And how many small businesses in the US fail every day? No organization is always going to do what is the most economically efficient.
Private companies do make plenty of mistakes, and they go out of business. When government makes a mistake, there is a knee-jerk reaction to give them more money.
Try driving in a planned city vs. one that just sprung up naturally.
Well first off, "planning" is not something exclusive to government. Secondly, government planning via zoning laws has been one of the primary reasons why we have suburban sprawl. Look at a pre-WWII town vs. a post-war town, the difference is obvious. Driving is easier, yes; but at the cost of pedestrian activity. That's why New Urbanists want to scrap zoning laws as they exist today (except for heavy industry, for obvious reasons). The whole point is that you don't need to drive in the first place! Compare Paris to Houston, for example.
Nobody is saying that government is amazing at what it does. But private corporations suck at monopolies. They suck when people are dependent on them. They consistently **** over those individuals who are dependent on them. I'm willing to deal with some inefficiency for some control over whats going on. And when a company has a monopoly, they are likely to be less efficient than the government. The government has an interest in people enjoying that product, or the service...a company with a monopoly does not.
Most of what we learn about monopolies in high school history class is bunk. The cartels that were formed usually failed, because there was always either A) someone outside the cartel looking to get in on the action, or B) one of the cartel members weaseled out of the deal. Thus, cartels started turning towards government for protection from competition. Private companies were actually begging for some of the measures that FDR instituted with the NRA to "manage" competition.
Standard Oil is always given as an example, but their prices steadily declined. They had a "monopoly" because their prices were lower than anyone else's. (Actually it was more like 88% of the market, but whatever.) So, at the urging of companies that couldn't compete, the government intervened and took them to court. By the time the case was decided, Standard Oil had actually lost market share. The bottom line is, in some cases, a monopoly is more efficient. The main question is, are they a monopoly because they out-competed everyone, or are they a monopoly because the state granted them special priviledges?
Tell me, do you think the interstate highway has helped commerce at all?
It has helped commerce, sure; but a private road network would have done the same with less waste, and less distortion of the economy. What I mean by that is, the radically different development patterns we've seen after WWII. Big box stores and isolated corporate-built tract housing have benefited; classical town planning and mom and pop local stores have suffered. If we had to pay the true market price of roads, neighborhood developers would probably incorporate mixed retail/apartment/office space within walking distance, rather than building golf courses surrounded by McMansions. Saving $5 at Walmart wouldn't make much sense if you had to pay a $5 road toll during rush hour.
As fair as I know most bridges that use EZ pass systems are still public. The state/government has just contracted with a private company to help collect tolls.
Oh I know, I was just saying that the electronic tagging method would be the easiest way to do it. Sometimes when you talk about private roads, people have visions of manned toll booths at every street corner, heh. Paying for roads with gas taxes just doesn't make sense. It's like paying for cigarette-related expenses with a tax on lighters.
Or commuters would just come in anyway and complain bitterly about it. Thats what seems to have happened in London.
From what I've read, congestion is lower than what it was, and Londoners are starting to move closer to work. Or, work moves closer to where people live (remember of course that new development is heavily restricted in the UK).
Whatever the case, we can't simply just blindly add more lanes and more roads. If you're like me and live in a newer american city, I'm sure you can think of an example where there are 5~6 lanes of traffic on each side of the freeway, and despite that, they're perpetually clogged. You can't build your way out of traffic jams--if traffic actually does go down, then people move out further and fill it back up again. Road planners actually have a nickname for this phenomenon, I forget the word for it though.
A traffic jam is really just an example of an economic shortage. You can't have unlimited road space, although god knows we've tried. And the best way to solve shortages is to charge the market price. You can run "please carpool!" public service ads all day long, but the only thing people really pay attention to is prices.
