Would all roads be owned privately in a purely capticalist system? Would all roads be toll roads?
Would all roads be owned privately in a purely capticalist system? Would all roads be toll roads?
Yes and no.
Yes, all roads would be privately owned – because all property would be privately owned and roads would be property.
The owners of the roads would decide whether to charge tolls or not. (The courts would have to decide the levels of the tolls – if any – for people trying to get to their own property; but I see that as a sort of common law type of legal problem, not a philosophical problem.)
An owner of a shopping center probably would not charge a toll for the roads leading to his shopping center. Offering free parking, a similar idea, is an attraction to customers and thus profits.
There is an easier and better way than having courts decide. Owners of roads could each contribute their percentace to forming a private “DMV” for the purpose of issuing drivers licenses. The cost of these drivers licenses (it wouldnt be any more than they cost now) would be a more logical method of payment than tolls, which tend to bottle up traffic and would be very inconvenient within or around cities.
There is an easier and better way than having courts decide. Owners of roads could each contribute their percentace to forming a private “DMV” for the purpose of issuing drivers licenses. The cost of these drivers licenses (it wouldnt be any more than they cost now) would be a more logical method of payment than tolls, which tend to bottle up traffic and would be very inconvenient within or around cities.
I don’t understand how this would work. If five owners own a stretch of road and I live near the middle of the road, what happens? What if I don’t want to buy the “driver’s license”? I have a right to access to my property. Say I won’t buy your license. If you won’t let me through your check point, you are attacking my property rights.
And what happens if one of the owners of this road says, no, he wants to charge a toll, while the others go with the license idea? Who settles the disagreement?
Further, what about proportionality? Would the person who drives 100k miles per year pay the same fee as the one who drives back and forth once a week to a nearby grocery store?
Here is one fictionalized account of how the market might arrange it. Needless to say, this is just one potential scenarios that markets might create. It is impossible to say what arrangement free markets would actually create.
2008 Edit: I have posted an updated version of this post on my blog .
Several major transport investment firms pay hundreds of road-building contractors to build a honeycomb of speedways covering the country. The speedways function as rapid transit hubs and provide access to traditional flattop as well as maglev and airborne routes concentrated in and around urban areas. To save costs, the road-building ventures sign deals with property owners to offer them various transportation rights, which usually end up on the road rights market until purchased by a community that desires access to the national network. Just as with data networks, the speedways inevitably find it more profitable to create free interconnects to their competitors. One or more integrated scanners provided by several national firms are located at every exit and entrance of a speedway to read travel passes that provide a given user’s account information. It is common for long-distance travelers to switch among several travel passes just as they would with credit cards (many credit cards also function as travel passes) to take advantage of benefits, discounts, free miles, or for privacy reasons.
When it comes to developing new routes, road builders have found many methods to make a mockery of the old fallacy of the “natural monopoly” in the road market – even though stubborn property owners and competitors try their best to outfox them. They can build around, under, and even over other roads and properties – usually after getting judicial insurance to back up their claims. More often than not, the insurance warrantee is sufficient evidence for the property owner to negotiate a compromise rather than miss a profit opportunity. The most common strategy however, is the traditional purchase option contract, whether obtained prior to construction of a roadway or as part of a contract inherited by the owner when he first purchased his property.
The market for transportation within cities and communities is highly complex and specialized. In large urban areas, a city corporation owned by residents and investors is charged with providing a few basic services, such as trunk city roads, speedway off-ramps, firehouses, and emergency services. Smaller communities tend to provide a greater variety of services, as the stock prices of citycorps tend to vary inversely with the number of industries they attempt to manage. Within the many residential townships of a given city, division roads are owned by a combination of investors and lot owners, depending on their age and wealth of the township. Smaller communities pay the city to manage their roads while larger ones contract with road maintenance outfits on their own. The city itself contracts with road builders, maintainers, highway patrols, insurers, and other services necessary to provide these services. Within commercial sectors, transportation is provided by the real-estate moguls or corporations that own or prospect that sector or specialized commercial management services.
