# Think Tank > Austrian Economics / Economic Theory >  Walter Block, Austrian Free Market Economist, Used to be a Communist

## FrankRep

I was shocked, but I'm glad he left his old Communist ways and became a Free Market Capitalist.



*Walter Block, Austrian Free Market Economist, Used to be a Communist*




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3HQ_yGjUyc


Walter Edward Block (born 21 August 1941) is an Austrian School economist and prominent anarcho-capitalist. He is currently Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and Senior Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

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## Travlyr

That is partly why he is still confused on classical liberalism.

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## supermario21

Anyone have video of that abortion speech he gave at We Are The Future? That was an epic fail. Knowing this now, he should have spoken about how he converted from communism to capitalism. It would have shown all the young people there that the Democrat party is never an option!

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## NIU Students for Liberty

> That is partly why he is still confused on classical liberalism.


How is he confused?

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## Travlyr

> How is he confused?


Classical Liberalism allows for the state, laws, and government for property ownership, distribution, and justice.




> "The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand."  - Ludwig von Mises


Private ownership of the means of production =/= private ownership of everything in the world. Roads are public for a specific reason and that is trespassing laws. Rivers, Parks, Great Lakes, Oceans, and Air are for the public as well.




> We call the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion that induces people to abide by the rules of life in society, *the state*; the rules according to which the state proceeds, *law*; and the organs charged with the responsibility of administering the apparatus of compulsion, *government*. - Ludwig von Mises

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## whippoorwill

bump

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## heavenlyboy34

> That is partly why he is still confused on classical liberalism.


WTF are you babbling about?  He doesn't even talk about anarchism in the video.  He says he was a commie "as all jews were" (his words,paraphrased a bit). He talks about how the Randians convinced him of laissez-faire.  And if you bother to read what he's actually written/said about classical liberalism, you'll find he understands it better than you do.

You would do well to actually pay attention to what threads are about before commenting.  Otherwise, you detract from the discussion.

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## Travlyr

A Future of Private Roads and Highways
Mises Daily: Thursday, April 16, 2009 by Walter Block




> I advocate the complete, total, and full privatization of all roads, streets, highways, byways, avenues, and other vehicular thoroughfares. And I am serious about this, deadly serious.


This propaganda is inconsistent with Classical Liberalism.

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## Paul Or Nothing II

Well, seeing this sort of thing can only be inspiring for those hoping to spread the seeds of liberty as much as they can, that if a hardcore commie can be converted to voluntaryism then anybody can be.........given of course, that they aren't completely intellectually bankrupt unlike some people out there who'll talk about liberty, freedom & all that, & yet fully support government robbing, coercing & enslaving people......

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## Travlyr

> Well, seeing this sort of thing can only be inspiring for those hoping to spread the seeds of liberty as much as they can, that if a hardcore commie can be converted to voluntaryism then anybody can be.........given of course, that they aren't completely intellectually bankrupt unlike some people out there who'll talk about liberty, freedom & all that, & yet fully support government robbing, coercing & enslaving people......


Are you referring to Ludwig von Mises, Ron Paul, Murray N. Rothbard, Thomas Jefferson, or me?



> "Liberalism is therefore far from disputing the necessity of a machinery of state, a system of law, and a government. It is a grave misunderstanding to associate it in any way with the idea of anarchism. For the liberal, the state is an absolute necessity, since the most important tasks are incumbent upon it: the protection not only of private property, but also of peace, for in the absence of the latter the full benefits of private property cannot be reaped." - Ludwig von Mises





> I believe it's worthwhile for all of us to tirelessly pursue the preservation of the elegant Constitution with which we have been so blessed."- Ron Paul





> "Ron Paul, in short, is that rare American, and still rarer politician, who deeply understands and battles for the principles of liberty that were fought for and established by the Founding Fathers of this country. - Murray N. Rothbard.





> "The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits." - Thomas Jefferson
> 
> "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." - Thomas Jefferson


Because I agree with all these statements.

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## Confederate

Hans-Herman Hoppe was a communist as well.

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## Travlyr

> Hans-Herman Hoppe was a communist as well.


Interesting. And it does not surprise me at all. I grew up in freedom and have always cherished my independence.

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## matt0611

I believe Hayek started out a socialist as well. Not a full-commie mind you but at least a democratic-socialist.

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## heavenlyboy34

> A Future of Private Roads and Highways
> Mises Daily: Thursday, April 16, 2009 by Walter Block
> 
> 
> 
> This propaganda is inconsistent with Classical Liberalism.


False.  Classical liberals favor private property and socialist roads are antithetical to that ideal.

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## heavenlyboy34

> Interesting. And it does not surprise me at all. I grew up in freedom *and have always cherished my independence*.


Why did you stop?

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## Travlyr

> False.  Classical liberals favor private property and socialist roads are antithetical to that ideal.


No, that is wrong. Classical liberal philosophy as described by Mises is summarized as follows. 



> "The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand." - Ludwig von Mises


Private ownership of the means of production =/= private ownership of everything.

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## ronpaulfollower999

> A Future of Private Roads and Highways
> Mises Daily: Thursday, April 16, 2009 by Walter Block
> 
> 
> 
> This propaganda is inconsistent with Classical Liberalism.


Why does it have to be a public road? Why should all roads be public, but not railroads? Instead of building public roads, why can't we build streetcars? I'd think the free market would make a better decision to determine where a road is needed, where mass transit is needed, or where nothing is needed at all.

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## Demigod

I was a full commie as well,even member of the party.It took me a lot of time to really accept everything about liberty and capitalism.

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## MoneyWhereMyMouthIs2

> Anyone have video of that abortion speech he gave at We Are The Future? That was an epic fail.


If you can't get over that, maybe you should go find the video and download it to your computer to you relive it over and over again.

He made a stupid assumption, talked off an expected topic, and apologized for it.  Move on with your life.  Everyone else has.

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## fisharmor

OP doesn't surprise me a bit... I've seen with my very eyes evidence, supplied by the man himself, that Will Freaking Grigg of all people supported the War on Terror early on.




> This propaganda is inconsistent with Classical Liberalism.


So, in Jefferson's day, how many roads were owned and maintained by the state?

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## Travlyr

> Why does it have to be a public road? Why should all roads be public, but not railroads? Instead of building public roads, why can't we build streetcars? I'd think the free market would make a better decision to determine where a road is needed, where mass transit is needed, or where nothing is needed at all.


In a free society, road commissioners are elected officials accountable to the people. The elected official is responsible for making sure the roads get built properly. The roads are built by getting competitive bids from private road building contractors.

Private roads can operate along side of public roads. Private ownership of land comes with trespassing laws. Public roads are not protected by trespassing laws. If all roads were private, then a homeowner/landowner would be forced to trespass on private land to leave his/her property.

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## Travlyr

> OP doesn't surprise me a bit... I've seen with my very eyes evidence, supplied by the man himself, that Will Freaking Grigg of all people supported the War on Terror early on.
> 
> 
> 
> So, in Jefferson's day, how many roads were owned and maintained by the state?


I don't exactly know how Virginia was surveyed. Many states are divided up into 640 acre sections of land one mile long by one mile wide and the public roads were the perimeter. Elected road commissioners are elected for each township and are charged with managing the roads.

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## heavenlyboy34

> No, that is wrong. Classical liberal philosophy as described by Mises is summarized as follows. 
> 
> 
> Private ownership of the means of production =/= private ownership of everything.


