that belongs at the top of every libertarian drinking game. If we didn’t have forced labor, the argument runs, there would be no roads. There’d be a Sears store over there, and your house over here, and everyone involved would just be standing there scratching their heads.”

In this context, then, you can imagine my amusement to see economist Noah Smith give the following examples as he chides libertarians for their narrow focus on restricting government intervention in the economy:

But there are other kinds of freedom that matter a lot for the vast majority of people — people who don’t try to derive their ideologies from axioms, or spend time curled up with a Hayek book. For examplesocial freedom — the ability to express your individuality without having people ostracize you — is hugely important in most people’s lives…

Nor is the state always a destroyer of human freedom. It’s liberating to be able to hop in a car and drive to another city without stopping to pay a toll every few miles. It’s also liberating to be able to hop on a train and jaunt across a city without sitting in traffic.

Normally I italicize block quotes from other authors, but in this case I retained the original formatting. That italicized “train” is Noah’s. It would be foolish to suggest that I truly understand how this man’s mind works, but I *think* what he is doing there is to shake the reader, as it were. “You know, a TRAIN, for heaven’s sake. You like the option of taking a TRAIN, right? So maybe we need taxes after all, Mr. Stop-Taking-My-Money-At-Gunpoint.”

This is truly astounding. Noah’s not even (apparently) making an argument, say, about eminent domain reducing construction costs. No, he seems to be suggesting that we need the State if we want trains to exist. I feel as much need to argue with him on this point, as if he had claimed, “It’s also liberating to be able to buy nonfat yogurt, so I wish libertarians would stop focusing on limiting the State all the time.”

For those who want to see an excellent historical discussion of train builders–one who turned to State subsidies, the other who relied on good ol’ capitalism–see Burt Folsom’s The Myth of the Robber Barons.

124 Responses to ““But Without the State, Who Would Lay the Tracks?””

  1. DesolationJones says:

    My flying cars joke was hilarious.

    • Darien says:

      Yes it was. I love that you got that awesome assist with the punch line, too.

  2. Ash says:

    When I first read that “trains” bit, my eyes jumped so far out of my head they needed a train to get back to me

  3. Alex Tabarrok says:

    In a libertarian world, Dagny Taggart would build the trains, duh.

    • Philippe says:

      she’d build them with her own hands, of course.

      • Major.Freedom says:

        While the workers would sit in their offices lighting cigars with $100 bills, twirling their waxed moustaches and cackling at the plight of poor Taggart, just before they bury bags of gold with big dollar signs on them.

  4. Bill Karr says:

    I argued once that if the government didn’t build so many roads, there would probably be more trains and streetcars: http://libertywithoutapologies.com/roads

  5. Darien says:

    So now “social freedom” is a thing, hey? Has anybody else noticed that whenever people talk about “social” things, what they’re really talking about is “stuff just the way it is except with me in charge?”

    • RandomGermanDude says:

      “the ability to express your individuality without having people ostracize you — is hugely important in most people’s lives”

      I am really flabbergasted by this remark because IMHO it is mostly non-/anti-libertarians that actually promote ostracizing people in praxis while libertarians usually only defend the right to do so.

  6. LK says:

    The problem goes much deeper than some concerns about roads.

    Will an anarcho-capitalist society have a good system of transportation, sanitation, drainage, water, and electricity infrastructure? You claim that the private sector would build everything, but historical instances where these things are left to the private sector suggest that such a system has definite disadvantages: not enough provision of such goods/services, and some services they provide are too expensive for many people.

    If there is no basic social security, people who cannot find work or successfully beg for private charity will starve or be plunged into poverty.

    How will you deal with people who are mentally ill and disabled and simply cannot pay for basic services they need to live? What if these people cannot find enough charity?

    With no public health policies such as immunization programs and disease control, how do you deal with epidemics and other serious public health issues?

    With no regulation of who brings in plants and animals into the society, will visitors / tourists bring in plant and animal diseases causing serious problems to agriculture and the environment?

    Are you telling us that a society where there are no regulations whatsoever on the production and sale of not just guns but advanced military weapons, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons is one where you’d fell safe?

    The simple truth is this: there are very few people indeed who either want such a society or think it would be a good place to live in.

    • Grane Peer says:

      The simple truth is this: We already have all of those problems

      • LK says:

        I see. There is the problem that nobody regulates who brings in plants and animals into Western states. Also, there is the problem that Western states today have no disease control policies.

        You are one highly informed person, Grane Peer.

        • K.P. says:

          There’s an obvious bridge between these objections and outright privatization, simply decentralize: That is, break the U.S. into smaller states.

          (Or slowly scale it back, people might have good reason to be fearful of society without a government – it’s quite a change – but a government as large as the 90’s? Eh.)

        • Grane Peer says:

          I would insult you but then I would have to explain it to you and then you still wouldn’t get it.

    • razer says:

      The collectivist spends so much time worrying losing control. All of LK’s and other hardline statists’ concerns boil down to one thing: fear of losing control over people’s lives. That’s the root of it. But I’ll bet when asked, the statist will mention altruism as his motivation, not a pervasive need for control. It must be some type of sick pathology that literally every statist I’ve ever met suffers from.

