It's an interesting effect, and fairly obvious once you hear the explanation the first time. This article focuses primarily on the effect that roads have on their own congestion, but I think you can do similar analysis on the effects of roads on many other things.
This sort of idea is discussed a lot in the libertarian community. I don't intend to make the conversation about that; I just want to mention the ideas because they're similar. Basically, a common and oft-parodied criticism of libertarianism is "but who will build the roads," implying that massive road infrastructure is something that can only be produced by government through taxation and eminent domain.
One common retort by libertarians is to come up with a bunch of proposals for how private enterprise could create a very similar road system to what we have today. I think that's the wrong approach. I'm more interested in the ways that government roads, no matter how well-intended they are, can lead to inefficiency and perverse incentives.
I think the biggest and easiest argument to make is an environmental one, which is somewhat ironic, considering that libertarians are generally considered (by themselves and others) as a threat to environmentalism. And yet, I wager that public road infrastructure is one of the most obvious cases where government programs lead to (probably unintended) environmental problems. The interstate highway system is a massive blow to railroads, which have a vastly smaller environmental impact than road freight. The public road funds essentially subsidize the price of fast shipping via truck. Big trucks are probably responsible for a disproportionately large portion of road wear relative to the funding of roads that they provide.
Another interesting effect is that urban sprawl probably wouldn't happen without roads which are primarily produced by government. This is probably another big threat to the environment, since I would imagine that suburbs pollute much more per capita than urban areas because of the necessity to use automobiles.
The Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel is one of the largest bridge-tunnels in existence. It's 17.6 miles long, and was financed by toll-backed bonds, and continues to be maintained with toll money. The point being that large infrastructure projects can be financed by the free market, provided they require the users to pay for them in the future, allowing investors to profit.
Here in the DC region, demand-based pricing was used in the widening of interstate 495. It works. My favorite aspect is that buses and vehicles carrying 3 or more people can use the lanes for free, while all the assholes riding by themselves have to pay handsomely for the privilege of creating congestion at rush hour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_HOT_lanes
One of the funny things about the libertarian idea of making everyone pay for road use is that technology has made it much more feasible. We don't have to use toll booths anymore. Instead just stick a transponder on the window. One of the best remedies for situations in which overuse of a public good is causing environmental problems is to make people pay to use said good.
Everyone paying for road use is not a libertarian idea. It's the basis of the gas tax, for instance, which funded the Eisenhower interstate system--not usually held up by libertarians as their ideal.
Likewise the Chesapeake bridge-tunnel was built by a government organization funded by municipal bonds. Bond funding does not imply private ownership and is not really a libertarian idea.
The 495 HOT lanes were a public/private partnership, so again not exactly a libertarian ideal. Also, to date they are underperforming financially.
The best example of a libertarian-type road project in the DC area is probably the Dulles Greenway, which was built and is operated by an entirely private company.
I think the "roads" problem is just a simple and easy example of the general class of collective action problems that require a single authority to manage. Here is another example: the design of a network cannot be modified arbitrarily.
It's rational for a private company to insert a road into a system to benefit itself at the disadvantage to others (cf. negative externalities). Indeed it's rational for several to do this making ad-hoc modifications to the network, the net result of this is significant inefficiency.
Collective action problems and (negative) externalities are the main cases where we require a single-point-of-trust / authority to coordinate a system. Libertarians say that private companies can do this, but when you ask "well what do these companies look like?" you invariably get something like a small government.
The moral question then arises: we have these single-points-of-trust, do we have any democratic control over them? The answer, in a libterian system is No (money != vote).
The libertarian solution to these problems then, seems to me, to hand them over to private tyrannies with no public accountability to perform largely the same function as a government. Its at this point the "NOPE!! LEAVE ME ALONE!" tends to come out.
The collective action problem sounds good in theory, but the concept breaks down when you realize that the formation of a government (at least a democracy or republic) is also a collective action. The idea is that we can't form a market to efficiently create certain things like roads, but that somehow we can form a government which can efficiently create those things. Market failures, like the failure to produce a public good, are not defeated or circumvented by forming a government, because government is also a public good.
> It's rational for a private company to insert a road into a system to benefit itself at the disadvantage to others (cf. negative externalities). Indeed it's rational for several to do this making ad-hoc modifications to the network, the net result of this is significant inefficiency.