No, it's correct.  Mises' definition is perfectly compatible with private ownership of roads.  We already have some private roads-like the Summerlin Parkway The Dulles Greenway, and 40 thousand private roads in England and Wales.

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## Tpoints

> No, that is wrong. Classical liberal philosophy as described by Mises is summarized as follows. 
> 
> 
> Private ownership of the means of production =/= private ownership of everything.


they're not the same?

so what is public if not everything?

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## Travlyr

> No, it's correct.  Mises' definition is perfectly compatible with private ownership of roads.  We already have some private roads-like the Summerlin Parkway The Dulles Greenway, and 40 thousand private roads in England and Wales.


Private roads are fine along side public roads.

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## Travlyr

> they're not the same?
> 
> so what is public if not everything?


No they are not the same. The means of production is produced by labor. Land that is not mixed with labor can be public land the same as natural lakes, rivers, parks, roads, oceans, and air.

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## Demigod

> Why does it have to be a public road? Why should all roads be public, but not railroads? Instead of building public roads, why can't we build streetcars? I'd think the free market would make a better decision to determine where a road is needed, where mass transit is needed, or where nothing is needed at all.


Local roads have always been public and maintained locally,only highways have been built by private enterprises from time to time although most were built either by a central government or a number of local governments joining together .Railroad,airfields and ports do not equal roads.

Highways,Railroad,Airfields and ports are in competition with each other as ways to get from ine local road network to another local road network  so they can be private.But local roads have no alternative ,if you make them private you turn your private property into a private prison.

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## Tpoints

> No they are not the same. The means of production is produced by labor. Land that is not mixed with labor can be public land the same as natural lakes, rivers, parks, roads, oceans, and air.


so basically, non-commercial land and resources can be publically owned and controlled?

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## Travlyr

> so basically, non-commercial land and resources can be publically owned and controlled?


In a free society, public land would include public roads, public parks, public buildings, rivers, natural lakes, oceans, and inhabitable land. Everything else could be privately owned.

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## jj-

Ah, there is something wrong with his mind. No wonder he is an anarchist and not a real capitalist.

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## jj-

> Hans-Herman Hoppe was a communist as well.


No wonder. See post #30.

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## heavenlyboy34

> In a free society, public land would include public roads, public parks, public buildings, rivers, natural lakes, oceans, and inhabitable land. Everything else could be privately owned.


That's a flavor of socialism, sir-not free society.

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## heavenlyboy34

> No wonder. See post #30.





> Ah, there is something wrong with his mind. No wonder he is an anarchist and not a real capitalist.


   Is this supposed to be a serious critique?  Sorry, it's too juvenile to take seriously.

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## Feeding the Abscess

> In a free society, public land would include public roads, public parks, public buildings, rivers, natural lakes, oceans, and inhabitable land. Everything else could be privately owned.


How are roads and buildings not a mix of land and labor?

With that out of the way, how are those things being public not then public ownership of the means of production, ie socialism?

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## ronpaulfollower999

> Local roads have always been public and maintained locally,only highways have been built by private enterprises from time to time although most were built either by a central government or a number of local governments joining together .Railroad,airfields and ports do not equal roads.
> 
> Highways,Railroad,Airfields and ports are in competition with each other as ways to get from ine local road network to another local road network  so they can be private.But local roads have no alternative ,if you make them private you turn your private property into a private prison.


What economic benefit would someone have by turning a road into a prison? 

And why does it have to be a road? Why can't the government build railroads instead of city streets and everyone drives around in one of these:



Central planning FTW!

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## GeorgiaAvenger

Thomas Sowell used to be a Marxist.

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## Wesker1982

> In a free society, road commissioners are elected officials accountable to the people. The elected official is responsible for making sure the roads get built properly. The roads are built by getting competitive bids from private road building contractors.


Yeah, great idea. It is such a great idea, why not implement this for food? Yeah yeah, why stop there!? If the socialism you advocate is so good, why not have committees, elected officials, commissioners, why not use this to provide everything!




> The crux of the economic difference between market anarchists and market minarchists is that the minarchists -- a priori -- find a market failure in the provision of law and security. Market anarchists do not. Considering that the minarchists embrace market theory in every other area, it seems they have the burden of showing why *their own principles* don't apply in those excepted areas. - Sheldon Richman

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## AGRP

A lot of us used to be neocons and progressives...modern day marxists.

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## Travlyr

> Yeah, great idea. It is such a great idea, why not implement this for food? Yeah yeah, why stop there!? If the socialism you advocate is so good, why not have committees, elected officials, commissioners, why not use this to provide everything!


Because the source of the state is land ownership, land laws, standards, protecting natural and property rights, and law for order and justice. It is not that hard to understand... really it is not. You guys need to read Mises, Locke, Jefferson, and Paul. None of them were communists ... ever.

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## Travlyr

> How are roads and buildings not a mix of land and labor?


Land by itself is not producing anything. Roads publicly owned and produced with private labor is consistent with classical liberalism.



> With that out of the way, how are those things being public not then public ownership of the means of production, ie socialism?


Private ownership of the means of production =/= private ownership of everything.

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## Travlyr

> A lot of us used to be neocons and progressives...modern day marxists.


Not me. I have always rejected marxism and socialism.

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## Travlyr

> What economic benefit would someone have by turning a road into a prison? 
> 
> And why does it have to be a road? Why can't the government build railroads instead of city streets and everyone drives around in one of these:
> 
> 
> 
> Central planning FTW!


Economic benefit is not a consideration to a wealthy man.

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## Tpoints

> How are roads and buildings not a mix of land and labor?
> 
> With that out of the way, how are those things being public not then public ownership of the means of production, ie socialism?


wow! he actually fooled me there for a minute. Remind me never to read this forum without my coffee again.

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## AGRP

> In a free society, public land would include public roads, public parks, public buildings, rivers, natural lakes, oceans, and inhabitable land. Everything else could be privately owned.


Public land cant exist in a free society.

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## Tpoints

> Public land cant exist in a free society.


is your definition of free society everything privately owned?

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## ronpaulfollower999

> Economic benefit is not a consideration to a wealthy man.


Then how did they become wealthy in the first place? If no one can use their road, why bother owning it? 

Believe it or not, businesspeople aren't evil. Of course, the statement you used are used by the same people who say if we deregulate everything, Taco Bell will put bolts and screws in my tacos.

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## AGRP

> is your definition of free society everything privately owned?


I don't know, but if public land is paid for and maintained by theft, then it doesn't exist in a free society.

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## ronpaulfollower999

Horror in England after the privatization of telecommunications:

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## A Son of Liberty

A person who used to be a socialist, or a marxist, stands a far better chance of understanding those philosophies than a person who has never been.

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## DerailingDaTrain

Who cares? He isn't one now.

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## heavenlyboy34

> *Who cares?* He isn't one now.


Petty little people who want to slander him.

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## DerailingDaTrain

I guess Travlyr has never heard of Max Eastman.

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## Tpoints

> I guess Travlyr has never heard of Max Eastman.


I haven't either, let me google that for myself.

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## BSWPaulsen

Private ownership stems from mixing land with one's labor. This has to be a continuous process, because simply putting a building/road down doesn't create permanent ownership of said building/road for all time. Permanent ownership without continuing labor, as far as I'm concerned, is perhaps one of the biggest threats to liberty when it is applied to a finite entity (ie: land). It only stands to restrict the movement of other individuals that would actually make use of it. We see this _today_ with the way the US government claims all of the unused land in this country as its own, and how difficult it is to try to make use of it as an individual.