      • LK says:

        Sure. Any person who, say, has the worry that the abolition of government immunisation and disease control programs might lead to troublesome epidemics is just lying and using some smokescreen to conceal their fear of the government “losing control over people’s lives”.

        There are most probably tens of millions of people who would have the concerns I have raised above, but you just **know** that every one of them is really secretly lying and has some “pervasive need for control.”

        How, one might ask, do you know this? Telepathy? Magic?

        • Z says:

          How do people know this? Because your desire to use force does not extend only to helping poor dying children. What about insisting that even things virtually nobody considers necessities like birth control be paid through force? Or excuse upon excuse for why every thing from Obama’s drone strikes to The events at Ruby Ridge are wonderful gifts to humanity even when those people didn’t threaten anyone. Look, I’m a moral nihilist now, so you can do whatever you want, but there are more than enough reasons to doubt your assertions of only innocent intentions.

          • Philippe says:

            amazingly confused train of thought you have there, z.

            • Z says:

              Yeah, I didn’t write that clearly at all, now that I looked at it again.

        • razer says:

          Anytime you coerce peaceful humans into doing something they wouldn’t otherwise do, you lose any moral high ground. I can easily identify the statist without fail. They love to use euphemisms to dress up their desire for control. It’s always social this or social that. or this type of society or that type of society. They ascribe their motives to altruism (no politician wants to rule over his fellow humans, right? No, they just want to lead, right?). The statist finds anyone who wants to opt out of their sphere of control as contemptible, immoral, and worthy of punishment.

          Non statists like myself also want to see the poor and handicapped helped, but unlike you and the typical statist, I don’t want to see anyone else harmed in order to help them. That’s where we differ.

          Find me a statist that doesn’t fit these descriptions and I’ll admit my hypothesis was wrong.

    • Reece says:

      “Will an anarcho-capitalist society have a good system of transportation, sanitation, drainage, water, and electricity infrastructure? You claim that the private sector would build everything, but historical instances where these things are left to the private sector suggest that such a system has definite disadvantages: not enough provision of such goods/services, and some services they provide are too expensive for many people.”

      There’s no way anyone can respond to everything you wrote in a blog comment, but a lot of your comments seem to have very little basis. Have you read any of Walter Primeaux’s works on electrical utilities for example? It seems the market could provide electricity for cheaper, in the few historical instances we have anyway. Your claim on transportation is particularly strange, given that Murphy gave an instance where the market outperformed the government above – do you disagree that this happened? Perhaps you meant to say only certain forms of transportation? The historical record on these matters, if anything, only make me think anarchism would be stronger. These services seem much more difficult to provide in theory than courts or police, and yet the market seems to perform relatively well.

      Some of the public health issues you listed might be handled better by the state. Market regulation would be fairly weak against these things, although not nonexistent. One could easily imagine the airports being liable for diseases spread from people traveling on their planes, and having policies based off this – the plants/animals issue could be taken care of in this way as well. People that are not vaccinated for certain diseases (and people with deadly diseases) could be considered to be endangering (or even threatening) other individuals when outside their home – businesses and roads might also have certain policies blocking these people from traveling. Current state regulation is also pretty weak right now though; it’s pretty easy to get a tourist visa and spread foreign diseases, for example, and for the most part vaccines are voluntary. So while this likely is one positive from having a state, I don’t think it outweighs most other issues in which anarchism would be better. The mentally ill and disabled issue could also be difficult, if charity was not sufficient. For the most part however, poverty would be greatly reduced – since poverty is strongly linked with crime, there would be people with clear incentives to lift these people out of poverty, and jobs would be much more widely available.

      • LK says:

        “People that are not vaccinated for certain diseases (and people with deadly diseases) could be considered to be endangering (or even threatening) other individuals when outside their home – businesses and roads might also have certain policies blocking these people from traveling.”

        hmm. And how would you possibly ascertain whether your clients have really been vaccinated or not? This would require intrusive or unrealistic checks and cause huge transactions costs. This issue alone suggests how unworkable your suggestion is.

        • Reece says:

          “And how would you possibly ascertain whether your clients have really been vaccinated or not? This would require intrusive or unrealistic checks and cause huge transactions costs.”

          Not really. If society was structured in the way Murphy outlined in Chaos Theory (for example, just because this is his blog), the insurance companies would be liable for any damage their customers caused because of the disease. So they could have the customer report their doctor, and simply check with the doctor to see if the customer was vaccinated. The doctors could have a simple checklist that the companies could even check online perhaps, keeping transaction costs incredibly low – even lower than now, where places often need to have people re-vaccinated or go through long checks with doctors in order to let them in (to schools, for instance). Doctors would want to vaccinate and wouldn’t want these long checks, and so would likely agree – insurance companies might not even let customers use doctors that don’t have simple methods of checking. Even if checking was expensive, they would only need to check a few people to dramatically lower incentives to skip the vaccination. Other forms of anarcho-capitalist societies could deal with this in fairly simple ways as well. This really isn’t an issue at all.

          The bigger issue is if it isn’t considered endangerment, then there wouldn’t really be anything incentivizing people to be vaccinated for most diseases (besides for their own good) or not travel when infected, as roads and most businesses are unlikely to care except for extremely deadly diseases like ebola. As I said, I think the state, on average, would be more effective in this area.