It's also rational for a government to insert a road into a system to benefit "itself" (i.e. politicians, construction companies that are "friendly" with government, etc.) at the disadvantage to others. What is your response to my environmental argument? That's an argument about specific negative externalities that are produced by government that I would not expect to be produced by private infrastructure.
> The moral question then arises: we have these single-points-of-trust, do we have any democratic control over them?
It's just as reasonable to ask that about government roads. Does government's decisions about roads reflect the desires of the population? I haven't seen any data, so I don't really know, but I would suspect the answer to be mostly no. But markets often do have the quality that their products reflect the desires of the population.
> The collective action problem sounds good in theory, but the concept breaks down when you realize that the formation of a government (at least a democracy or republic) is also a collective action.
Formation of a government may have these problems, but it's done once every now and then, and then in between we have stable periods of consensus. Yes, some will disagree with this, and some with that decision, but your solution involves spreading this same mess, akin to government formation, over every single activity where a consensus would be beneficial!
Your parent didn't claim government was the most efficient way. Your parent just claimed the public has more control over government, than a company operating as a pseudo-government serving similar functions.
Does government's decisions about roads reflect the desires of the population? I haven't seen any data, so I don't really know, but I would suspect the answer to be mostly no.
> Your parent just claimed the public has more control over government, than a company operating as a pseudo-government serving similar functions.
And I think the claim that public has more control over government needs to be backed up by some sort of data. Of course, you'd need to define the term "pseudo-government" as well.
> Well, if that isn't a convincing argument...
It's not meant to be a convincing argument. That's why I explicitly said that I don't have any data, and that I simply suspect something. Do you have any data? There are plenty of studies on whether the public approves of the general behavior of its government, and at least in the USA the numbers aren't great. My suspicion is that the numbers wouldn't be better when it comes to roads, based on the frequent mismanagement of roads and the number of complaints I here about roads. Again, not data, just suspicion.
> And I think the claim that public has more control over government needs to be backed up by some sort of data. Of course, you'd need to define the term "pseudo-government" as well.
For pseudo-gov read "multinational". As far as data goes, I cant think of a principle more well-evidenced. A single person who is not a consumer of a corporation has no influence whatsoever over the decision making of that corporation.
I can go to my local representative and act in my local community (petition, etc.) in which my local representative has a stake and he can do things for me.
The tremendous amount of public shaming the government goes through (compared to private corps) should be evidence enough that there's a considerable amount of public accountability.
You're still not showing any data, and I would question your conclusions. Just because it seems like you have a say in politics doesn't mean you actually do. If, for example, public policy has no or little positive correlation with public desires, or the public is extremely disappointed with government (both of which are the case in many polls and studies), I would question the presumption that people really have a voice in politics.
The 407 in Ontario is privatized (well, PPP, actually) and they add lanes all the time. The traffic is almost never gridlocked.
The main reason highways exhibit the behaviour is because they are not load-costed, as the 407 is. The cost per peak traveler on the 401 (an alternative-ish public highway of similar size / etc) is around $10k per car per year, due to the immense cost of building new lanes, the slow down that costs, and the additional slowdown of everyone else on the road. And that cost was when I was studying engineering back in 2007, so it's almost surely higher.
I think "cost per peak traveler" is a pretty useless metric. But even still the math doesn't work. 401 is 4+ lanes, 500 miles long, meaning peak travelers must be up near 500,000 cars. Now, apparently the Ministry of Transportation maintains the 401 (and much more than that) and their entire estimated budget for 2013-2014 is $1.5 billion.
Cost per use seems a lot more interesting. It's hard to say exactly how many cars ride it every day, but Wiki has a table of average daily utilization at 11 points along the system. If we simply add those up, then in 2008 they counted an average of 1.1m cars per day on the highway, or 401 million riders per year. This almost certainly significantly understates utilization.
If the Ministry of Transportation spent their entire budget on the 401, that would work out to about $3.70 per ride. In reality they are probably investing less than $0.25 / ride to maintain and extend the highway.
There is very little, perhaps nothing, that can compare to the cost-benefit of building freeways for your nation.
> can lead to inefficiency and perverse incentives.
What is the alternative. Can you show a single developed country with a successful private transportation system? You talk about trains. Most countries with functional and effective train system are not libertarian today. In most places they are mandated, standardized, subsidized by governments. Bullet trains, freight, safety rules, etc.
Showing that public roads lead to inefficiency and perverse incentives doesn't point to a solution. It just points to a problem. You still have to find a solution that works.