"Public" land can simply refer to unowned land (even with all the people on this planet, I am damn sure that even with every individual mixing land with labor there would still be parts of the planet unowned with such an understanding of property rights). It would be a mistake to assert that it couldn't/shouldn't be owned. Of course, people can collectivize and determine that they will prevent ownership by force (ie: religious sites come to mind for such a pheonomena), but this would denigrate freedom in the universal sense. People can always shape society around their own priorities, but if liberty in the absolute sense is the chief goal, then everything should be up for ownership.

Take a river for example. They are fairly long on average, and I don't see how someone could reasonably find a way to mix land and labor in such a way as to own more than a very tiny bit of the whole. Do you really need to forbid people from making private use of the river due to them owning what would typically be a fractionally insignificant amount of space?

Perhaps one could argue that the right of free travel trumps property rights, and while I am sure you could find hypothetical circumstances where each should triumph, as a practical matter it is best left to the parties involved to rationally work out the problem to mutual benefit.

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## Travlyr

> *Trespass  [tres-puhs, -pas]*
> 
> Trespass,  in law, any physical injury to the person or to property. In English common law the action of trespass first developed (13th cent.) to afford a remedy for injuries to property. The two early forms were trespass quare clausum fregit,  used in instances of breaking into real property, and trespass de bonis asportatis,  used when personal property was removed without consent. To sue for trespass the plaintiff must have had possession of the property. Although the offense of trespass required the use of force, the courts quickly decided that the mere act of breaking in or of taking goods was in itself forceful. Trespass in time was applied to injuries to the person involving force, such as assault, battery, and unlawful imprisonment. Out of the law of trespass developed many of the torts that are now commonly recognized. In present-day usage the term trespass  is usually applied only to unlawful entry into private property. If a trespasser refuses a request to leave the premises, he may be removed by force.


This law applies to private property owners. It does not apply to public property. If a private property owner decides to not let you trespass on his road, then you can't be on his property by law. He can use force to keep you off his land. The law protects homeowners/landowners up to and including using force to kick an intruder out of their home and off their land. 

If all roads are private, then it would be like having a cage built around your property. The same applies to rivers, natural lakes, etc.

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## Shane Harris

everyone starts out socialist really.

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## Shane Harris

What's wrong with privatizing roads?

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## Shane Harris

A little section from For a New Liberty:

Chapter 11: The Public Sector, II: Streets and Roads
*
Protecting the Streets*


"Abolition of the public sector means, of course, that all pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary groupings of individuals and capital. The fact that all streets and land areas would be private would by itself solve many of the seemingly insoluble problems of private operation. What we need to do is to reorient our thinking to consider a world in which all land areas are privately owned. Let us take, for example, police protection. How would police protection be furnished in a totally private economy? Part of the answer becomes evident if we consider a world of totally private land and street ownership. Consider the Times Square area of New York City, a notoriously crime-ridden area where there is little police protection furnished by the city authorities. Every New Yorker knows, in fact, that he lives and walks the streets, and not only Times Square, virtually in a state of "anarchy," dependent solely on the normal peacefulness and good will of his fellow citizens. Police protection in New York is minimal, a fact dramatically revealed in a recent week-long police strike when, lo and behold!, crime in no way increased from its normal state when the police are supposedly alert and on the job. At any rate, suppose that the Times Square area, including the streets, was privately owned, [p. 202] say by the "Times Square Merchants Association." The merchants would know full well, of course, that if crime was rampant in their area, if muggings and holdups abounded, then their customers would fade away and would patronize competing areas and neighborhoods. Hence, it would be to the economic interest of the merchants' association to supply efficient and plentiful police protection, so that customers would be attracted to, rather than repelled from, their neighborhood. Private business, after all, is always trying to attract and keep its customers. But what good would be served by attractive store displays and packaging, pleasant lighting and courteous service, if the customers may be robbed or assaulted if they walk through the area?

 The merchants' association, furthermore, would be induced, by their drive for profits and for avoiding losses, to supply not only sufficient police protection but also courteous and pleasant protection. Governmental police have not only no incentive to be efficient or worry about their "customers'" needs; they also live with the ever-present temptation to wield their power of force in a brutal and coercive manner. "Police brutality" is a well-known feature of the police system, and it is held in check only by remote complaints of the harassed citizenry. But if the private merchants' police should yield to the temptation of brutalizing the merchants' customers, those customers will quickly disappear and go elsewhere. Hence, the merchants' association will see to it that its police are courteous as well as plentiful.

 Such efficient and high-quality police protection would prevail throughout the land, throughout all the private streets and land areas. Factories would guard their street areas, merchants their streets, and road companies would provide safe and efficient police protection for their toll roads and other privately owned roads. The same would be true for residential neighborhoods. We can envision two possible types of private street ownership in such neighborhoods. In one type, all the landowners in a certain block might become the joint owners of that block, let us say as the "85th St. Block Company." This company would then provide police protection, the costs being paid either by the home-owners directly or out of tenants' rent if the street includes rental apartments. Again, homeowners will of course have a direct interest in seeing that their block is safe, while landlords will try to attract tenants by supplying safe streets in addition to the more usual services such as heat, water, and janitorial service. To ask why landlords should provide safe streets in the libertarian, fully private society is just as silly as asking now why they should provide their tenants with heat or hot [p. 203] water. The force of competition and of consumer demand would make them supply such services. Furthermore, whether we are considering homeowners or rental housing, in either case the capital value of the land and the house will be a function of the safety of the street as well as of the other well-known characteristics of the house and the neighborhood. Safe and well-patrolled streets will raise the value of the landowners' land and houses in the same way as well-tended houses do; crime-ridden streets will lower the value of the land and houses as surely as dilapidated housing itself does. Since landowners always prefer higher to lower market values for their property, there is a built-in incentive to provide efficient, well -paved, and safe streets." 
 "Another type of private street-ownership in residential areas might be private street companies, which would own only the streets, not the houses or buildings on them. The street companies would then charge landowners for the service of maintaining, improving, and policing their streets. Once again, safe, well-lit, and well-paved streets will induce landowners and tenants to flock to those streets; unsafe, badly lit and badly maintained streets will drive those owners and users away. A happy and flourishing use of the streets by landlords and automobiles will raise the profits and stock values of the street companies; an unhappy and decaying regard for streets by their owners will drive the users away and lower the profits and the stock values of the private street companies. Hence, the street-owning companies will do their best to provide efficient street service, including police protection, to secure happy users; they will be driven to do this by their desire to make profits and to increase the value of their capital, and by their equally active desire not to suffer losses and erosion of their capital. It is infinitely better to rely on the pursuit of economic interest by landowners or street companies than to depend on the dubious "altruism" of bureaucrats and government officials.

*At this point in the discussion, someone is bound to raise the question: If streets are owned by street companies, and granting that they generally would aim to please their customers with maximum efficiency, what if some kooky or tyrannical street owner should suddenly decide to block access to his street to an adjoining homeowner? How could the latter get in or out? Could he be blocked permanently, or be charged an enormous amount to be allowed entrance or exit?* The answer to this question is the same as to a similar problem about land-ownership: Suppose that everyone owning homes surrounding someone's property would suddenly not allow him to go in or out? The answer is that [p. 204] everyone, in purchasing homes or street service in a libertarian society, would make sure that the purchase or lease contract provides full access for whatever term of years is specified. With this sort of "easement" provided in advance by contract, no such sudden blockade would be allowed, since it would be an invasion of the property right of the landowner.