The creation of both commercial sectors and residential complexes follows a similar pattern: after a property development company has prospected a sector for development, it will seek out the purchase and contracts options necessary to develop it. Options with speedways, city trunk lines, utilities, communications providers, and security firms are prepared and invoked once development begins. The sector is sold to individual investors who agree to the building and land use codes established by the developer. Once a sector is commercially viable, the developer will lease or sell management rights to a sector management service or the city itself.
I know of no “right to access ones property.” Does a man in prison who owns a home on malibu beach have a right to access his property? In this country, you have a right “to own prperty.” If and when you access it is a contextual issue. When you board an airplane, do you have a right to have access to your hunting rifle?
I’m not saying that a road owner would have no right to put up a toll booth, and, with todays scanning methods, it might not even cause heavy traffic delays, but why on earth would anyone sit in traffic when they know of another conglomerate who has already collected their fee at the beggining of the year and offers no heavy delays on their roads?
I know of no “right to access ones property.” Does a man in prison who owns a home on malibu beach have a right to access his property? In this country, you have a right “to own prperty.” If and when you access it is a contextual issue. When you board an airplane, do you have a right to have access to your hunting rifle?
If you own a piece of land you have a right to access it. Nobody can purchase all the land around your property and block your access to it. You may have to work out a “right of way” agreement with other landowners, but nobody can stop you from accessing your property.
It is superfluous to try to use an imprisoned man as a counter example to this because so many other rights have been taken away from him. As for the airplane example, nobody is preventing you from accessing your hunting rifle. If you board an airplane, you have to abide by the airline’s policies regarding the use of their property, one of which is the prohibition of firearms.
If you own a piece of land you have a right to access it. Nobody can purchase all the land around your property and block your access to it. You may have to work out a “right of way” agreement with other landowners, but nobody can stop you from accessing your property.
It is superfluous to try to use an imprisoned man as a counter example to this because so many other rights have been taken away from him. As for the airplane example, nobody is preventing you from accessing your hunting rifle. If you board an airplane, you have to abide by the airline’s policies regarding the use of their property, one of which is the prohibition of firearms.
You just said it yourself: "You may have to work out a “right of way” agreement.
An agreement presumes two parties agreeing. What if they don’t agree???
If you say an agreement must be made, then an agreement must be made.
But what if one isnt? Do you have the right to force an agreement??
If you won’t let me through your check point, you are attacking my property rights.
Can you elaborate on this point? This has come up before in a conversation I had with a friend and I didn’t have any answers.
How is it a violation of property rights to surround someone with land I purchased and then refusing access to them, thus trapping them. What is the specific form of ‘initiation of force’ taking place here?
There already are roads you have to pay for if you want to use them. Private roads would be no exception. Some primitive methods of how to pay for using less significant roads can easily be conceived. As for safety, it is well known that it depends on the drivers that use them. Road companies could deal with that by placing private security on certain random points of the roads, which would see that the drivers who violate the terms of service (speed limits, etc.) are properly punished.
As new technologies become available, however, things like that could be dealt with in another fashion. Digital devices could replace security and, properly programmed, could even get the reckless driver’s vehicle off the road by force, and then his reckless behaviour can be reported to proper authorities where he can be punished - not for reckless driving, but for violating the contract between himself and the company whose roads he’s been using, in which proper speed limits can be defined.
What exactly the companies will charge and how much, is left in their own hands. They can as well offer free trials of their roads, if they think that would be wise.
The laws of the market, in an ideal Capitalism, would be preserved and the competing companies would try to take hold of that market. Therefore, not much to say here, unless you are planning to write a novel or a treatise.
You just said it yourself: "You may have to work out a “right of way” agreement.
An agreement presumes two parties agreeing. What if they don’t agree???
If you say an agreement must be made, then an agreement must be made.
But what if one isnt? Do you have the right to force an agreement??
If two parties cannot work out an agreement, that is where that courts come in. Through the legal system you do indeed have a right to force an agreement.
