Roads

Political Philosophy
41

Some other person coming along and blocking or entrapping you is. If you already know you will not be able to access the property before you buy the property, then you ought not to have any claim to access it in violation of others’ rights once you purchase it.

Transportation, specifically a road, is a service not a right. If that service was there when you moved in then removed no ‘rights’ have been violated. It would be no different from moving next to a store before it closes.

When the time comes that you are surrounded by four unreasonable liberals you must act according – but deriving from that situation that you need a right to access your property means that you’re going to be treating everyone like they are unreasonable liberals.

Roads are an extremely important service but we have no right to a road as we have no right to a car, food, or clean water. We have a right to produce these things, to keep what we produce, and partake in free trade. The paranoia surrounding the thought that roads could be privatized and all public property abolished comes from the premise that somehow we need public property, that somehow we must have a right to something we haven’t earned in order to survive - that last bit of protection from absolute justice.

42

Well I hope we get this sorted out before roads go out of style. <_<

43

I think we are all missing something here. If someone really was as malicious as to trap someone to a few acres of land by buying all the land around his and then denying him the right of passage, isn’t he then comitting a violation of the right to live? Isn’t he actually comitting murder? And wouldn’t the poor trapped man have the right to violate the malicious person’s property rights in a pure act of self-defense? I think that the right to life takes priority over the right to own property, and if someone violates another man’s right to life with his property, his liberty and his property should be taken away!

Bryan,

No matter what the “special cases” might be, the general principle always stays the same. You can’t force someone to give up his right to property if he doesn’t want to, unless that property threatens someone’s more fundamental right, namely - right to live. To force him to do so means to sacrifice his right to own property for the sake of someone else.

44

GoodOrigamiMan, I’m not talking about a person’s right to have or build a road on someone else’s property. I’m talking about a person’s right not to be forcibly barred by others from accessing his property. Buying up a ten-yard-wide loop of land completely surrounding a person’s property and forbidding him to cross it is akin to buying up the same land and laying layers of death traps such as land mines on every square inch of it, and inviting him to cross freely. It’s also akin to building a steel-and-concrete box completely surrounding his property from all sides and topping it with barbed wire, effectively putting him in a prison while never laying a finger on him. That, in whichever guise, is initiation of force. While no-one has a “right” or a claim on others to a car, food, or clean water, everyone does have a right not to be forcibly barred from obtaining those things: and threatening a person with death for moving outside an allotted area of land is forcibly barring that person from obtaining those necessities vital to his life.

If one puts oneself into that situation, then things are different.

45

You would be stupid to buy a piece of property without securing also a reliable means of accessing it. To expect the government to give you a guaranteed “right of way” is an abdication of your responsibility to make rational purchases.

46

All I need is the side facing the road – and since all that land is owned by me up until to land owned by the roadman I have very little to fear.

The liberal could buy the part of the road alongside your property.

Anyways you can be my guest trying to enforce property rights for a 1-inch-strip.

[…]

I’ve already mentioned that nobody is going to starve over this and why.  :frowning:

You mean you would violate the liberal’s right to his property? Since when does your need for a good meal trump the rights of another person?

If you attempt to cross the line, the liberal could shoot you for trespassing, and–in this hypothetical society–no court could punish him for it, since all he was doing is defending his property.

47

If you attempt to cross the line, the liberal could shoot you for trespassing, and–in this hypothetical society–no court could punish him for it, since all he was doing is defending his property.

Perhaps I have lost track of the circumstances here. Is a laissez-faire society being assumed here? If so, are you saying a property owner has a right to kill anyone who trespasses on his property – even if the trespass in no one way threatens the property owner?

If a hunter, in a rural area, mistakenly crossed your property at the far corner, away from your house, would the home owner have a “right” to kill him? Or how about a child who was exploring in the woods nearby and wandered onto the property? Okay to shoot him – and no legislator, prosecutor, or court would see anything wrong with that?

48

All of this is very simple.

If the roads are someday to be privatized, presumably the government must auction them off, or some other type of sale. Well, one of the coniditions of the sale would be that the buyer of a road or a group of roads would have to also have to agree to a stipulation that his prices must be uniform (and by that I don’t mean the same for everybody, neccessarily) they could be set by a variety of factors (veh. weight, tolls,annual odometer reading, etc.). The buyer would also have to agree that he doesn’t have the right to deny any U.S. citizen who has reached driving age and pays the fee, however established, access to the roads.