 There is of course nothing new or startling in the principle of this envisioned libertarian society. We are already familiar with the energizing effects of inter-location and inter-transportation competition. For example, when the private railroads were being built throughout the nation in the nineteenth century, the railroads and their competition provided a remarkable energizing force for developing their respective areas. Each railroad tried its best to induce immigration and economic development in its area in order to increase its profits, land values, and value of its capital; and each hastened to do so, lest people and markets leave their area and move to the ports, cities, and lands served by competing railroads. The same principle would be at work if all streets and roads were private as well. Similarly, we are already familiar with police protection provided by private merchants and organizations. Within their property, stores provide guards and watchmen; banks provide guards; factories employ watchmen; shopping centers retain guards, etc. The libertarian society would simply extend this healthy and functioning system to the streets as well. It is scarcely accidental that there are far more assaults and muggings on the streets outside stores than in the stores themselves; this is because the stores are supplied with watchful private guards while on the streets we must all rely on the "anarchy" of government police protection. Indeed, in various blocks of New York City there has already arisen in recent years, in response to the galloping crime problem, the hiring of private guards to patrol the blocks by voluntary contributions of the landlords and homeowners on that block. Crime on these blocks has already been substantially reduced. The problem is that these efforts have been halting and inefficient because those streets are not owned by the residents, and hence there is no effective mechanism for gathering the capital to provide efficient protection on a permanent basis. Furthermore, the patrolling street guards cannot legally be armed because they are not on their owners' property, and they cannot, as store or other property owners can, challenge anyone acting in a suspicious but not yet criminal manner. They cannot, in short, do the things, financially or administratively, that owners can do with their property.

 Furthermore, police paid for by the landowners and residents of a [p. 205] block or neighborhood would not only end police brutality against customers; this system would end the current spectacle of police being considered by many communities as alien "imperial" colonizers, there not to serve but to oppress the community. In America today, for example, we have the general rule in our cities of black areas patrolled by police hired by central urban governments, governments that are perceived to be alien to the black communities. Police supplied, controlled, and paid for by the residents and landowners of the communities themselves would be a completely different story; they would be supplying, and perceived to be supplying, services to their customers rather than coercing them on behalf of an alien authority.

 A dramatic contrast of the merits of public vs. private protection is provided by one block in Harlem. On West 135th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues is the station house of the 82nd Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Yet the august presence of the station house did not prevent a rash of night robberies of various stores on the block. Finally, in the winter of 1966, fifteen merchants on the block banded together to hire a guard to walk the block all night; the guard was hired from the Leroy V. George protection company to provide the police protection not forthcoming from their property taxes.1

 The most successful and best organized private police forces in American history have been the railway police, maintained by many railroads to prevent injury or theft to passengers or freight. The modern railway police were founded at the end of World War I by the Protection Section of the American Railway Association. So well did they function that by 1929 freight claim payments for robberies had declined by 93%. Arrests by the railway police, who at the time of the major study of their activities in the early 1930s totalled 10,000 men, resulted in a far higher percentage of convictions than earned by police departments, ranging from 83% to 97%. Railway police were armed, could make normal arrests, and were portrayed by an unsympathetic criminologist as having a widespread reputation for good character and ability.2 [p. 206]"

*Street Rules*

"One of the undoubted consequences of all land areas in the country being owned by private individuals and companies would be a greater richness and diversity of American neighborhoods. The character of the police protection and the rules applied by the private police would depend on the wishes of the landowners or street owners, the owners of the given area. Thus, suspicious residential neighborhoods would insist that any people or cars entering the area have a prior appointment with a resident, or else be approved by a resident with a phone call from the gate. In short, the same rules for street property would be applied as are now often applied in private apartment buildings or family estates. In other, more raffish areas, everyone would be permitted to enter at will, and there might be varying degrees of surveillance in between. Most probably commercial areas, anxious not to rebuff customers, would be open to all. All this would give full scope to the desires and values of the residents and owners of all the numerous areas in the country.

 It might be charged that all this will allow freedom "to discriminate" in housing or use of the streets. There is no question about that. Fundamental to the libertarian creed is every man's right to choose who shall enter or use his own property, provided of course that the other person is willing.

 "Discrimination," in the sense of choosing favorably or unfavorably in accordance with whatever criteria a person may employ, is an integral part of freedom of choice, and hence of a free society. But of course in the free market any such discrimination is costly, and will have to be paid for by the property owner concerned.

 Suppose, for example, that someone in a free society is a landlord of a house or a block of houses. He could simply charge the free market rent and let it go at that. But then there are risks; he may choose to discriminate against renting to couples with young children, figuring that there is substantial risk of defacing his property. On the other hand, he may well choose to charge extra rent to compensate for the higher risk, so that the free-market rent for such families will tend to be higher than otherwise. This, in fact, will happen in most cases on the free market. But what of personal, rather than strictly economic, "discrimination" by the landlord? Suppose, for example, that the landlord is a great admirer of six-foot Swedish-Americans, and decides to rent his apartments only to families of such a group. In the free society it would be fully in his right to do so, but he would clearly suffer a [p. 207] large monetary loss as a result. For this means that he would have to turn away tenant after tenant in an endless quest for very tall Swedish-Americans. While this may be considered an extreme example, the effect is exactly the same, though differing in degree, for any sort of personal discrimination in the marketplace. If, for example, the landlord dislikes redheads and determines not to rent his apartments to them, he will suffer losses, although not as severely as in the first example.

 In any case, anytime anyone practices such "discrimination" in the free market, he must bear the costs, either of losing profits or of losing services as a consumer. If a consumer decides to boycott goods sold by people he does not like, whether the dislike is justified or not, he then will go without goods or services which he otherwise would have purchased.

 All property owners, then, in a free society, would set down the rules for use of, or admission to, their property. The more rigorous the rules the fewer the people who will engage in such use, and the property owner will then have to balance rigor of admission as against loss of income. A landlord might "discriminate," for example, by insisting, as George Pullman did in his "company town" in Illinois in the late nineteenth century, that all his tenants appear at all times dressed in jacket and tie; he might do so, but it is doubtful that many tenants would elect to move into or remain in such a building or development and the landlord would suffer severe losses.

 The principle that property is administered by its owners also provides the rebuttal to a standard argument for government intervention in the economy. The argument holds that "after all, the government sets down traffic rules — red and green lights, driving on the right-hand side, maximum speed limits, etc. Surely everyone must admit that traffic would degenerate into chaos if not for such rules. Therefore, why should government not intervene in the rest of the economy as well?" The fallacy here is not that traffic should be regulated; of course such rules are necessary. But the crucial point is that such rules will always be laid down by whoever owns and therefore administers the roads. Government has been laying down traffic rules because it is the government that has always owned and therefore run the streets and roads; in a libertarian society of private ownership the private owners would lay down the rules for the use of their roads.

However, might not the traffic rules be "chaotic" in a purely free society? Wouldn't some owners designate red for "stop," others green or blue, etc.? Wouldn't some roads be used on the right-hand side and others on the left? Such questions are absurd. Obviously, it would be [p. 208] to the interest of all road owners to have uniform rules in these matters, so that road traffic could mesh smoothly and without difficulty. Any maverick road owner who insisted on a left-hand drive or green for "stop" instead of "go" would soon find himself with numerous accidents, and the disappearance of customers and users. The private railroads in nineteenth-century America faced similar problems and solved them harmoniously and without difficulty. Railroads allowed each other's cars on their tracks; they inter-connected with each other for mutual benefit; the gauges of the different railroads were adjusted to be uniform; and uniform regional freight classifications were worked out for 6,000 items. Furthermore, it was the railroads and not government that took the initiative to consolidate the unruly and chaotic patchwork of time zones that had existed previously. In order to have accurate scheduling and timetables, the railroads had to consolidate; and in 1883 they agreed to consolidate the existing fifty-four time zones across the country into the four which we have today. The New York financial paper, the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, exclaimed that "the laws of trade and the instinct for self-preservation effect reforms and improvements that all the legislative bodies combined could not accomplish."