To give a concrete example, right now I am working in the land department of an oil and gas company. It is a very frequent that for a given piece of land the person who owns the surface of the land (0 to 200 ft in depth) is different from the person who owns the mineral rights to the land (200 ft and below). An oil and gas company will set up a lease with the mineral owner to drill into the land to exact oil or gas from the mineral depths but they have to work out an agreement with the surface owner to set up the equipment on their land. Most of the time the surface owners are more than happy to allow the oil company to operate on their land because they are compensated very well monetarily for the inconvenience. But in cases where an agreement cannot be reached, it has to be taken to the courts or arbitration. The oil company has a right to the land below the surface and the surface owner cannot prevent them from accessing it.
A right is not something that has to be agreed upon.
How is it a violation of property rights to surround someone with land I purchased and then refusing access to them, thus trapping them. What is the specific form of ‘initiation of force’ taking place here?
You have just about answered your own question. If you have trapped them (preventing them from leaving) or barred them (from entering) then you are preventing them from using their property as members of a freely trading society. Rights exist only in society. No society, no rights. (The issue wouldn’t even come up.)
The right to property is a right to use property. No use, no right. If you can’t get access to your property, how can you use it? And if someone prevents you from leaving, then he is attacking another right: liberty.
A right is not something that has to be agreed upon.
Assuming you are not an anarchist, how would you resolve disputes – as would arise potentially in the case mentioned earlier, where surface rights and mineral rights apply to the same “land”?
The oil company has a right to the land below the surface and the surface owner cannot prevent them from accessing it.
By digging a hole through his property? Of course he can! That’s the whole point of private ownership. He who owns the oil will just have to find another way to get to it.
True, it is his oil, and he has right to profit from it, but not by sacrificing the rights of others. The courts that try to force an agreement in such a case is counterproductive - instead of protecting rights, it is violating them.
It has been said before, but I will repeat it once more - there is no “right to access your property.” You can see already from this example, that it is in contradiction with other rights, which have been proven to be “legitimate.” (true)
Assuming you are not an anarchist, how would you resolve disputes – as would arise potentially in the case mentioned earlier, where surface rights and mineral rights apply to the same “land”?
The “dispute” arises only in lack of an Objective viewpoint. Such a dispute is without grounds and should not continue. The owner of the land has every right to deny the oil company access to their oil, through his property. The resolution to this problem then, is not a philosophical question, but a technical one.
The “dispute” arises only in lack of an Objective viewpoint. Such a dispute is without grounds and should not continue. The owner of the land has every right to deny the oil company access to their oil, through his property. The resolution to this problem then, is not a philosophical question, but a technical one.
The disagreement here comes from your idea that there is “no right to access property”. I say there is a right to access property and it is derived from the property ownership rights. What would be the purpose of owning property if you cannot use and benefit from it? If someone is using their property to block access to your property they are violating your property rights.
If someone is using their property to block access to your property they are violating your property rights.
In my opinion this issue it is more or less along the lines of trying to make property rights work for savages and the fact remains they don’t apply. What I mean by this is that a society which recognizes individual property rights must already be rationally selfish – the people of this society have to a large extent, implicitly or explicitly, discovered a proper morality.
If a time comes when people treat property rights like pieces on a Go board and make efforts to suffocate each other, buy the roads leading to a city then deny passage, hoard land an arrest all trespassers – well that society is rotting from the inside out. Why is it rot? Because starving a city, denying passage at a reasonable toll or arresting some picnickers are not rationally selfish things to do – they are stupid things to do – and the only way people that stupid could acquire enough wealth to play such a dirty game would be from some guilt-milking altruist policy… but nonetheless these scenarios have become example candy for altruists who claim that selfishness means sacrificing others to oneself. Grr… Grrr Maximus!
Anyways, if a right to access your property means in effect the right to dispose of someone else’s – then by no means is it a right.
Assuming you are not an anarchist, how would you resolve disputes – as would arise potentially in the case mentioned earlier, where surface rights and mineral rights apply to the same “land”?