        • Raja says:

          Clients in free society and voluntary anarcho-capitalist society might need insurance for protection of health and property. If their insurance recommends something they might have to decide to take it or the premiums go up.

          Private airports might also allow some certification to be carried or ID that includes vaccination information. Any damage to another person by the infected person would increase the infected person’s premiums, nudging that person to voluntarily get the vaccine.

        • Enopoletus Harding says:

          LK, I’m sure the market can provide cheap and quick tests for antibodies.

          • LK says:

            Free magic dust can do anything, no doubt.

            • K.P. says:

              Kind of funny, you hear Libertarians making similar remarks about Keynesian and other state policies. Useful quip.

            • Major.Freedom says:

              LK you are always tacitly attacking the human mind.

    • Cosmo Kramer says:

      “The simple truth is this: there are very few people indeed who either want such a society or think it would be a good place to live in.”

      Statists refuse to accurately describe the current system with total government/gdp at roughly 40%. With all of the problems in America, that size of government still isn’t big enough to solve the problems…… Try not being bigoted for one moment and list all of the problems in this country. Reply to this message with the murder conviction rate. What a high bar you have set……….

      “people who cannot find work or successfully beg for private charity will starve or be plunged into poverty.”

      You forgot friends and family in your equation……….

      “How will you deal with people who are mentally ill and disabled and simply cannot pay for basic services they need to live? What if these people cannot find enough charity?”

      See above

      “With no public health policies such as immunization programs and disease control, how do you deal with epidemics and other serious public health issues?”

      No company has any incentive to make money by making drugs. NO COMPANY I SAID!

      “Are you telling us that a society where there are no regulations whatsoever on the production and sale of not just guns but advanced military weapons, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons is one where you’d fell safe?”

      Look at all of those companies privately producing nuclear weapons. That non-existent place is where I don’t want to live.

    • Major.Freedom says:

      LK:

      Please explain why you pointing a gun at me and violating my property rights is the ONLY possible conceivable solution to the problems you have listed above.

      • Philippe says:

        MF,

        please explain why you think pointing a gun at me and violating my property rights is the best solution to the problems listed above.

        • Major.Freedom says:

          Ask LK, he’s the one who believes it.

  7. Teqzilla says:

    Also liberating: slavery. Think of how much more time you’d free up for yourself if you had a few slaves here and there. Not that i’m advocating the reintroduction of the unenlightened slavery we had previously. Obviously we ‘d have to have someone do some kind of analysis to tell us what number of slaves would increase net social freedom (Matt Yglesias maybe, he knows how to make pie charts in excel) but it’s worth thinking about.

    • Philippe says:

      thankfully “voluntary slavery” will exist in ancapistan, thereby providing all the benefits of which you speak.

      • K.P. says:

        How’d you determine that one?

        • Ken B says:

          We go round this tree endlessly. Rothbardians support slavery. (They just object to the word because f its connotation.) See MF’s replies on this thread. It’s inherent in the notion of unrestricted “self-ownership”. Anything *owned* can be *alienated*. If you own your pen you can sell your pen. If you won your kidney you can sell your kidney. If you own yourself you can sell yourself. And that means “voluntary slavery”.
          This is one of the reasons for the Rotbardian hostility to the declaration of independence: the notion of “inalienable” rights. If rights are property they are alienable.

          • K.P. says:

            Unless you mean they implicitly support slavery or, then no. With the famous exception of Block, Rothbardians (Rothbard included) usually reject it. That is, self-ownership does *not* mean you can sell yourself.

            “This is one of the reasons for the Rotbardian hostility to the declaration of independence: the notion of “inalienable” rights. If rights are property they are alienable.”

            Nah, Rothbard explicitly said one’s will is “inalienable” and therefore not transferable to another, he might be wrong, (or confused) but that’s besides the point.

            Further still, even assuming Ancapistan didn’t go in a Rothbardian direction but rather a Blockean one, the possibility of voluntary slavery in no way implies it would exist at all. Hence my response to “thankfully ‘voluntary slavery’ *will* exist in ancapistan”. (emphasis mine)

            • Dan says:

              Ah, I figured I was missing the distinction you were making in your response to Philippe. It appears my response to you was unnecessary.

              • K.P. says:

                I appreciate it anyways. I think you’ve kicked off a bizarre attack on Rothbardians, it’s quite amusing.

            • Ken B says:

              You are not being careful enough with the wording KP. Capital punishment can exist and yet there be no executions. ‘Voluntary slavery’ would exist even if there were no slaves.

              If the right to one’s will is inalienable then it is NOT a “property’ right. So I am pleased to see at least some Rothbardians admit their theory is flawed and that not all rights are property rights.

              • K.P. says:

                We could go down this rabbit hole about the nature of existence (and that sure would be fun) but in the quote I replied to it was asserted that slavery would exist in *more* than just a theoretical possibility but a reality (“…thereby providing all the benefits…”) so your reply is kind of irrelevant.

                “If the right to one’s will is inalienable then it is NOT a “property’ right. So I am pleased to see at least some Rothbardians admit their theory is flawed and that not all rights are property rights.”

                Yup, if you set the argument up like that then you’re completely correct.

                All Property Rights are Alienable
                Will is Inalienable
                Therefore, Will isn’t a Property Right.

                I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is a merely a semantic quibble; that your view of what constitutes a “property” right and the standard Rothbardian one differ. It has little impact on the theory itself.