*Pricing Streets and Roads*

"If, in contrast, we examine the performance of governmental streets and highways in America, it is difficult to see how private ownership could pile up a more inefficient or irrational record. It is now widely recognized, for example, that federal and state governments, spurred by the lobbying of automobile companies, oil companies, tire companies, and construction contractors and unions, have indulged in a vast overexpansion of highways. The highways grant gross subsidies to the users and have played the major role in killing railroads as a viable enterprise. Thus, trucks can operate on a right-of-way constructed and maintained by the taxpayer, while railroads had to build and maintain their own trackage. Furthermore, the subsidized highway and road programs led to an overexpansion of automobile-using suburbs, the coerced bulldozing of countless homes and businesses, and an artificial burdening of the central cities. The cost to the taxpayer and to the economy has been enormous. [p. 209]

 Particularly subsidized has been the urban auto-using commuter, and it is precisely in the cities where traffic congestion has burgeoned along with this subsidy to overaccumulation of their traffic. Professor William Vickrey of Columbia University has estimated that urban expressways have been built at a cost of from 6 cents to 27 cents per vehicle-mile, while users pay in gasoline and other auto taxes only about 1 cent per vehicle-mile. The general taxpayer rather than the motorist pays for maintenance of urban streets. Furthermore, the gasoline tax is paid per mile regardless of the particular street or highway being used, and regardless of the time of day of the ride. Hence, when highways are financed from the general gasoline tax fund, the users of the low-cost rural highways are being taxed in order to subsidize the users of the far higher-cost urban expressways. Rural highways typically cost only 2 cents per vehicle-mile to build and maintain.4

 In addition, the gasoline tax is scarcely a rational pricing system for the use of the roads, and no private firms would ever price the use of roads in that way. Private business prices its goods and services to "clear the market," so that supply equals demand, and there are neither shortages nor goods going unsold. The fact that gasoline taxes are paid per mile regardless of the road means that the more highly demanded urban streets and highways are facing a situation where the price charged is far below the free-market price. The result is enormous and aggravated traffic congestion on the heavily traveled streets and roads, especially in rush hours, and a virtually unused network of roads in rural areas. A rational pricing system would at the same time maximize profits for road owners and always provide clear streets free of congestion. In the current system, the government holds the price to users of congested roads extremely low and far below the free-market price; the result is a chronic shortage of road space reflected in traffic congestion. The government has invariably tried to meet this growing problem not by rational pricing but by building still more roads, socking the taxpayer for yet greater subsidies to drivers, and thereby making the shortage still worse. Frantically increasing the supply while holding the price of use far below the market simply leads to chronic and aggravated congestion.5 It is like a dog chasing a mechanical rabbit. Thus, the Washington Post has traced the impact of the federal highway program in the nation's capital: [p. 210]

 Washington's Capital Beltway was one of the first major links in the system to be completed. When the last section was opened in the summer of 1964, it was hailed as one of the finest highways ever built.

 It was expected to (a) relieve traffic congestion in downtown Washington by providing a bypass for north-south traffic and (b) knit together the suburban counties and cities ringing the capital.

 What the Beltway actually became was (a) a commuter highway and local traffic circulator and (b) the cause of an enormous building boom that accelerated the flight of the white and the affluent from the central city.

 Instead of relieving traffic congestion, the Beltway has increased it. Along with I-95, 70-S, and I-66, it has made it possible for commuters to move farther and farther from their downtown jobs.

 It has also led to relocation of government agencies and retail and service firms from downtown to the suburbs, putting the jobs they create out of reach of many inner city dwellers.6

 What would a rational pricing system, a system instituted by private road owners, look like? In the first place, highways would charge tolls, especially at such convenient entrances to cities as bridges and tunnels, but not as is charged now. For example, toll charges would be much higher at rush-hour and other peak-hour traffic (e.g., Sundays in the summer) than in off-hours. In a free market, the greater demand at peak hours would lead to higher toll charges, until congestion would be eliminated and the flow of traffic steady. But people have to go to work, the reader will ask? Surely, but they don't have to go in their own cars. Some commuters will give up altogether and move back to the city; others will go in car pools; still others will ride in express [p. 211] busses or trains. In this way, use of the roads at peak hours would be restricted to those most willing to pay the market-clearing price for their use. Others, too, will endeavor to shift their times of work so as to come in and leave at staggered hours. Weekenders would also drive less or stagger their hours. Finally, the higher profits to be earned from, say, bridges and tunnels, will lead private firms to build more of them. Road building will be governed not by the clamor of pressure groups and users for subsidies, but by the efficient demand and cost calculations of the marketplace." 
 "While many people can envision the working of private highways, they boggle at the thought of private urban streets. How would they be priced? Would there be toll gates at every block? Obviously not, for such a system would be clearly uneconomic, prohibitively costly to the owner and driver alike. In the first place, the street owners will price parking far more rationally than at present. They will price parking on congested downtown streets very heavily, in response to the enormous demand. And contrary to common practice nowadays, they will charge proportionately far more rather than less for longer, all-day parking. In short, the street owners will try to induce rapid turnover in the congested areas. All right for parking; again, this is readily understandable. But what about driving on congested urban streets? How could this be priced? There are numerous possible ways. In the first place the downtown street owners might require anyone driving on their streets to buy a license, which could be displayed on the car as licenses and stickers are now. But, furthermore, they might require anyone driving at peak hours to buy and display an extra, very costly license. There are other ways. Modern technology may make feasible the requirement that all cars equip themselves with a meter, a meter which will not only click away per mile, but may speed up in a predetermined manner on congested streets and roads at peak hours. Then the car owner could receive a bill at the end of the month. A similar plan was set forth a decade ago by Professor A. A. Walters:

 The particular administrative instruments which might be used include . . . special mileometers (similar to those used by taxis) . . . . The special mileometers would record mileage when the "flag" is up and a charge would be levied on this mileage. This would be suitable for large urban areas such as New York, London, Chicago, etc. "Flag-up" streets could be specified for certain hours of the day. Vehicles might be allowed to travel on those streets without a special mileometer provided that they bought and displayed a daily "sticker." The occasional traffic on "sticker" authority would have been charged more than the maximum amount paid by those on mileometer authority. The supervision of [p. 212] the scheme would be fairly simple. Cameras could be set up to record those cars without sticker or flag, and a suitable fine could be levied for contravention.7

 Professor Vickrey has also suggested that TV cameras at the intersections of the most congested streets could record the license numbers of all cars, with motorists sent a bill each month in proportion to all the times that they crossed the intersection. Alternatively, he proposed that each car could be equipped with the Oxford electronic metering device; each car would then emit its own unique signal which would be picked up by the device placed at the given intersection.8

 In any case, the problem of rational pricing for streets and highways would be an easy one for private enterprise and modern technology to solve. Businessmen on the free market have readily solved far more difficult problems; all that is needed is to allow them the room to function.

