Government Explained 2: The Special Piece of Paper
Law without Government
Juan:I'm afraid I still don't get it. Are you saying companies don't strive to lower prices in order to attract new customers ?
A company cannot set prices lower than it has supply to meet demand. It cannot set prices higher than it wants to keep supply in reserve. Ultimately it is the demanders that choose prices as much as the company.
Juan: Let's say supplier 1 is more efficient than supplier 2, so supplier 1 can sell at a lower price, which benefits consumers and at the same time forces supplier 2 out of business...I thought that's what competition was all about, no ?
If supplier 1 is more efficient than supplier 2, then it will make more profit from selling its supply, but it won't be able to sell at a lower price unless it has produced enough supply to meet all the demand for the good. If it has not then there will be a shortage from supplier 1 and supplier 2 will be able to sell the same good at higher prices.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
You shouldn't be spamming your website URL in your posts like that. It violates the forum rules. You can always link to your site on your personal community profile page if you want a backlink. You can also add your own RSS feed to your profile.
As far as roads, Tom DiLorenzo has an article about toll roads and turnpikes. You can Google for it.
Also Walter Block is the resident expert on private roads. You can check his article archive on LewRockwell.com as well as his personal email address, where I am sure he will answer any advanced questions you have about his articles.
Truth and Liberty:Why would anybody want to own a road, unless they intend to make it a toll road? Would this mean that all roads become toll roads?
If you're talking about interstate highways and the like, i agree. In all likelihood they'd only be run for profit. However, you're paying for roads now via taxes anyway. It's not like you drive on roads for free. Privatizing roads would drive costs down so you'd probably end up paying less for them.
Truth and Liberty:Only one highway exists between my town and my nearest city. Won't the owner of this highway then have a virtual monopoly and be able to charge as much as he likes?
You're assuming more roads wouldn't arise once roads were privatized. In any case, the owners of roads would have an incentive to get you to drive on them so charging high prices for roads seems illogical.
Truth and Liberty:What if the owner of a major highway wanted to prevent some arbritary group, say, Norwegians, from using the highway, and felt so strongly that he went to great lengths to make sure no Norwegians drove on his road? Is there anything to stop him? Would the Norwegians have to find another route?
It's his property. He can deny access to anyone he wishes.
Truth and Liberty:What is to stop someone buying up the roads that surround my house and decides that I cannot go on it? Am I a prisoner in my own home?
You'd be able to get an easement
I am certainly not authoritative in this subject in any capacity, but I think it would be less like privately owned roads, but rather public roads with private contractors who would be paid to construct and repair them. Furthermore, the task of repairing the roads could be initiated by anyone who was willing to pay for it.
Eg.If company A uses shoddy road A a lot, but the government can only pay for repairs to more popular shoddy road B, company A should be legally allowed to pay a private entity to repair road A if they felt it was cost-effective to do so (maybe the bumpy road was causing the company to pay too much to repair their trucks). I highly doubt that would be legal in any municipality today.
An interesting podcast on the subject:http://lewrockwell.com/podcast/?p=episode&name=2008-08-19_023_road_socialism.mp3
Someone would want to own a road to move around faster on his land and help people come to his land faster. The same reason why you would want a driveway for your house, in other words.
An owner of anything can charge as much as he likes. That is necessary for a free market to exist. That does not make him a monopoly.
If someone who owns a road on his land does not want to allow a certain group of people, it is his right not to.
Your house is not the relevant scale of ownership for roads. Your house is on land rented from a landowner and could not exist economically without that relationship. You rent land for your house because being a landowner yourself is not in your interest, although you could decide to become a landowner, live from your land and then no longer need roads.
Imagine a street full of businesses, that sell various goods and services. For them to sell their stuff, they need a road so that a) customers can get to their shops, and b) so that they can make deliveries to their shops in the first place. They could easily organise together, perhaps even create a separate entity, to administer the road.