There is ABSOLUTELY no sense in discussing what would happen if the roads in the U.S. had always been private, with no safeguards in place against abuse, and somehow someone wakes up one day with his house completely surrounded by people who won’t let him on or off of his property. (Read: The Ethics of Emergencies)

But, to be sure that things run smoothly, if anyone wants to take a chance and build a house up in the hills where there are currently no roads, then the rule would have to be: Let the buyer beware. Or the buyer of this secluded property could just build his own road as well that links up to an existing road.

And, let me add that if someone here comes up with an imaginary nightmare-like problem that I have now overlooked, I GUARANTEE that I will have an adequate solution within ONE HOUR of reading the post.

49

Perhaps I have lost track of the circumstances here. Is a laissez-faire society being assumed here?

Yes, and there is an extra assumption: That it is legal to buy up property around a man’s home and prohibit him from crossing. (My goal is the reductio ad absurdum of this latter assumption.)

If a hunter, in a rural area, mistakenly crossed your property at the far corner, away from your house, would the home owner have a “right” to kill him? Or how about a child who was exploring in the woods nearby and wandered onto the property? Okay to shoot him – and no legislator, prosecutor, or court would see anything wrong with that?

Of course not. But in our case we are not talking about mistaken crossing, nor about children. You are a grown-up and the bad guy has let you know very explicitly that the property is his and you must not cross it under any circumstances. He has marked it very clearly, so there is no way you can wander on it by mistake. And he has emphatically indicated that he intends to use deadly force if you trespass in spite of all these warnings.

50

You mean you would violate the liberal’s right to his property? Since when does your need for a good meal trump the rights of another person?

Well it looks like I have trapped myself… go figure.

All in all I think these hypothetical situations about trapping people by surrounding them with private property, are ridiculous – and the consequences of accepting the argument as valid seems to be my current situation.

There is no right to access your land thru anyone else’s land! Grr… I’m going to resort to grr intimidation now. Grrrrr! :thumbsup:

51

Funny how no one paid attention to my last post, not even to say that I am utterly wrong.

52

Funny how no one paid attention to my last post, not even to say that I am utterly wrong.

I could “grr” at you if you’d like… :thumbsup:

But in all seriousness, I have become dissatisfied on my thinking so I’m going to take a break. I am still sure of my first couple posts but I lost it in the last couple… I’ll be back.

53

Would all roads be owned privately in a purely capticalist system? Would all roads be toll roads?

I’ve read through this whole thread but it digresses so far from the original question I need to start at the beginning with my thought. (Hello by the way, I’m new)

Wouldn’t we want government to still secure roads as a part of protection? Borders and such. Not to mention speed limits (I’m sure a great marketing ploy would be unlimited roads-but how safe?) the real issue to me here seems to be that this is still a government function we would voluntarily pay into so as to have access to all roads (as we do now) and not be bartering every few miles for the price of our commute. It is included in my mind to protection because criminals use roads, police and fire need roads, and everybody needs unrestricted access. Otherwise wouldn’t you end up with poorer citizens restricted to one section because they couldn’t afford the roads to get out? And don’t you think it would result in a ridiculous array of thouroughfares that go nowhere with no compatible design?

Forgive my naivete, but that’s how it appears to me straight off.

54

Dominique, I will not answer all of the questions in your post, except to say that collective ownership of roads is not the function of the government. The purpose of this post is to ease your mind on the economics of private transportation.

First off, the goal of private roadway companies would be to ensure as many customers and income as possible. To achieve this they would need to keep tolls low, keep roads safe, ease congestion, and keep payment simplified.

In the case of toll highways, there are already electronic passes that bill your credit card when you pass under a radio frequency identifier. You purchase the cheap and simple RFID from the company, put money in an account with them, and you are able to drive on and off of toll highways with no congestion and lines. Any company to implement this type of service on the free market would earn more customers.

On streets in commercial areas, the businesses in the district will probably pay to maintain the roads themselves, and will not place any charges to drive through them. Their incentive is to get customers to their stores, not to drive them away.

In residential neighbourhoods, roads will generally be built by developers and landowners. In my case, I live on a privately built and maintained road sustained by the strata fees required by people living in the condos. It snowed today, and a backhoe was hired to clear the snow early in the morning.

It is in a road company’s interest to connect drivers smoothly with other roads, even if they are going to a competitors roadway–otherwise he would have no customers. To expand his market, he wants to connect to as many other roads as possible, and make his roads inviting to drivers.

Eliminating the enormous subsidy for automobile orientated transportation and delimiting regulation on other forms of transport will spur fast, cheap, and convenient methods of travel. If the market is there, a bullet-train will be built by a company looking for a profit (like Dagny did). When rail-transit systems are built, there is little need to worry about compatability with other companies because they are point-to-point transportation.