                (I’ve said this several times before but I’ll say it again here, I’m neither a Rothbardian or even a libertarian.)

              • Reece says:

                Actually, even if you can’t transfer ownership rights over something, it can still be your property: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_rights_(economics)

                Property rights are probably best looked as a bundle of rights. In this case, you own your will but cannot transfer it. This “bundle of rights” is recognized in other parts of Rothbardian theory. For example, if someone pollutes over unowned land, then he is generally looked at as gaining the right to pollute (to that extent) there, but not gain full ownership of the land. So, if someone else moved in, that person could gain ownership of the formerly unowned land, but not be able to stop the person from polluting to the extent he already was over his land. So, Rothbardians already recognize that property rights are not absolute (you also can’t shoot someone walking on your lawn). If transferring the property title to your will is not valid, this in no way makes Rothbardian theory flawed (although I do think there are some flaws with Rothbard’s natural law theory).

          • Tel says:

            It is perfectly self-consistent to believe that you own your kidneys, and also believe that no one else should be allowed to purchase them and that trade in kidneys should be repressed.

            Not that all Rothbardians take this position mind you, there are various arguments along these lines, but belief in property rights does not necessarily also imply everything can be sold.

            We already have this system in operation, by the way, when it comes to “moral rights” for literature, etc.

            Can I sell or transfer my moral rights?

            No. Unlike copyright, moral rights cannot be transferred or sold. This said, moral rights will not be infringed if a creator has consented to their work being used in a particular manner. This is called creator’s consent. This consent must be in writing and needs to specifically detail the way the creator will allow the work to be used. It may apply to current or future works, and employees are able to give their employer a general consent for works created in the course of their employment.

            http://www.copyright.com.au/get-information/other-rights/moral-rights

        • Dan says:

          Some libertarians believe you could enforce voluntary slavery contracts, but the majority, including Rothbard, object to that view. A good example of the debate is between Kinsella and Walter Block. http://www.stephankinsella.com/paf-podcast/kol004-interview-with-walter-block-on-voluntary-slavery/

          Also, Rothbard has a good explanation of why he believes in inalienable rights and his reasoning for why voluntary slave contracts would be uneforceable. I think it is in the Ethics of Liberty, but it might be in For a New Liberty. Google “Rothbard voluntary slavery” and I’m sure you will find it.

          • LK says:

            Just another example of how internet Rothbardians don’t read Rothbard.

            But, actually, in point of fact Walter Block DOES support voluntary slavery:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Block#.22Voluntary_slave_contract.22

            • Major.Freedom says:

              You know it IS possible for a Rothbardian to disagree with something Rothbard said.

              Yes yes, I know, anti-cultish. Crazy isn’t it? LORD KEYNES?

            • Dan says:

              I know he does. That’s why I put in the link where Kinsella debates Block about it.

              Also, I’m not really aware of many Rothbardians that don’t know Murray’s position on this issue. Like I said, it is the majority position among libertarians. The libertarians that believe in voluntary slavery just disagree with him on this issue.

              Usually, it is non-libertarians that mistakenly think being a Rothbardian means you automatically favor voluntary slavery or don’t believe in inalienable rights. Which is weird consider Rothbard’s position on these issues.

            • K.P. says:

              Seriously, is this a joke?

              Let me show how unread internet Keynesians are by citing Alvin Hansen.

          • Philippe says:

            “Some libertarians believe you could enforce voluntary slavery contracts, but the majority, including Rothbard, object to that view.”

            So “voluntary slavery” could exist in ancapistan, because there will be no law against it.

            Everyone makes up their own laws in ancapistan, apparently. Some people think you can straight up shoot someone for just walking on land you claim to own, others think you can’t, etc.

            • Major.Freedom says:

              Philippe,

              Yor preferred ethic has the same thing of one group of peoplr shooting at another group of people for “trespassing”. You support government armies shooting at the armies of unwelcome, i.e. invading, foreign army.

              I don’t why you expect me to believe that your morality is better on the basis of the lie that you are truly against it.

              The only difference, and it is a big difference don’t get me wrong, is that you, whether you want to admit it or not, attribute land property rights to governments. You are OK with “your” government shooting at any North Korean soldiers who invade “your” country.

              • Philippe says:

                “you attribute land property rights to governments”

                land property rights are human creations, they are not given by nature or God.

          • Tel says:

            Enforcement comes down to what the general population are willing to do (i.e. hunt down runaway slaves, etc). As I’ve said elsewhere, property rights only exist as a general agreement amongst the majority of the population. Government may become the embodyment of that agreement, but the people themselves are the source of it.

        • Dan says:

          Here is Rothbard on the subject. This is also the majority position among libertarians as far as I have seen.

          ” Hence, the unenforceability, in libertarian theory, of voluntary slave contracts. Suppose that Smith makes the following agreement with the Jones Corporation: Smith, for the rest of his life, will obey all orders, under whatever conditions, that the Jones Corporation wishes to lay down. Now, in libertarian theory there is nothing to prevent Smith from making this agreement, and from serving the Jones Corporation and from obeying the latter’s orders indefinitely. The problem comes when, at some later date, Smith changes his mind and decides to leave. Shall he be held to his former voluntary promise? Our contention—and one that is fortunately upheld under present law—is that Smith’s promise was not a valid (i.e., not an enforceable) contract. There is no transfer of title in Smith’s agreement, because Smith’s control over his own body and will are inalienable. Since that control cannot be alienated, the agreement was not a valid contract, and therefore should not be enforceable. Smith’s agreement was a mere promise, which it might be held he is morally obligated to keep, but which should not be legally obligatory.