I can think of two ways to incentivise businesses to pay for local roads. The first way is that those businesses that pay for the road can place a sign on their shop, and customers will then be able to patronise businesses that invest in roads rather than those who do not. A more efficient way would be for the entity who ends up owning the road to simply block the driveway to those businesses that didn't pay for it, eliminating the tragedy of the commons problem.
liberty student: You shouldn't be spamming your website URL in your posts like that. It violates the forum rules. You can always link to your site on your personal community profile page if you want a backlink. You can also add your own RSS feed to your profile.
If you are not an administrator of this forum, why do you act as if you were one? There are lots of other fora where the link to your web page shows up automatically.
Art transcends ideology.
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/ruben
Fred Furash: Imagine a street full of businesses, that sell various goods and services. For them to sell their stuff, they need a road so that a) customers can get to their shops, and b) so that they can make deliveries to their shops in the first place. They could easily organise together, perhaps even create a separate entity, to administer the road. I can think of two ways to incentivise businesses to pay for local roads. The first way is that those businesses that pay for the road can place a sign on their shop, and customers will then be able to patronise businesses that invest in roads rather than those who do not. A more efficient way would be for the entity who ends up owning the road to simply block the driveway to those businesses that didn't pay for it, eliminating the tragedy of the commons problem.
Shopping malls already do that without having to block any driveways.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the only way one can have a monopoly is if there is blocked entry to a market. Therefore the only way the owner of this road could have a monopoly is if the government does not allow anyone else to construct a road through this area. So, if the government does not forbid others from constructing roads through this area, there is no monopoly. There would be no reason for the owner of a road to discriminate against a certain group of people, because he would not make money off of them. Instead, by discriminating he would be creating an opportunity for someone else to come in and construct a road that would be more tolerant. Then, the prejiduce road owner would lose the business of the people he would not allow, and other people who would rather support a moral, ethical business.
However, I do have a question. What if a company buys huge amounts of land and does not allow others to construct roads on them? If there is no competition because he owns the land and will not allow it, then what happens? It would seem that the incentive to keep prices low would be gone because nobody can challenge it.
Dont get me wrong, I am in favor of privatizing the roads, however, this is one point that I do not fully understand.
...And nobody has ever taught you how to live out on the street, But now you're gonna have to get used to it...
mr_anonymous:Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the only way one can have a monopoly is if there is blocked entry to a market.
The problem is that monopoly has been defined way too many different ways so lots of the time people arguing over monopoly will really just be arguing based on different definitions. I agree with your definition though.
mr_anonymous: However, I do have a question. What if a company buys huge amounts of land and does not allow others to construct roads on them? If there is no competition because he owns the land and will not allow it, then what happens? It would seem that the incentive to keep prices low would be gone because nobody can challenge it.
I don't allow other people to build roads on my land, I don't see why this would be a problem.
Stranger: I don't allow other people to build roads on my land, I don't see why this would be a problem.
I understand this, an in a local case this wouldnt be a problem. But if a very successful company acquired a lot of land, say 500 square miles, have'nt they lost the incentive to satisfy the consumer if the consumer has no other choices? I agree with the privitization, but I am just a little confused about this part.
Rubén:If you are not an administrator of this forum, why do you act as if you were one?
I report spammers and remind people of the forum rules. Reminding people of the forum rules is good forum citizenship.
Rubén:There are lots of other fora where the link to your web page shows up automatically.
Well, you should contest the rules with the admin. I don't write them.
mr_anonymous: I understand this, an in a local case this wouldnt be a problem. But if a very successful company acquired a lot of land, say 500 square miles, have'nt they lost the incentive to satisfy the consumer if the consumer has no other choices? I agree with the privitization, but I am just a little confused about this part.
I am confused about your question. Why wouldn't a company have the incentive to urbanize their land because they have a lot of it?
liberty student: Rubén:If you are not an administrator of this forum, why do you act as if you were one? I report spammers and remind people of the forum rules. Reminding people of the forum rules is good forum citizenship. Rubén:There are lots of other fora where the link to your web page shows up automatically. Well, you should contest the rules with the admin. I don't write them.
By no means I am contesting them. I am just asking for information.
Back to roads, I can see here in Venezuela that they are destroyed, full of potholes, and this happens in a country that produces locally some of the best asphalt of the world. I definitely get a feeling that private roads in this country would be a great solution.