What I find enormously backward are the regulations on vans and cabs in North America. Go to Asia, and a man with a van (or even motorcycle taxi) can make a living driving people to and fro. You often pay only half a buck to drive half way through the city. I’ve heard that business liscences for cab drivers in New York are thousands of dollars now. I’m sure the same is with buses, otherwise we would see more private bussing like in other countries, rather than almost purely government subsidized public transit.

[Edit]

[This bridge is completely privately made]

[Who Cooked the Jam? An article on roadways by the Von Mises Institute]

55

Would all roads be owned privately in a purely capticalist system? Would all roads be toll roads?

Yes, all roads will be privately owned. No, I think our legal system will come-up with a payment schedule plan for every commuter who will use a privately owned road. In the Philippines, where I grew up, every city has various private subdivisions. Each subdivision has their own guard posts to guard entries in each subdivision. Homeowners need to have a car sticker to identify their residence within the subdivision. If you are a guest, the guard usually calls the homeowner, whom you are visiting within their subdivision, for security reasons. Some subdivisions demand a minimal fee. Some subdivisions just check your license and purpose in entering in their subdivision.

56

Dominique, I will not answer all of the questions in your post, except to say that collective ownership of roads is not the function of the government. The purpose of this post is to ease your mind on the economics of private transportation.

Thank you very much. That was illuminating. When I first saw the question posed I was intrigued but had trouble getting into the thread in the way that it progressed. It makes more sense to me now. I still have questions, but I think on reflection I can probably answer them myself. Thanks again :wink:

57

Funny how no one paid attention to my last post, not even to say that I am utterly wrong.

I did read your post, but I think you are quite right–that’s why I preferred to concentrate my efforts on trapping GoodOrigamiMan! :wink:

If you insist, I will make one comment though:

I think that the right to life takes priority over the right to own property

I wouldn’t say that rights can be prioritized. A properly defined right can never conflict with another person’s right, as rights are not conditional but absolute. Since there can be no conflict, there is no need for priorities. If the exercise of a purported “right” would violate a right of another person, then the former is not a right in the first place.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a properly defined right is a right to a certain set of actions, not to a state of affairs. So you don’t look at a map that shows who owns what and ask, “Is this a rightful pattern of ownership?” Instead, you look at a proposed action, for example the action of purchasing a block of land and banning GoodOrigamiMan from it, and ask, “Would that be a rightful action?”

Now, suppose that GoodOrigamiMan wants to build a homestead in an undeveloped–and therefore unowned–area somewhere in the mountains. Does he have a right to do that? Sure, he does.

After that, Michael Moore goes there and builds his own homestead to the north of GoodOrigamiMan’s and doesn’t allow GoodOrigamiMan to pass through it. Can he rightfully do that? Yes, he can.

Next, Moore builds a studio to the east of GoodOrigamiMan’s place, and likewise keeps it private. Is he within his rights? Sure enough, he is.

Then, he erects a lookout tower to the west of GoodOrigamiMan’s property, and also makes it entirely private. Can he do this by right? He absolutely can.

Finally, Mike wants to build a car park to the south of our friend’s home, similarly denying him passage through it, so that he would be completely surrounded by property inaccessible to him. Would THIS action be rightful? No, it wouldn’t, since it would violate GoodOrigamiMan’s right to his liberty. Mr. Moore’s rights end where Mr. Origami’s rights begin.

58

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? 

Admittedly, this is conjecture, but the right to property would be pretty meaningless if you could not get to it, and the right to access it might stem from this fact.

People in prison suffer a loss of rights in general, so it would not apply to them.

The right of the airline to require you to meet the terms of its “contract” for providing transport services overrides your right to always carry your rifle.

59

[This bridge is completely privately made]

Glad to hear that. It’s always a bit of a drag to hear some nice new structure or facility is funded by taxation. I bet people will travel there just to see and cross that bridge…

60

If you insist, I will make one comment though:

I wouldn’t say that rights can be prioritized. A properly defined right can never conflict with another person’s right, as rights are not conditional but absolute. Since there can be no conflict, there is no need for priorities. If the exercise of a purported “right” would violate a right of another person, then the former is not a right in the first place.

LOL! :slight_smile:

I asked for this, right?

Anyway, what I meant to say was that no one can use his property to threaten another man’s life. I see that my statement was wrong in the sense that no one can claim another man’s property because he needs it to live. I guess I didn’t have this inversion of my original thought in mind, which caused me to write what I did.