          In fact, to enforce the promise would be just as much compulsory slavery as the compulsory marriage considered above. But should Smith at least be required to pay damages to the Jones Corporation, measured by the expectations of his lifelong service which the Jones Corporation had acquired? Again, the answer must be no. Smith is not an implicit thief; he has retained no just property of the Jones Corporation, for he always retains title to his own body and person.”

          http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/nineteen.asp

          • LK says:

            Walter Block:

            “In an essay on “inalienability” of natural and legal rights, Block defends what he calls a “voluntary slave contract”, arguing that it is “a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs”. He notes only Robert Nozick agrees with him, and critiques the views of the libertarians who disagree. Block seeks to make “a tiny adjustment” which “strengthens libertarianism by making it more internally consistent.” He argues that his position shows “that contract, predicated on private property [can] reach to the furthest realms of human interaction, even to voluntary slave contracts.”

            See:

            Walter Block, “Towards a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Smith, Kinsella, Gordon, and Epstein.” pp. 39–85.

            • Dan says:

              LK, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you didn’t click on the link with the debate between Kinsella and Walter Block on the issue of voluntary slavery. But, yes, I am fully aware of Block’s position.

              The quote might be useful, though, for people that think Rothbardians support voluntary slavery or don’t believe in inalienable rights, considering it shows that that is a minority position.

            • Samson Corwell says:

              Block seeks to make “a tiny adjustment” which “strengthens libertarianism by making it more internally consistent.”

              What was that thing Oscar Wilde said about foolish consistency?

      • Major.Freedom says:

        As long as people don’t sell OTHERS into slavery, what’s the problem?

        You against people killing themselves too? Live and let live. If people do ridiculously stupid things TO THEMSELVES, then let them.

        You mad bro?

        • Philippe says:

          “If people do ridiculously stupid things TO THEMSELVES”

          Only an extreme masochist would want to sell themselves into slavery. Normally people would only do so if they had absolutely no other real choice. If you don’t have a real choice then it’s not really ‘voluntary’, even if you sign on the dotted line.

          • Philippe says:

            “Voluntary slavery (or self-sale) is the condition of slavery entered into at a point of voluntary consent. In ancient times, this was a common way for impoverished people to provide subsistence for themselves or their family and provision was made for this in law. For example, the code of Hammurabi stated that “besides being able to borrow on personal security, an individual might sell himself or a family member into slavery.” In medieval Russia, self-sale was the main source of slaves.”

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery

          • Major.Freedom says:

            Extreme masochism is NON VIOLENT, Philippe.

            Live and let live bro.

            If a person chooses to sell themselves into a chained work camp, let them. As long as they are not threatened with violence if they don’t submit to the chains, there is no victim nor aggressor.

            If a person believes, or is actually in a situation, that the only choice they have is die from lack of food, or selling themselves as a slave to someone else, then wow would that be horrible, but it is a choice that someone is making to save their own lives. Is the person who accepts a slave offer morally wrong? I don’t think so. He is only accepting an offer. Whether he proposed it or not might tell me for example to avoid them, but in terms of the actual exchange, it doesn’t matter who proposed it, because the person is choosing to sell themselves.

            It would be inconsistent to be pro-voluntary slavery if the would be slave proposes the offer, but anti-voluntary slavery when the would be master proposes it. The way I see it, if I am going to be blanket anti-voluntary slavery, then I would have to be willing to point a gun at someone who wants to sell themselves. I would have to be willing to point a gun at a masochist who did nothing wrong to me. I would have to follow this person around constantly threatening to use my gun on him so that he never chooses to sell himself.

            Since I believe that is morally wrong, I cannot be anti-voluntary slavery in the blanket manner. But consistency demands that I must then be pro-voluntary slavery even for those cases where the would be master proposes the offer. If a person can offer themselves but wait for a response of acceptance, why can’t the other side of the potential trade do it?

            Philippe, would I be violating your rights by merely ASKING you to be my slave, and not do anything to you if you do not accept the offer, and to live my life without there being any contract in place? Sure, you can call me a horrible person for even considering it, but in terms of what you can and cannot do to me, would it be morally just for you to use violence against me for merely communicating an offer to you, which can be just an exercise of free speech, (subject to the rules of the property owner)?

            • Dan says:

              “The way I see it, if I am going to be blanket anti-voluntary slavery, then I would have to be willing to point a gun at someone who wants to sell themselves.”

              As far as I am aware, all libertarians would oppose that. Anti-voluntary slavery libertarians would just say the contract is unenforceable, not that you can’t make it and live by it if you chose to do so.

              • Samson Corwell says:

                As far as I am aware, all libertarians would oppose that. Anti-voluntary slavery libertarians would just say the contract is unenforceable, not that you can’t make it and live by it if you chose to do so.

                Then why call it a contract if it’s meaningless?

