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RomanDavis comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong
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Not necessarily. If you've ever been to Disney World, it's not like that. And hell, government roads in the states and Japan often dissolve into a complex and inefficient series of toll roads, at least in some areas.
I'm much more worried about uncompetitive practices, like powerful local monopolies and rent seeking behavior.
Disney world owns the land, they can do whatever they want. But here in order to make efficient roads, we have to use eminent domain. A private company wouldn't be able to do that. In order to have a governmentless society, you have to a) create a nearly impossible to maintain system of total anarchy like exists in parts of Afghanistan today or b) create a very corrupt and broken society ruled by private corporations, which is essentially a government anyways.
The Kelo case allows government to use its eminent domain powers on the behalf of private companies. Why couldn't a private road builder borrow this government power?
You actually support the Kelo case? To me that's like a Glenn Beck conspiracy theory come to life.
Yup. Mind killed. I'm out, guys. Was fun while it lasted.
Why do you assume I support the Court's decision? All I did was state that under current United States law, Houshalter's objection was possible to overcome.
The government does use private contracters in many cases for different projects. It might work on roads, I'm not sure if they already use it, but its still alot differnet from asking a private corporation to decide when and where to build roads.
They do. And private corporations or councils already decide where to build the roads for some things, it's just that all of those things only work if they're already connected to other infrastructure, which, in the US, means public federal, state and locally built roads.
Well, I think you aren't really imaginative enough in your view of anarchy, but... I'm not an anarchist and I'm not going to defend anarchy.
I disagree with the idea that efficient roads require imminent domain. It's not even hard to prove. All I have to do is give one example of a business that was made without imminent domain. The railroad system, which I brought up before.
I still mostly think a nation of private roads is a bad idea, since it's hard to imagine a way or scenario in which they wouldn't be a local monopoly.
Actually, in the U.S. at least, railroads did get lots of land grants, right-of-way rights, and similar subsidies from the government. So yeah.
Which is part of the reason I think it's a bad idea. The railroads constantly petitioned for those rights, that money and essentially leached off the American people. That's what rent seeking means.
Are railroads that good an example? Some railroads and subways were built using eminent domain although I don't know how much. And many of the large railroads built in the US in the second half of the 20th century went through land that did not have any private ownership but was given to the railroads by the government.
Railroads are a good example of a bad idea. The reason I picked them is that they were terrible, if I was going to pick innovative and creative real estate purchases by private industry, I'd be talking about McDonalds or Starbucks.
Railroads weren't a terrible idea. The canal system was a terrible idea, not railroads. Railroads created lots of industry that wouldn't have been possible without them. Many 19th century leaders thought of them as the best thing that ever happened to America.
The system of canals built in the early 19th century in the United States allowed the settlement of the old west and the development of industry in the north east (by allowing grain from western farms to reach the east). Why do you consider them a terrible idea? They were one of the centerpieces of the American System, which was largely successful.
Because they would dump the waste off the left side of the boat, and get drinking water from the right. The actual sides would switch depending on wich way they were going. I've been on those canal boats before, they are very, very slow. They had orphans walk on the side of the boat and guide the donkey (ass) that pulled it. They also took a long time to build, and didn't last that long.
This was a general problem more connected to cleanliness as a whole in 19th century America. Read a history of old New York, and realize that it took multiple plagues before they even started discussing not having livestock roaming the city.
Of course they were slow. They were an efficient method of moving a lot of cargo. Each boat moved slowly, but the total cargo moved was a lot more than they could often be moved by other means. Think of it as high latency and high bandwith.
In general 19th century attitudes towards child labor weren't great. But what does this have to do with the canal system itself? Compared to many jobs they could have, this would have been a pretty good one. And this isn't at all connected to using orphans; it isn't like the canals were Powered by the souls of forsaken children. They were simply the form of cheap labor used during that time period for many purposes.
The first point isn't relevant unless you are trying to make a detailed economic estimate of whether they paid for themselves. The second is simply because they weren't maintained after a few years once many of them were made obsolete by rail lines. If the rails had not come in, the canals would have lasted much longer.
So they're a terrible idea because of bad sanitation and child labor? In that case, the entire history of economic ideas is bad up until 1920-ish. They unquestionably achieved their goal of providing better transportation. Am I to infer that you believe that government run highways are wrong because there is trash strewn on the sides of the road?
Maybe but thats not the point. They might have worked, maybe even made a profit, but I still say that they were inefficient which is why we don't use them today (all thats left is a few large pieces of stone jutting out of rivers that passers by can't explain.)
I think they might have been been better as wither a fully government venture or a private one. When they merge, a conflict of interest becomes immediately present.