 If all transportation were set completely free, if the roads, airlines, railroads, and waterways were freed of their labyrinthine networks of subsidies, controls, and regulations in a purely private system, how would the consumers allocate their transportation dollars? Would we return to railroad travel, for example? The best estimates of cost and demand for transportation predict that railroads would become the main staple for long-haul freight, airlines for long-range passenger service, trucks for short-haul freight, and busses for public commuter travel. While railroads, in short, would stage a comeback for long-haul freight, they would not be revivified for much passenger service. In recent years, many liberals who have become disenchanted with the overbuilding of highways have been calling for massive discouragement of highway use, and the subsidizing and building of subways and commuter railways on a vast scale for urban traffic. But these grandiose schemes ignore the enormous expense and waste that would be involved. For even if [p. 213] many of these highways should not have been built, they are there, and it would be folly not to take advantage of them. In recent years, some intelligent transportation economists have raised their voices against the massive waste involved in constructing new rapid transit railroads (such as in the San Francisco Bay area) and have called instead for making use of the existing highways through employing express busses for commuting.9

 It is not difficult to envision a network of private, unsubsidized and unregulated railroads and airlines; but could there be a system of private roads? Could such a system be at all feasible? One answer is that private roads have worked admirably in the past. In England before the eighteenth century, for example, roads, invariably owned and operated by local governments, were badly constructed and even more badly maintained. These public roads could never have supported the mighty Industrial Revolution that England experienced in the eighteenth century, the "revolution" that ushered in the modern age. The vital task of improving the almost impassable English roads was performed by private turnpike companies, which, beginning in 1706, organized and established the great network of roads which made England the envy of the world. The owners of these private turnpike companies were generally landowners, merchants, and industrialists in the area being served by the road, and they recouped their costs by charging tolls at selected tollgates. Often the collection of tolls was leased out for a year or more to individuals selected by competitive bids at auction. It was these private roads that developed an internal market in England, and that greatly lowered the costs of transport of coal and other bulky material. And since it was mutually beneficial for them to do so, the turnpike companies linked up with each other to form an interconnected road network throughout the land — all a result of private enterprise in action.10

 As in England, so in the United States a little later in time. Faced again with virtually impassable roads built by local governmental units, private companies built and financed a great turnpike network throughout the northeastern states, from approximately 1800 to 1830. Once again, private enterprise proved superior in road building and ownership to the backward operations of government. The roads were built and operated by private turnpike corporations, and tolls were charged to the [p. 214] users. Again, the turnpike companies were largely financed by merchants and property owners along the routes, and they voluntarily linked themselves into an interconnected network of roads. And these turnpikes constituted the first really good roads in the United States."

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## Travlyr

Where is the part about getting around trespassing laws?

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## Travlyr

> What's wrong with privatizing roads?


This is what is wrong with privatizing all roads.




> *Trespass  [tres-puhs, -pas]*
> 
> Trespass,  in law, any physical injury to the person or to property. In English common law the action of trespass first developed (13th cent.) to afford a remedy for injuries to property. The two early forms were trespass quare clausum fregit,  used in instances of breaking into real property, and trespass de bonis asportatis,  used when personal property was removed without consent. To sue for trespass the plaintiff must have had possession of the property. Although the offense of trespass required the use of force, the courts quickly decided that the mere act of breaking in or of taking goods was in itself forceful. Trespass in time was applied to injuries to the person involving force, such as assault, battery, and unlawful imprisonment. Out of the law of trespass developed many of the torts that are now commonly recognized. In present-day usage the term trespass  is usually applied only to unlawful entry into private property. If a trespasser refuses a request to leave the premises, he may be removed by force.


This law applies to private property owners. It does not apply to public property. If a private property owner decides to not let you trespass on his road, then you can't be on his property by law. He can use force to keep you off his land. The law protects homeowners/landowners up to and including using force to kick an intruder out of their home and off their land. 

If all roads are private, then it would be like having a cage built around your property. The same applies to rivers, natural lakes, etc.

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## Shane Harris

> This is what is wrong with privatizing all roads.
> 
> 
> 
> This law applies to private property owners. It does not apply to public property. If a private property owner decides to not let you trespass on his road, then you can't be on his property by law. He can use force to keep you off his land. The law protects homeowners/landowners up to and including using force to kick an intruder out of their home and off their land. 
> 
> If all roads are private, then it would be like having a cage built around your property. The same applies to rivers, natural lakes, etc.


I don't think you read Rothbards chapter that I posted, but I went and *bolded* what I think you're referring to? On a side note, just declaring something PUBLIC doesn't change the fact that it is PRIVATELY owned by the State, and that State can "cage you in" in the same way if they are so inclined. The gang of thieves and murderers owning the roads in our society are more inclined to do so because they have no need for your approval or good will because of its monopoly on the service in question as well as the monopoly on the use of force.

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## AGRP

> This is what is wrong with privatizing all roads.
> 
> 
> 
> This law applies to private property owners. It does not apply to public property. If a private property owner decides to not let you trespass on his road, then you can't be on his property by law. He can use force to keep you off his land. The law protects homeowners/landowners up to and including using force to kick an intruder out of their home and off their land. 
> 
> If all roads are private, then it would be like having a cage built around your property. The same applies to rivers, natural lakes, etc.


Actually, a lot of us would love to live on a _private_ street to accompany our _private_ homes and land.  I wouldnt mind paying a fee to have all entry points to the _private_ neighborhood secured and maintained.  If that fee got unreasonable, then I would move somewhere else.

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## Travlyr

> I don't think you read Rothbards chapter that I posted, but I went and *bolded* what I think you're referring to? On a side note, just declaring something PUBLIC doesn't change the fact that it is PRIVATELY owned by the State, and that State can "cage you in" in the same way if they are so inclined. The gang of thieves and murderers owning the roads in our society are more inclined to do so because they have no need for your approval or good will because of its monopoly on the service in question as well as the monopoly on the use of force.


That is more of a problem than a solution. What Rothbard is saying that if one wants to drive on a road, then he/she would have a contract with the road owner. As a traveler of many roads, that would pose an insurmountable obstacle.

You describe an illegitimate state.

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## Travlyr

> Actually, a lot of us would love to live on a _private_ street to accompany our _private_ homes and land.  I wouldnt mind paying a fee to have all entry points to the _private_ neighborhood secured and maintained.  If that fee got unreasonable, then I would move somewhere else.


It is not the fee that is the problem. It is trespassing laws that would have to be compromised to work. As a road owner I can keep you off my road if I want because trespassing laws permit it.

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## Shane Harris

> That is more of a problem than a solution. What Rothbard is saying that if one wants to drive on a road, then he/she would have a contract with the road owner. As a traveler of many roads, that would pose an insurmountable obstacle.


So you're not just talking about a cage around your property, but a cage around anywhere you want to go? I don't think this is a logical problem, akin to saying what if every grocery store and restaurant bans me because they are private! I won't be able to eat! This is very unrealistic, and like I said I believe this problem is more likely to take place in a system of public (privately owned by the state) roads. I think you're underestimating the free market.

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## Shane Harris

Also, my statement about starting out socialists refers to how almost every child easily latches on to socialism and the initiation of force to get what you want. Of course children are still selfish and seem to understand ownership when applied to themselves, but so do socialists. They just want to take from others. Children have to be taught to not take by force. In general.

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## Travlyr

> So you're not just talking about a cage around your property, but a cage around anywhere you want to go? I don't think this is a logical problem, akin to saying what if every grocery store and restaurant bans me because they are private! I won't be able to eat! This is very unrealistic, and like I said I believe this problem is more likely to take place in a system of public (privately owned by the state) roads. I think you're underestimating the free market.


