Economics: Muh Roadz

[DBTrek]

In Fife world all the amazing advancements due to the collectivization of humanity from division of labor, to law, agriculture, commerce, and industry would’ve happened anyway. It’s a sheer coincidence that humans did 300k years scratching their asses, squatting caves, and hunting deer before the rise of civilization and government. Everything governed humanity has achieved was going to happen anyway, even though it didn’t for 300k years, and even though it hasn’t for the few pockets of primitive humanity remaining.

[Fife]

Fife's good at telling us what's wrong, but is pretty skimpy with the details.

Fife - let's do away with the interstate system and let the free market handle it. How many road-building companies would create their own interstate system? Where do they get the land? Will the free market let as many companies that want build their own interstate system? We could have Acme Company Interstate of Awesomeness & Fife's Dream world Roads of Excellence. All these roads are next to each other, like gas stations tend to do?

Is that the most efficient use of our space?

Genuinely curious as to how a free market competition environment creates the most efficient use of our land, wrt roads.

There's an OP in this thread, you know (with a link to a big-ass free book).

[Fife]

In Fife world all the amazing advancements due to the collectivization of humanity from division of labor, to law, agriculture, commerce, and industry would’ve happened anyway. It’s a sheer coincidence that humans did 300k years scratching their asses, squatting caves, and hunting deer before the rise of civilization and government. Everything governed humanity has achieved was going to happen anyway, even though it didn’t for 300k years, and even though it hasn’t for the few pockets of primitive humanity remaining.

Thank Providence for the Ancien Regime. Is that your point?

[DBTrek]

300,000 years of ungoverned humanity - no roads.
Modern pockets of ungoverned humanity - no roads.

Fife “We don’t need government for roads, deer and pizza joints will spontaneously generate them!”

[Kath]

There's an OP in this thread, you know (with a link to a big-ass free book).

500 pages? Is there a Cliff's Notes on this book?

[DBTrek]

If you could train deer to deliver pizza the whole world would be cross-crossed with free roads, dude. Seriously, imagine the possibilities....

[Speaker to Animals]

Here's my thoughts on roads and vehicles: They are kind of crazy if you really step back and consider it.

Sometimes while I walk the dogs, I get pretty reflective and it strikes me as really weird that we are surrounded by so many cars, parking lots, and roads. I think people in the future who study us will find this one of the most bizarre aspects of our society. Seriously go outside today and just step your mind back from all of this stuff you are used to and look at it as if you are seeing this society for the first time. We devote more real estate to roads and parking lots than we do to living space. We design our communities in such a way that we are totally dependent upon motor vehicles when we don't really have to organize our communities in this way. We don't really need cars to move ourselves and goods around quickly. We could do it with people movers of various kinds, cargo pipelines, trains, and now even drones for small packages. We have all these cars around us, and we devote so much of our real estate to paved roads and parking lots, because we choose this. Why is it so important? There has to be a reason why we naturally converged on this paradigm, but I am not sure it's a good idea in terms of robustness and longevity of civilization. it makes us quite fragile economically and infrastructurally.

[Fife]

There's an OP in this thread, you know (with a link to a big-ass free book).

500 pages? Is there a Cliff's Notes on this book?

Because I like you . . .

[Speaker to Animals]

Anywho.. my response to Fife is this:

[C-Mag]

Questions.

Would we keep the Interstate system Federal ?
What would we do with roads on Federal Lands ? In National Parks ?
Would we sell portions of adjoining land to entrepreneurs like the Romans for Olive trees ?