| | Hope you're enjoying yourself, Ronald.
The best reference on this subject is probably the anarcho-capitalist bible, "The Market for Liberty," by Morris and Linda Tannehill, which also includes the essays entitled "Public Services Under Laissez Faire," by Jarret Wollstein. You don't have to be an anarchist to appreciate their exposition on how various things currently run by states could be much more efficiently run by individuals or private companies.
In fact, ironically, every major objectivist spokesperson who I've heard discuss the "Competing Governments" aspect has said essentially the same thing: ~"In a real laissez faire capitalist society, much and probably most of what state's actually do, including roads, etc., and even most of the courts - so long as you had a state appellate and supreme court - could and would likely be privatized. I've even heard Yaron Brook, subject of a long front-page article in today's OC Register, BTW, imply that just maybe, when we get to that point, we might discover a way to get rid of that last .1% of the state as well - who knows?, altho he certainly hasn't come out on the anarchist side ... yet. ;-)
My own view has trended strongly in recent years toward a position that integrates ideas of property, commons, and social contract. All the things that are said in defence of private property, morally and economically are generally true. You DO have a fundamental right to property, which follows from your basic right to life. Without property, it is impossible to plan for the future. However, that does not conflict - among rational people - with the equal right that everyone else has in the same physical objects. When you make something private, you take it out of the commons, where it either already was in use or potentially was available for use, which you have now closed off.
Thus, a rational way has to be found to reconcile the opposing claims. Looking at it from the point of view of a potential Martian colonist, able to get everything right on the outset, I favor a social contract system, in which to start everyone holds a non-transferable share in the whole of mankind, thus giving them a stake in the general success of everyone else right from the get go. I.e., humanity as a share-holding trust.
If you want to make something private, then you bid against whoever else wants that particular piece of land or whatever. This is how they settle property disputes in divorces. Each party bids whatever they want for the various pieces of furniture, etc., and then the money is split at the end. So the money that goes into the pot is distibuted among the shareholders, giving them another specific incentive to hope that the most productive people are engaged as much as possible.
The property does not - and never has, for that matter - consist of the physical land (what, a conic section through the mantle and molten core?), but rather a bundle of rights, which are contextually absolute. And major misuse that endangers or devalues the property of your neighbors is handled by the fact that everyone has to post bonds or get insurance to cover that very kind of risk.
In such a system, a private company might buy the roadways and - perhaps taking advantage of an eminent domain clause in the social contract that guaranteed that the land owners would make a substantial profit by losing their land - buy the right to run the roads, with the caveat that they could not refuse access to anyone without objective cause to believe that they were a traffic hazard - as in DUI - nor could they charge excessive fees. Otherwise, they would be largely free to run the roads however they thought best.
I note that something like this is allegedly done almost as the rule in mainland China now. Private companies are reported to be building super-highways like crazy in the new industrial cities, altho I think that the level of graft, etc., is quite high there, as you might expect with a criminal gang running the show from the top.
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