I think this argument is bit of cop-out, well we can't make argument how libertarianism would work so we can poke at something government subsidized and tell everyone how it is broken.
To me it seems this is not unlike Communism argument. "It is so nice in theory, we'll just share and distribute the wealth blah blah". "Ok, can you show me an example of a successful Communist country?" "Well no, _but_ let me point out some problems and inefficiences with the capitalist system".
> Can you show a single developed country with a successful private transportation system?
Not on a national scale, no, unless you count any passenger rail or air systems as "successful" and "private." But that's not really a sufficient argument. Obviously, it would be nearly impossible to compete with taxation and eminent domain at the scale they are used in modern developed nations.
> Showing that public roads lead to inefficiency and perverse incentives doesn't point to a solution. It just points to a problem. You still have to find a solution that works.
What do you mean I have to find a solution that works? Does that mean I don't get to propose new solutions and argue for why I think they should work?
> I think this argument is bit of cop-out, well we can't make argument how libertarianism would work so we can poke at something government subsidized and tell everyone how it is broken.
I can make an argument for how libertarianism (or rather, a specific societal organization that some might consider to be "libertarian") could work.
> To me it seems this is not unlike Communism argument...
Well, I don't think communism works well in theory or in practice. I am advocating for markets, and there is a great deal of theoretical and practical evidence for why markets perform well.
> no, unless you count any passenger rail or air systems as "successful" and "private." But that's not really a sufficient argument.
Well actually that is not bad. I mean air systems are private and they work. So a good argument. Not without heavy regulation but nevertheless. Now, one can argue that looking at just aircraft flying in the sky is not enough, one has to obviously look at airports. And there it is back to government allocating and sponsoring development.
What about passenger rail? I can't think successful modern national-level private passenger rail systems.
> Does that mean I don't get to propose new solutions and argue for why I think they should work?
Sorry, I meant the difference between just showing that highways produce some inefficiencies. That is not hard to do, it is a simple argument in a way. Some imminent domain is taken, government paid for some of it. Makes rail more expensive, so can't quite compete with it. Is that a basic rehash? A more interesting argument is to propose something that works. Say, privatize roads. How would that work and why are there no large scale examples of it, if it is supposedly a good idea.
> I can make an argument for how libertarianism
I guess I misunderstood your argument as more being about showing an inefficiency in a government run project. That is not too hard. But what to do about it. It might seem "privatise" is the clear answer. But the other answer is "not have it at all" or have something else, or even enhance government control over it.
We are almost there with the post office. It is inefficient, outdated, and dying. But it still delivers mail to places where it makes no financial sense to deliver for someone like FedEx. If USPO shut down, I think necessarily in many places there would anything in its places. Maybe that is the correct answer or maybe it isn't.
This is probably another big threat to the environment, since I would imagine that suburbs pollute much more per capita than urban areas because of the necessity to use automobiles.
Maybe. Or, while we're speculating, maybe spreading out the impact (even if it is in total greater) is good. Highly concentrated human activity causes very dramatic damage to the environment. If you spread the same activity, or even more activity, over an area many times as large the impact may not be felt.
There's quite a lot of studies on this that indicate the opposite:
"It has been shown that cities of a high density, such as,
for example Hong Kong, have a far lower transport energy
demand per capita than low density cities such as Houston,
by a factor of 18. On average, when comparing 10 major
cities in the US with 12 European cities, European cities are
five times as dense but the US cities consume 3.6 times as
much transport energy per capita. The conclusion often
drawn from such data is that dense cities are low energy
cities." [1]
You are correct that there is more immediate impact to the environment from dense urban areas, but it's outweighed by the gains in energy savings from sharing resources (energy, transportation) effectively. This is why contemporary urban planning tends to push compact, dense neighbourhoods over suburban sprawl.
- 10,000 people live in log cabins in 1,000,000 acres.
- 10,000 people live in 100 acres.
Let's suppose the people living in log cabins use a hundred times as much energy as the second group.
Clearly from an energy standpoint, that isn't good. But the second group has completely and utterly decimated 100 acres, while the first has minimal impact on the land.
Basically, in summary, even if consumption goes up as we spread out, the amount of impact experienced by a given area of land decreases as our impact is diluted over a larger area.
Phrased differently, it's easier for native organisms to survive if humans are spread out, than if we bulldoze their habitat and build highrises.
