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Comment by 6510 | Hacker News Reader

Just a weird thought (Sorry) : What would happen if all roads were put on auction to become privatized toll roads?

Bad idea I think. It would crush the lower middle class. Gov should handle infrastructure that's shared even though at times it sucks at it. DMV on the other hand, any bidders that can privatize it? The current situation is completely unacceptable and it has been for decades. Many departments in Government need to be rethought and gutted out, starting afresh. With new stack, new databases, new infrastructure and new vision. 18F should take the lead in defining the vision from the techonology standpoint: https://18f.gsa.gov/

Edit: Not sure why people are downvoting for a silly question, no question too silly and should be open for debate. :-)

We are already limiting access to housing in urban centers by driving up prices. If it is a good idea I don't know, it is what we have and I cant think of an easy replacement. Rent seems to scale to match earnings, toll roads would do the same and compete for the same budget.

We could also do government housing and pay a standardized fee that reflects building cost but then you would need a different formula to prioritize one case over the other. You would have to tell people to leave which is much less accepted than being unable to afford it any longer.

Roads are for transportation but people use them as a place to live(?!) The street the default place to live for everyone??? Imagine how absurd that is.

I think the incentives wouldn’t work out. Capitalism and private enterprises only work well when there is a healthy amount of competition —- a fantastic example is consumer electronics, which has tons of competition leading to rapid tech development and cheaper devices. Just think of how cheap a 4k TV is compared to 5 years ago. A bad example is healthcare, which has very little competition, which leads to extremely high costs.

Capitalism simply cannot work towards society’s benefit when competition doesn’t force prices to be cheaper for higher quality products.

If roads were private, I really do not think different companies could compete for better service. Your home will only attach to a single road after all. The consistency of road design and laws across the US is a huge win as well; that could be problematic if it was privatized.

Over time, monopolies would also develop. We see this with ISPs all the time: you have a single provider in a region, and prices are very high relative to the very poor service. It’s very easy to imagine one road company purchasing all roads in a region and having complete price control, driving costs up without making service better. And probably avoiding maintenance.

Eventually, citizens would probably get tired of roads being privatized and have the government make them public again.

On the flip side, with driving being much less convenient, maybe people would look into more efficient modes of transportation!

We pay more than enough in state taxes to fund the f’n roads. They should be in better shape than they frequently are.

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