That is not a good analogy. Roads, land, oceans, rivers, lakes, parks, etc. are special cases concerning property relating to trespassing laws.

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## Travlyr

> *Trespass  [tres-puhs, -pas]*
> 
> Trespass,  in law, any physical injury to the person or to property. In English common law the action of trespass first developed (13th cent.) to afford a remedy for injuries to property. The two early forms were trespass quare clausum fregit,  used in instances of breaking into real property, and trespass de bonis asportatis,  used when personal property was removed without consent. To sue for trespass the plaintiff must have had possession of the property. Although the offense of trespass required the use of force, the courts quickly decided that the mere act of breaking in or of taking goods was in itself forceful. Trespass in time was applied to injuries to the person involving force, such as assault, battery, and unlawful imprisonment. Out of the law of trespass developed many of the torts that are now commonly recognized. In present-day usage the term trespass  is usually applied only to unlawful entry into private property. If a trespasser refuses a request to leave the premises, he may be removed by force.


Read this carefully. In a legitimate state described by Mises and Locke, trespassing laws pertain to private property. They do not pertain to public property.

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## Shane Harris

> That is not a good analogy. Roads, land, oceans, rivers, lakes, parks, etc. are special cases concerning property relating to trespassing laws.


Roads are not natural. They are products. Access to roads is not a right. Trespassing laws apply to all private property, so I think my analogy works, since grocery stores and restaurants are private property and you can be kicked out for trespassing if the owner decides you are not welcome. I don't understand this obsession with trespassing laws as if this highly unlikely scenario is somehow entirely avoidable when the benevolent state owns all the roads? What makes access to roads, rivers, oceans, parks and babbling brooks a *Right*? If anything,access to food seems just as deserving of being a right. Or am I totally not understanding the issue? If so I'm going to need a much better explanation of the problem than simply the definition of trespassing and what you've already said.

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## AGRP

> That is not a good analogy. Roads, land, oceans, rivers, lakes, parks, etc. are special cases concerning property relating to trespassing laws.


How do you think indians preserved and maintained land for so long without your laws?

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## Travlyr

> How do you think indians preserved and maintained land for so long without your laws?


You nailed it on the head. They were nomads. Hunters and gatherers.

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## AGRP

> You nailed it on the head. They were nomads. Hunters and gatherers.


We aren't?

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## Shane Harris

> We aren't?


+rep

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## Travlyr

> Roads are not natural. They are products. Access to roads is not a right. Trespassing laws apply to all private property, so I think my analogy works, since grocery stores and restaurants are private property and you can be kicked out for trespassing if the owner decides you are not welcome. I don't understand this obsession with trespassing laws as if this highly unlikely scenario is somehow entirely avoidable when the benevolent state owns all the roads? What makes access to roads, rivers, oceans, parks and babbling brooks a *Right*? If anything,access to food seems just as deserving of being a right. Or am I totally not understanding the issue? If so I'm going to need a much better explanation of the problem than simply the definition of trespassing and what you've already said.


In a legitimate state of classical liberalism, as described by Mises, with property rights being enforceable all public roads should remain accessible and not be restricted by law. It is not the road that is natural. It is the land under the road that is natural and should remain without any right to enforce trespassing laws. Road building should be accomplished by competitive bid by private contractors. 

Private roads should be allowed to compete with public roads, but if our founders would not have included elected township road commissioners and pubic roads, then private property law would restrict access.

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## Travlyr

> We aren't?


I'm not. I live in a home on my land.

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## AGRP

> I'm not. I live in a home on my land.


Youre not special.  One way or another, we are all nomads; hunters and gatherers.  A lot of people travel for the summer, winter, weekends, day trips, or vacation.   Its not your land. Long term nomads such as yourself will die some day and "your" home and land will be passed onto someone else.  Life is not permanent.

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## Travlyr

> Youre not special.  One way or another, we are all nomads; hunters and gatherers.  A lot of people travel for the summer, winter, weekends, day trips, or vacation.   Its not your land. Long term nomads such as yourself will die some day and "your" home and land will be passed onto someone else.  Life is not permanent.


What I meant by the nomad comment is that the indians did not build fences, stake surveyed boundaries, or claim individual right to own land. Do you believe that individuals should be able to own land while they are here on Earth?

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## AGRP

> What I meant by the nomad comment is that the indians did not build fences, stake surveyed boundaries, or claim individual right to own land. Do you believe that individuals should be able to own land while they are here on Earth?


Indians had fences, survey boundaries, and individual rights to land.  They used different methods to go about it.  They used mountain ranges,  rivers, etc.  Individual rights to land came about by tribes.

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## Travlyr

> Indians had fences, survey boundaries, and individual rights to land.  They used different methods to go about it.  They used mountain ranges,  rivers, etc.  Individual rights to land came about by tribes.


They had tribal rights to land but not individual rights to land.

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## AGRP

> They had tribal rights to land but not individual rights to land.


They had no individual rights to live in a home of their own?

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## Travlyr

> They had no individual rights to live in a home of their own?


I am not positive about this, but as far as I know they did not claim individual rights to a permanent home... only tribal rights. They moved around their territories with the seasons. I am pretty sure that surveying and individual land owning concept came from Europe.

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## noneedtoaggress

Mises also grew up as a socialist:




I don't really find it all that surprising. People who are interested in discovering truths will likely change their views over the course of their lives as they come across knowledge that causes them to evaluate their currently held beliefs and adopt more accurate ones.

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## jj-

A socialist is a lot less messed up than a communist. Block and Hoppe never recovered, otherwise they wouldn't be anarchists.

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## NIU Students for Liberty

> A socialist is a lot less messed up than a communist. Block and Hoppe never recovered, otherwise they wouldn't be anarchists.


Where was I when Block became an anarcho-syndicalist?

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## Tudo

Well we all know who Dr Block is don't we

Introduction to Libertarianism | Walter Block 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGVt...eature=related

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## silverhandorder

Oh look at this minarchist bashing anarchists.

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## noneedtoaggress

> Oh look at this minarchist bashing anarchists.


lol

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## Travlyr

> Well we all know who Dr Block is don't we
> 
> Introduction to Libertarianism | Walter Block 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGVt...eature=related


Libertarianism =/= Classical Liberalism

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## AGRP

> I am not positive about this, but as far as I know they did not claim individual rights to *a permanent home*... only tribal rights. They moved around their territories with the seasons. I am pretty sure that surveying and individual land owning concept came from Europe.


What is this permanent home you keep speaking of?  Life is not permanent.  You're crazy to believe indians did not survey land and had a right to their own homes.  Try trespassing in my teepee and see what happens.  If I see or hear someone wondering around my teepee then expect a confrontation if i dont recognize you or your tribal gear.

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## mczerone

> A Future of Private Roads and Highways
> Mises Daily: Thursday, April 16, 2009 by Walter Block
> 
> 
> 
> This propaganda is inconsistent with Classical Liberalism.


So he's not a true Scotsman. You haven't analyzed his argument one bit, nor have you proven that your formulation of "Classical Liberalism" is the best way to organize society. Further, you haven't proved that govt management of so called "public goods" is better than private.

You're hiding behind meaningless labels and blaming one's communist past for not accepting your communist solutions.

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## curtd59

While it is possible to criticize Block's reasoning on a number of topics, this is not one of them. You fail to understand both the limits of classical liberalism and Block's attempt at innovation. 

1) Block is attempting to create means by which we can create public goods without the need for government. That is the purpose of the Anarchic research program, in which he is a member.  He has largely succeeded in doing so. And if you were to read his work on roads you would understand this.