Why would you even bring that term anywhere near me???
I would resolve disputes in court. Just like you.
All I am saying is that rights are either rights or they are not. They don’t get agreed upon. They are inherent in our nature as reasoning human beings.
Buying a piece of property does not grant you any new rights, like the right to trespass.
The imaginary situation which has been brought up here, where one owns a house and then somehow someone buys up all surrounding land (from whom?) (why wasn’t my land bought also?) is ridiculous. Free men have never behaved that way. Use of land is usually open to bidding. If it is not, it is not. If you wake up one day and discover that irrational people have bought up all the land around you and don’t want you to cross theirs, and still they don’t want to buy your one parcel as well, then we will discuss that nightmare when it happens. But that discussion is really off the topic.
P.S. Also, Mr. Laughlin, I am sure your viewpoints are well-respected around here, but I would like to point one thing out: For someone who doesn’t hesitate to point out when someone forgets to use a capital letter “O” or some other small details, you seem to forget about some obvious courtesies that people here generally extend one another. That is, they don’t make ad hominem attacks or silly arguments from intimidation. When you open with:" Assuming you aren’t an anarchist. . ." implies that somehow, I am behaving like one. If you disagree with this assesment of mine, then just imagine if I were to open my lines of communication with members of this board with lines like this from now on:
“Assuming you aren’t a moron. . .”
“Assuming you aren’t a socialist. . .”
“Assuming you aren’t a social metaphysician. . .”
“Assuming you aren’t a christian fundamentalist . .”
Please, the fact that I am here should grant that assumption. And even if the assumption isn’t warranted, there is no substantive need for you to open with that nonsense. I am quite aware of my views. I am an Objectivist. That means 100% Objectivist. I have read every word that Ayn Rand ever published, and every word of hers that has been published by others. I understand and agree with every single word in the entire body of Objectivism. I have studied it since 1990. Even if you are older, that doesn’t grant you one iota of license to condescend.
The issue was a simple one. Either rights are absolute or not. The right to property is not being questioned. You simply said that there is a “right” to access ones property. I said that “right” to access is contextual. If you have a yard that boders mine and I am standing in the street, and it would be quicker for me to get home by walking through your yard, I still don’t have the “right” to access my property in that way. There are countless other situations in life where one owns property, but does not have unrestricted or unqualified access to it.
The disagreement here comes from your idea that there is “no right to access property”. I say there is a right to access property and it is derived from the property ownership rights. What would be the purpose of owning property if you cannot use and benefit from it? If someone is using their property to block access to your property they are violating your property rights.
Anyways, if a right to access your property means in effect the right to dispose of someone else’s – then by no means is it a right.
I agree with the entire post made by GoodOrigamiMan. I was, however, just trying to clear up the issue with oil. Such scenario is possible without the society having to rot away. Someone may have built a resort or a shopping centre above the reserves of oil, without knowing that there really is any oil. What Bryan is suggesting that he should give that up for “the common good” because there is oil and his land is a good one for drilling, and, to put in some paranoia to the argument, this may be the last resource of oil on Earth, and we absolutely need it badly.
The individual who owns the land above the reserves of oil has every right to deny access to that oil. But he only has the power to do so within the borders of his property. This is one of the most basic rights of man and denying this would be denying his freedom and denying him to live. There is no disagreement, Bryan. You are in error, because the “right to access property,” most clearly in this case, shows that it is in contradiction with this basic man’s right. Read the chapters of Peikoff’s OPAR which speak of Concept-formation, Objectivity and Reason. Peikoff there clearly states that all new knowledge must be logically consistent with all the rest that is already acquired and validated. Trying to make such an arbitrary insertion of a single right, as you suggest “the right to access one’s property” destroys the whole idea of concept-formation. The system of knowledge is compromised because it is no longer logically consistent and it threatens to fall apart, and with that man’s ability to survive wanes.
Rights are not arbitrary statements, and no man, no need of man, and no court should have the authority to claim otherwise.