Would You Pay To Drive On A Road?

Unfortunately, the answer for everyone is yes whether you like it or not. If you buy gas, own property or a number of other actions depending on where you live, you already do pay for roads.

The next question to consider is what are you getting for your investment. Are the roads you use on a daily basis well maintained? Does traffic always flow in a smooth manner? Are they secure so that you would feel safe on them at any time of the day? Chances are, your answer to all of these questions was “No”. As an educated consumer, I believe it is my obligation to give my financial support to only those that give me the best value for my money. If a business gives me poor service, I move on to a competitor. If I receive exceptional service, I remain with that provider until the service goes down. Shouldn't this idea also apply to services I use every single day?

How would you feel if the roads you drove on were always maintained at a level of high quality? Imagine never having to dodge another pothole or struggle to see the painted lines on a rainy day! How would you feel knowing that roads would be extended when the growing traffic volume demanded it and the construction was actually done in a timely manner? Imagine no more traffic jams and congestion! How would you feel knowing your roads were always safe and sound at any time of the day with security present to actually prevent crime as opposed to investigating crime after the fact? Imagine no longer having to be worried about your loved ones when they are out on the town either alone or at late hours! Also imagine no more nitpicking law enforcement officers looking to meet quotas!

Since so much money is taken from us to provide funding for road construction and maintenance, why is it that we cannot have these very simple things? I believe it is because we have allowed and continue to allow the most inept group of people to handle this very necessary need. Namely, government. If the roads were privatized, then we would have a number of companies striving to earn our business in a free market environment. Their success and failure would solely be determined by where we were willing to spend our money. That is simply how a true free market works and is not the case with government. They take with or without our permission and spend as they see fit. There is no regard to quality because how could there be when they get their money whether we are satisfied or not? Poor service is not going to run the government out of business. Otherwise, there would be no governments.

There will be those who argue that many services have to remain in the public sector or everything will devolve into chaos (as if things are not already chaotic!). However, lets briefly examine a few industries in both the public and private sectors. Home electronics is a prime example of how successful the free market could be when allowed to freely compete for your hard-earned dollars. Consider back to your childhood and think of how various items such as radios, televisions and possibly computers were. They were bulky, of lower quality and very expensive. Now, consider those same items today. In a short 20 years, you can visit any number of stores and get state of the art equipment for a fraction of the previous price that will easily outperform your older televisions, radios or computers. Now compare these to various public sector fields such as education, the Post Office and the topic of this piece, roads. All have gotten more expensive while decreasing in both quality and efficiency. Schools are now riddled with crime, the Post Office raises its rates almost annually while managing to actually get slower and roads are...well, just horrible.

Why is it that we cannot have what certainly would be a far better option? Unfortunately, until more people begin to see that government is not what George Washington labeled as a “necessary evil” but more simply an “unnecessary evil”, we will not have this option. For years, I have been a libertarian who advocated for limited government. It wasn't until recently that even I began to finally realize that this concept of “limit government” was a fantasy and simply is not possible. Sure, we may render government to a limited state. But, for how long? After all, did we not begin with a limited government and where did that get us? Anyway, what is the difference between being beaten a limited amount of twice a week or being beaten every day of the week? Your still being beaten! As long as there is an organization that attracts the lowest moral element of society and places them in a position of control over the rest of us and renders them unaccountable for their actions, we will never see an improvement in our condition.

In the end, you just have to ask yourself which you prefer. Would you rather pay for something voluntarily and have some say in how your money is spent? Or, are you happy going along with the status quo and having money taken from you by force and with no regard to your input? Basically, do you want to finally have a taste of true liberty or do you want to go on being a mindless slave working away for the benefit of others? This argument holds true to any function that is performed by the government since there is nothing that could not be done better by a free market than a system of coercion.