              • Dan says:

                That’s the point of contention between libertarians like Rothbard and Block. Rothbard say it is not a valid contract and isn’t enforceable, whereas Block says it is a valid contract and is enforceable.

            • Philippe says:

              MF,

              in ancapistan people points guns at other people all the time.

              • Major.Freedom says:

                Philippe,

                In ancapistan it would be illegal to use guns against those who are exercising their property rights.

                In statism it is legal for some people who are viewed as having a different morality than everyone else, to use guns against others who are exercising their property rights.

                Ancapistan is not a prediction. It is an ethic.

              • Philippe says:

                in ancapistan, self-declared property owners threaten everyone else at the point of a gun, and use violence to make others comply with their unilateral decrees.

            • Samson Corwell says:

              It would be inconsistent to be pro-voluntary slavery if the would be slave proposes the offer, but anti-voluntary slavery when the would be master proposes it.

              “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

              Found it!

      • razer says:

        If it’s voluntary, it’s not slavery. Do try and keep up. If memory serves me correctly, you weren’t even able to grasp the idea of self ownership. Perhaps that’s why the fascination and confusion with slavery?

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Razer, you’re flirting with the boundary between “aggressive” and “rude.” I’m not a fan of Philippe’s views either but if you’re going to debate him, it helps to let his side have a monopoly on hostility.

        • Philippe says:

          “you weren’t even able to grasp the idea of self ownership”

          I was able to grasp it, but I don’t think it makes sense. It might make more sense to say that ‘you own your body’, rather than that ‘you own yourself’, but the idea of owning your body assumes that the body and mind are separate things, or that there is such a thing as a separate soul, which is problematic.

          • Major.Freedom says:

            Duality does not imply a soul. Methodological dualism is not inconsistent with a fully materialist reality. It just requires that some material aspect of reality is unknowable to humans, if reality is in fact totally “physical.”. That aspect of materialist reality that is unknowable, is the future knowledge of the subject themselves. That unknowable aspect of reality determines constraints and boundaries of thought and action, which then serves as a framework for an epistemology that is structured in a dualist way.

            • Philippe says:

              “That aspect of materialist reality that is unknowable, is the future knowledge of the subject themselves.”

              What is that supposed to mean?

              • Major.Freedom says:

                What it says.

              • Philippe says:

                how can something be both unknowable and ‘future knowledge”?

                What do you mean by ‘future knowledge’?

        • Philippe says:

          “If it’s voluntary, it’s not slavery”

          No, there is such a thing as “voluntary slavery” in the English language, and ‘libertarians’ such as Walter Block are defenders of it.

        • Samson Corwell says:

          Sure, it’s involuntary after you’ve sold yourself into slavery. Is this really a hard concept to grasp?

  8. Robert says:

    I’ve heard libertarians laugh at this argument many times, but rarely actually answer. Roads are a public good with positive externality so it is a valid concern that there will be a sub optimal level (note there is a difference between saying there will be no roads and saying there will be too few roads).

    Roads are large capital investments that take a long time to pay off, so there will probably be few (even too few) investors. Would you be willing to invest millions if you know another company can build a similar road and take your customers?

    It seems that if we have private roads there will either be a) monopolies or b) waste of resources. So there will be either only one motorway to Galway which can rip everyone off or 3 motorways going the exact same way, providing competition but also wasting resources.

    Also if all roads are private, does this include the road outside my house? Would that company not hold a monopoly over whether I want to leave my house? How exactly will competition solve my problem?

    And so on. There are a lot of serious problems with private roads that cannot be easily laughed off.

    • Dan says:

      Perhaps you would like to read the book that Dr. Block wrote on this very subject. It’s actually linked in this very post.

      • LK says:

        No, Dan, maybe you should have read Block’s book.

        Right on p. 251, Block admits that one of the problems Robert is concerned about is a real and serious problem for anarcho-capitalism:

        “Ordinarily, under laissez-faire capitalism, the owner of a private enterprise could charge whatever price he wished for the goods or services he supplies. If you didn’t like the pricing or any other policy of McDonalds, you are free to patronize Burger King or Wendy’s, or any such other emporium, or buy your burgers from the supermarket and eat them at home. It would be a bit harsh, however, to allow the new private owners of the street to engage in such an exercise of “economic freedom.” This is because in the world where all streets were privatized from day one, no one would have ever built a home or a business without first contractually preventing the road owner from such unilateral behavior. Rather, there would have been an agreement preventing this, either through contract, or by making the home or business owner a partner in the street enterprise. Were we now to allow the new road owners to impose their unilateral decisions on travelers, this would in effect make a gift of the entire economic value to them, not only of the roads, but of virtually all property within a city. Some way must be found, then, to mimic the market in streets which would have existed under free enterprise from day one, but which did not.”
        Block, Walter. 2009. The Privatization of Roads and Highways. Human and Economic Factors. Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala. pp. 250-251.

        • Philippe says:

          “which would have existed under free enterprise from day one”

          assertion of purely speculative and unfounded fantasy as fact. A typical ancap rhetorical move.

          • Major.Freedom says:

            He didn’t actually say what would have happened in terms of prices. He only said that a way must be found to transition.

        • Scott D says:

          LK,

          You can restate the quote from Block as saying, “Given that a monopoly in roads under government currently exists, transitioning to a free market in roads presents us with certain problems.” He’s stating that we need to be cautious about granting too many property rights to the owners of the roads, rights that they would not have acquired if they had to deal with property owners.