10'000 people living in 10'000 log cabins, each of 50m² (5 × 10 m² sounds reasonable to me) will cover more space than 10'000 people living on 100 acres (= 0.4km²). Furthermore, if you consider a single spot of 0.4km² populated in an area of 4047km², you will likely find that its impact on the vast majority of those 4047km² is absolutely minimal, whereas, if my WolframAlpha-foo is not completely wrong, there is no point further than 400m from the next human settlement in your first scenario.
This is a false dichotomy; in reality, impact on the natural landscape does not decline with housing density.
Suburbs are not little log cabins surrounded by wilderness. They are big houses with big yards, garages, roads, schools, shopping malls, parking lots, etc. At even lower densities, in many rural areas houses are surrounded by farmland, which is also a substantial alteration of the natural landscape.
In addition, energy has to come from somewhere, and energy development also impacts the land through mining, drilling, refining, transporting, and using the energy sources. Even solar and wind have impacts on land use and must scale with demand. So it's incorrect to disregard energy use, because it will impact the land somewhere.
> Phrased differently, it's easier for native organisms to survive if humans are spread out, than if we bulldoze their habitat and build highrises.
This is just 100% wrong. The habitat gets bulldozed (or plowed under) in any case when humans move in and start developing.
9 feet for one lane road between 10,000 cabins in a line 209 feet apart leads to 431 acres of road area. i.e. your less dense population already destroys more road area than the denser city did. It is an unfortunate reality that dense cities are orders more efficient for a modern society than spread out ones.
Phrased differently, if we have to bulldoze anyway, we should bulldoze the minimal surface area.
Let me know if messed up the calculation, I never used acres or feet.
The answers libertards give to each other and those we give to authoritarians are often different.
To other libertards, we have to come up with a well-reasoned, thoughtful argument, with support and contingencies.
To authoritarians, we have to use a glib sound bite. Who will build the roads? Without government, who would possibly make the hamburgers and blue jeans?
In reality, a libertarded city might not have any roads at all, like Kowloon Walled City before they tore it down. It wasn't necessarily a nice place to live, but it got on well enough without roads.
Some libertards are kooky enough that they would build a city around ziplines, sleds pulled by teams of housecats, for-hire piggybackers, and go-go-gadget hatcopters. If there were any cars at all, they would be made of hemp, have built in pistol holsters instead of seatbelts, and be powered by Stirling engines burning moonshine. Visit New Hyperbole City today!
But seriously, either someone will build a road at their own expense, or everyone else will adapt to the lack of a road. What you certainly will not see are paved county roads with one mailbox every half-mile or so. A massive system of autobahns will not spontaneously appear, and it certainly would not be free to use. Rail networks, as you mention, would almost certainly more efficient use of private funds. People living where roads are not economical would simply buy off-road-capable vehicles and chainsaws instead of paving their own. Libertarded CONUS would start to look a lot like Alaska, except with more fanboats, ATVs, mudboggers, dune buggies, ultralight fan-gliders, mountain bikes, zeppelins, and such. People who like cars would have to pack in closer on fewer roads, and pay for their use directly.
This sort of idea is discussed a lot in the libertarian community. I don't intend to make the conversation about that; I just want to mention the ideas because they're similar. Basically, a common and oft-parodied criticism of libertarianism is "but who will build the roads," implying that massive road infrastructure is something that can only be produced by government through taxation and eminent domain.
One common retort by libertarians is to come up with a bunch of proposals for how private enterprise could create a very similar road system to what we have today. I think that's the wrong approach. I'm more interested in the ways that government roads, no matter how well-intended they are, can lead to inefficiency and perverse incentives.
I think the biggest and easiest argument to make is an environmental one, which is somewhat ironic, considering that libertarians are generally considered (by themselves and others) as a threat to environmentalism. And yet, I wager that public road infrastructure is one of the most obvious cases where government programs lead to (probably unintended) environmental problems. The interstate highway system is a massive blow to railroads, which have a vastly smaller environmental impact than road freight. The public road funds essentially subsidize the price of fast shipping via truck. Big trucks are probably responsible for a disproportionately large portion of road wear relative to the funding of roads that they provide.
Another interesting effect is that urban sprawl probably wouldn't happen without roads which are primarily produced by government. This is probably another big threat to the environment, since I would imagine that suburbs pollute much more per capita than urban areas because of the necessity to use automobiles.