Yes, that’s a terrible title.
I was listening to the audio book of Murray Rothbard’s great work For a New Liberty this morning, and I worked through most of his chapter entitled ‘The Public Sector: Streets and Roads.‘ In it, Rothbard advocates allowing liberty to see its full manifestation even in the streets and roads, which would make all building, maintaining, and use under the jurisdiction of the free market. It is Rothbard’s contention that only voluntary associations and exchanges can make the roads a moral and efficient system, and that the time to privatize is always (and forever) “as soon as possible.”
I am of the opinion that one of the prevailing difficulties in being a libertarian is that few people understand both libertarian critiques of State-run society and the alternative that is proposed. Most assume that the libertarian’s most sophisticated answer to the question: “Well, how would that work?” is: “The market will take care of it!”
Of course, the short answer to any objection to liberty is, in fact, that the market will take care of it (which is simply short hand for saying ‘yes, it ought to be taken care of, and to do so without using violence is paramount’). However, this answer quickly grows stale to the ears of those seeking real solutions to our society’s problems. Politicians thrive on making promises when they can say that the have detailed, practical, and realistic plans for tackling ‘the issues.’ Such promises are rarely kept, but by observing the public’s general reaction to candidates willing to make such promises we can see how hungry people are for solutions that would work.
The libertarian, while cautious of providing a market blue-print for any given issue, should not shudder or buckle under any demand to produce some account for how a free market might handle a given problem. A book along these lines could tackle many of the issues involved with public and private streets and roads; community development; economic efficiency; and of course freedom, liberty, and peace. There is a wealth of research out there that could aid the libertarian in showing that, yes, such social organization is possible without absolute, overriding force.