          That’s not an admission of failure, any more than Rothbard’s observation that the only reasonable way to privatize public land is to auction it off, even if that land isn’t legitimately owned by the state.

          In a free market, the land owners would exist first. A developer who decided to build a housing tract in previously unused land might contract with a road builder to put streets between the houses and connect it up to the city. Would you presume that the developer would just sell all of the space between houses to the road builder? Or would they work out a contract, whereby certain rights are transferred to the builder and certain rights remain with the developer? How is the developer going to convince people to move into the houses he builds, if he can’t guarantee that the road builder won’t screw them over?

          The developer might just maintain ownership of the land, including the strip used to connect to the city, and pay the road builder maintenance fees. At that point, you’re going to wonder if the evil monopolist developer will then charge exorbitant fees to the residents who live there? Well, that gets worked out when people buy their house and sign a contract. The road use fees would be similar to those charged by a home owner’s association. Alternatively, the roads might be jointly owned by the homeowners themselves.

          Again, Block is just pointing out the difficulty of getting from here to there. We don’t want the government to just auction all the roads off to Acme Inc. without any consideration of the transfer of property rights that the government should not have had in the first place.

          Philippe,

          Your comment adds nothing to the conversation and is self-refuting. But you’re always right because we’re a bunch of kooks.

        • Dan says:

          I have read the book. I have a copy right here on my bookshelf.

    • Major.Freedom says:

      “Roads are large capital investments that take a long time to pay off, so there will probably be few (even too few) investors.”

      I always see this type of argument. Too expensive, must be government run…

      But government run is as a rule more expensive. They don’t face market pressures to lower costs or increase productivity.

  9. Who will build the roads? says:

    Forgive me if you have seen this before.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11008835/Entrepreneur-builds-private-toll-road-after-landslip.html
    It seems he got fed up waiting for the highways authority to repair a landslip so he built his own detour and is charging £2 a journey on his own toll road. He’s been open less than a week. I wish him well.

  10. LI Liberty says:

    Thanks for taking Walter Block’s quote WAY out of context. He is simply saying that owners of roads do NOT have the right to affect a person’s property without the person owning the property having agreed to the terms. It is part of the non-aggression principle, that if the property owners did not want a road, or did not want the cost of the road forced on them, they are free to do so.
    If a road-owner were to build a road past your property, and charge a million dollars per usage, that renders your property valueless. And that is an assault on your property and your rights. So an agreement between the parties as to terms is required. In a voluntary system, this is an easy contract, as both sides gain – one by having access to the road, and the other by being able to profit from building and maintaining the road.
    So pretending that Dr. Block was calling for some form of governmental intervention or requirement is utter nonsense.

    • LK says:

      Except I did not pretend, imply nor state that Block was calling for “some form of governmental intervention or requirement”. You made that up.

      What I said was Block acknowledges that one of Robert’s concerns is indeed a legitimate and serious problem for anarcho-capitalism.

      • Scott D says:

        LK,

        See my response above. You misunderstand Block.

    • Samson Corwell says:

      I’d just plow right through the road.

  11. Josiah says:

    I’ve always found Tom Woods quip a bit odd. Does he think that Sears would build a store at a location with no road access?

    • Tom Woods says:

      The idea is that without government we begin, ex hypothesi, with no roads at all. so of course Sears isn’t near a road in that scenario.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        Aww man, jokes aren’t as funny when you start explaining them… Josiah ruins everything.

        Tom, I think what Josiah is saying (as he sucks the joy out of life by analyzing your quip), is that the Sears would never have been built if there were no pre-existing roads. I.e., “Without the State, who would build the stores?”

        • Josiah says:

          I think what Josiah is saying (as he sucks the joy out of life by analyzing your quip), is that the Sears would never have been built if there were no pre-existing roads

          Right. Tom seems to be imagining a world just like ours except without roads (or government). But without roads most of existing buildings couldn’t have been built in the first place.

          Josiah ruins everything.

          That’s the title of my forthcoming autobiography.

          • Grane Peer says:

            I think you are stuck on cement. As long as people want to go from one place to another the roads will form

          • Major.Freedom says:

            I don’t think that is what Tom is imagining. Exact same world but no roads? Come on.

    • khodge says:

      That’s probably quite common. Successful retail brands can read demographics and county land plans. Subdivision builders also want certain retail stores available as amenities for their buyers. Of course it is so much nicer if they can get government to lay the roads but you can be sure that they would build them if the government did not oblige. (Or train tracks if it helps them close the sale.)

      • Bob Roddis says:

        Subdivision builders will/can build the roads to the subdivision and within the subdivision. Since there will be no funny money loans, lenders and investors will have to be extra careful to make sure that their investments in buildings and land have appropriate access.

        Further, without government roads and compulsory government schools, there will be less Keynesian/”progressive”-induced suburban sprawl. A main reason why the Detroit suburbanites fled Detroit proper and sprawled out to 38 Mile Road was to get away from the Detroit public school system. Another was to invest in housing as an inflation hedge. There is no need for an inflation hedge if there is no inflation, a purposeful government policy however one defines it.

        • khodge says:

          …but we don’t get any shovel-ready jobs when we need them.

