There are 300 million Americans and 365 days in a year, so if each American traveled on a federal road once a day and was charged $1 for doing so, the federal government would garner $109,500,000,000 ($109.5 billion) in revenues.
Of course, there are various operating expenses which would take away from the revenue, not all Americans travel on federal roads once daily, some Americans travel more than once daily on a federal road, tolls on federal roads would create incentives to carpool and/or travel on different roads, etc.
But consider this: let's say that the federal government would semi-privatize federal roads by licensing private companies to operate certain roads for certain amounts of time. Say that Company A would pay $1 million up front and $1 per traveler to operate US 1 for 5 years. The $1 million plus $1 per traveler would be pure profit for the federal government, since all operating expenses would go to Company A, which would have an incentive to keep the road in good condition for customers.
Now imagine the federal Postal Service and railways also being "semi-privatized" in this manner, or at the very least, turned into profitable ventures. Also imagine Congress using the power it has to coin money, instead of whoring that out to a cartel of banks, the Federal Reserve System. The federal government would be able to earn at least a couple hundred billion in profits from such ventures. This would require political pressure to make these ventures profitable, but it could be possible in a society where balanced budgets, low taxes, and government self-sustainability are key.
If the federal government also took some other steps, like eliminating trade quotas and high tariffs, and replacing those with low tariffs, eliminating the thousands of regulations which cost the economy an estimated $1 trillion GDP (according to the CEI), legalizing drugs but taxing them slightly, eliminating certain taxes which harshly punish economic growth (e.g. business taxes and capital gains taxes), and simplifying other taxes (e.g. income and payroll taxes) in order to reduce waste, then the economy could grow much more quickly, while ensuring that the government still has enough revenue for many of its pet projects like Social Security, Medicare, and high military spending.
Of course, such a transformation in government would be a mixed blessing, since it would make government much more efficient, which isn't something libertarians should be looking forward to. But at least the economy would receive a permanent boost from such government reforms.
I suppose my point in writing all of this is that even a lover of big government should get behind some semi-capitalistic reforms of government. Sometimes, lessening the burden of government in the form of taxes, regulations, and wasteful agencies, allows the government to earn more in revenues from economic growth and semi-privatization.
Political Atheists Blog
Is this basically the realization that China came to?
krazy kaju: I suppose my point in writing all of this is that even a lover of big government should get behind some semi-capitalistic reforms of government. Sometimes, lessening the burden of government in the form of taxes, regulations, and wasteful agencies, allows the government to earn more in revenues from economic growth and semi-privatization.
Which brings us to Hoppe's essential insight - in a democratic or oligarchical state, nobody cares whether the government is optimizing its long-term resources. All that matters are group interests.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
That is true. The problem with that is that most dictators actually know less about what is good for their country than the people themselves. Many dictators lean toward either socialism or traditionalism, whereas most of the times the populace will favor property rights and lower taxes if they were to be given the option.
Pseudo-privatizations (that how I call semi-privatizations) are a mix of two fully incompatible systems. It leads to inefficiencies, corruption, political management and the so called "privatization of profits and socialization of losses". I don't see it as a good way towards freedom, just check the privatizations in Argentina during the 90's.