  12. Cosmo Kramer says:

    The goal isn’t to mimic the current system. This is a point statists refuse to consider and many Libertarians fail to consider.

    http://cougarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/405-1.jpg

    What a great idea! Lay down highways with no practical way of future expansion.

  13. Bob Roddis says:

    It completely possible today under statism for people to support and enforce encirclement and starvation of the victims of the encirclement.. The rules of any free or quasi free society are going to depend upon the mores of the mass of people who live there. Free access can be obtain via an enforceable long term contract. Under statism, you and your body can be snatched to die in a war and all of your property seized on a whim.

    The objection to AnCap consists mostly of insisting that once and if the great mass of humanity finally gives up on the initiation of violence they will all suddenly become petty dickheads shooting each other because the neighbor’s badminton birdie landed in their yard.

    • Samson Corwell says:

      Encirclement is imprisonment.

  14. Bob Roddis says:

    Of course, government, which caused mass slaughter of WWI and the wonders of the follow up flu pandemic, is a trusted institution necessary to prevent such pandemics.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

    The fact that private areas could simply refuse entry by those carrying disease is a silly argument.

  15. Bob Roddis says:

    Of course, without government, we’d never have access to the truth about pandemics and would be unable to protect ourselves using available information.

    To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, Britain, France, and the United States;[9][10] but papers were free to report the epidemic’s effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII), creating a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit[11] — thus the pandemic’s nickname Spanish flu.

  16. Jan Masek says:

    Some people already informed about the recent private road in england. Near the place is a town of Portishead where they banned traffic lights. Result: fluent flow of traffic, people mind other people rather than lights, less accidents. Surprise, surprise.
    http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18072259

    • Cosmo Kramer says:

      If everyone lived on social security, then any attempt to eliminate or remove SS payments is basically murder. No benefit can ever see its payment decrease or the rate of growth of the benefit decrease from the proposed rate. Anyone on government assistance is only a beneficiary because it was THE last resort. There is no dependency associated with free money. People able to work do not sign up for welfare they don’t need. Welfare means less people are poor, ceteris paribus.

      If children work, it is slavery and pure evil. (unless it is your child and they are supplying labor to you!)

      Anyone attempting to subvert the minimum wage hates poor people. Volunteers and interns don’t count, free labor rocks!

      And this is the dumbest thing I’ve read today:

      “Finally, with no government regulations whatsoever on the production and sale of not only guns, but also advanced military weapons, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, it follows that any lunatic or religious fanatic with enough money can literally go and freely buy weapons of mass destruction, without anyone stopping them, in a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist world.”

      What honest person can honestly write that and ignore the proliferation of military grade weaponry BY MAJOR GOVERNMENTS??? Seriously?

      Look at all of those free market nukes, tanks, and etc. around the world?!?!?!
      none
      zip
      nada

      • Dan says:

        “What honest person can honestly write that and ignore the proliferation of military grade weaponry BY MAJOR GOVERNMENTS??? Seriously?”

        How much you wanna bet he also supports the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan during WWII?

      • Ken B says:

        Do you think the absence of a free market in nukes is the result of states working to prevent them?
        Do you think that in the presence of such markets more groups would have nukes?

      • Bob Roddis says:

        LK relies upon alleged HISTORICAL INSTANCES where these things are left to the private sector suggest that such a system has definite disadvantages: not enough provision of such goods/services, and often privatised services which are too expensive for many people to afford (e.g., health care).

        Where there is merely price competition in healthcare (Lasik and plastic surgery), prices are reasonable. The reason other medical prices are outrageous is because there is no free market in pricing or in the supply of practitioners.

        And there is no historical instance where violent intervention had been abolished so that every large project had to have been built via voluntary cooperation. It is quite difficult for a private road system to compete with a government built and subsidized “free” road system.

        The historical anecdotal method fails again.

  17. Raja says:

    Around my home this is a private highway 407. It’s pretty expensive, and the rates change based on the timings. Rush hours are more expensive. It’s operating well and I like to have the option to get on it if my looking for a faster commute. It’s not perfect and I would prefer another owner to be put into the mix for competition. Although the main highway 401 is public owned.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_407

  18. Major.Freedom says:

    There is no such thing as a problem that only a coercive territorial monopoly of security can solve.

  19. Samson Corwell says:

    The problem with roads is that they are typically commons (though not all of them). Only one road can pass through a particular location, so there really can’t be competing “road providers”.

    • Scott D says:

      Two observations I have to make on this point:

      1) The definition of what constitutes a monopoly and how meaningful this is is entirely arbitrary. If I open the area’s only salad-only restaurant, I think it’s pretty silly to observe that I have a monopoly on restaurants that only serve salad. If people want salad, they still have many choices. Likewise, if a customer walked into my restaurant, we would not say that I have a monopoly on food service inside my restaurant. You may observe that my potential customer could simply walk out and choose a different restaurant down the street. So, too, can a potential property owner or renter choose a different piece of property based on the road provider(s) in the area, just as people often choose where to live based on the quality of schools and level of crime. This puts pressure on road providers to adopt fair practices.

      2) Road providers that own the land on which their roads are built is one possible model, but it is not the only one. Just like people who own their home also own their driveways, some landowners will choose to also own their own roads. This can also exist as a cooperative agreement between many landowners.

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