2) Public goods (commons) in the Classical Liberal context, unlike shareholder rights in shareholder agreements, are neither calculable nor codified.  They are not calculable because there is no means by which to measure usage, and there is no limit on the number of shareholders, nor means of transferring (selling) rights.  They are not codified because they are not specifically written for each instance as a contract unmodifiable except by voluntary approval of the shareholders.

3) Public goods (commons) then, are by definition, acts of fraud because they allow for the involuntary transfer of property and in particular, the unequal transfer and consumption of that property.  They are also demonstrably acts of fraud, since the government members use them to consistently buy themselves rights and powers with which they use consequently to deprive citizens of further property.

4) If classical liberalism 'worked' it would have protected our rights. However, it has demonstrably failed to.  As the marxists have said, democratic elections are merely a slow road to communism.  (Something which Hoppe has elucidated in Democracy, the God That Failed, demonstrating that it is a necessary outcome of the incentives of elected individuals which enforce high time preference.)  So classical liberalism has logically, and demonstrably failed.   It has failed because the members no longer have the property rights and therefore the incentives that existed under the english common law. It is this common law model that the anarchic program claims is superior to the classical liberal model.  

The classical liberal model required the houses of government represent the classes of society. Instead of adding a house of low-commons for the proletariat, under universal democracy we have eliminated the houses as class distinctions and therefore set the classes to war at one another both inside and outside of the political institutions. 

5) You are consistently using the term 'Classical Liberal' as an historical analogy or a sentimental expression, but not as a technical description of the institutions and how they function in order to support cooperation and conflict resolution.  As such, it is difficult to distinguish between your understanding of these instituions as procedural systems and a 'religion' or the beliefs needed to be held by the population regardless of the function of the institutions. I mean this in the sense that religions consist of mythologies (allegorical concepts) that cannot be articulated as objective human actions.  Given that almost all of western philosophy makes this mistake, and given that political philosophy does moreso, it is understandable.  But we have moved beyond this level of understanding, and can articulate these institutional concepts.  

6) Classical liberalism's institutions are limited by the technologies that were available at the time it was conceived of. We no longer need representatives, who are simply a vehicle behind which special interests can easily focus their efforts and funding. There is no need for politicians, or the corruption that results from having them.   The entire western political model is based on an inability for individuals to understand issues and communicate their preferences in a timely fashion.  This is clearly not the case any longer.  And while we may need 'houses', or categories of voters as a construct by which the classes can be forced to cooperate, it is not clear that these votes need be equal, nor that we need representatives and bureaucracies to assist in the cooperation between the classes.

7) classical liberalism as it was implemented in the united states is a primitive technology that was suitable for resolving differences in the priority of  investments between people who were homogenous in all material terms.  ie: property owning, agrarian society, male protestants.  But those institutions are insufficient for resolving conflicts between individuals in heterogeneous societies who have a multitude of competing and irreconcilable interests.  

SUMMARY
it may not be clear that you're using a religious analogy that requires homogenous norms, and the anarchic program is attempting to create a technical solution devoid of bureaucracy and representation but still requires homogenous norms, and the new libertarian classical liberals like myself are trying to create institutions that tolerate heterogeneity of interests without bureaucracy and representation. (or perhaps with some limited variant of it.).  But we are, all of us, talking about different kinds of institutions, given different assumptions about what norms and institutions that is possible to produce in a polity.  Your argument, and the Anarchic argument suggest that humans can adopt a uniform set of intests. And they cannot. If only because the masculine and feminine reproductive strategies are in conflict, and therefore so are their moral instincts.

So I will criticize my friend Walter Block for applying insufficient jewish ethics of non-land holders to a political model that requires homogenity of belief and the ability to hold the land and create both the formal and informal institutions that lead to the high trust commercial society that libertarian ethics require. But his solution to roads is still an insight that has value for us, even if we choose not to employ it.  And the classical liberalism you appear to advocate is both a demonstrable failure, and requires a homogeneity of population that does not and cannot exist. ie: it's not possible.  It is not possible even more so if this form of classical liberalism is supposedly a norm, voluntarily held by the populace.  Because it is against the interests of more than half of them.

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## Travlyr

> While it is possible to criticize Block's reasoning on a number of topics, this is not one of them. You fail to understand both the limits of classical liberalism and Block's attempt at innovation. 
> 
> 1) Block is attempting to create means by which we can create public goods without the need for government. That is the purpose of the Anarchic research program, in which he is a member.  He has largely succeeded in doing so. And if you were to read his work on roads you would understand this.
> 
> 2) Public goods (commons) in the Classical Liberal context, unlike shareholder rights in shareholder agreements, are neither calculable nor codified.  They are not calculable because there is no means by which to measure usage, and there is no limit on the number of shareholders, nor means of transferring (selling) rights.  They are not codified because they are not specifically written for each instance as a contract unmodifiable except by voluntary approval of the shareholders.
> 
> 3) Public goods (commons) then, are by definition, acts of fraud because they allow for the involuntary transfer of property and in particular, the unequal transfer and consumption of that property.  They are also demonstrably acts of fraud, since the government members use them to consistently buy themselves rights and powers with which they use consequently to deprive citizens of further property.
> 
> 4) If classical liberalism 'worked' it would have protected our rights. However, it has demonstrably failed to.  As the marxists have said, democratic elections are merely a slow road to communism.  (Something which Hoppe has elucidated in Democracy, the God That Failed, demonstrating that it is a necessary outcome of the incentives of elected individuals which enforce high time preference.)  So classical liberalism has logically, and demonstrably failed.   It has failed because the members no longer have the property rights and therefore the incentives that existed under the english common law. It is this common law model that the anarchic program claims is superior to the classical liberal model.  
> ...


I continue to disagree. If all roads were made private, then that would be enslaving not liberating because land owners would end up in a private cage. Trespassing laws are paramount for private property. Walter Block claims that instead of applying eminent domain to build a road that road builders can build a bridge over the land or dig a tunnel under. I do not see how having a bridge built over the top of my house or under my house is liberating. That would be invading not liberating. Personally, I much prefer eminent domain to intrusion.

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## McChronagle

Not Sure ive ever heard block say something like that but theres a lot of his talks online. So are you basically saying private property and free markets only apply successfully and liberates people in certain cases while not in others? I cant think of many more tyranical things than stealing someones land for the arbitrary "greater good"

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## noneedtoaggress

If someone found it preferable to have the state seize their land and sell it off cheap at the point of a gun than have property-respecting private businesses build around their property it wouldn't sound very rational to me, but I don't really "get" masochism either, so to each their own.

The problem with institutionalizing that situation is that it would essentially be doing the same thing as forcing _everyone_ into "masochistic" sexual relationships because it's your preference rather than allowing them form their own relationships.

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## Travlyr

> Not Sure ive ever heard block say something like that but theres a lot of his talks online. So are you basically saying private property and free markets only apply successfully and liberates people in certain cases while not in others? I cant think of many more tyranical things than stealing someones land for the arbitrary "greater good"


No, I am not saying private property and free market only apply in certain cases while not in others. Re-read what I wrote. Land ownership is a separate case. Land has nothing to do with slavery. They are separate issues. Conflating them is a mistake.

Read his book. If you don't sell your land to the private road builders, then they can simply build a bridge over the top of your house. I don't know about you, but I do not wish to live under a bridge. I would much prefer to sell my land and move on.

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## NIU Students for Liberty

> Read his book. If you don't sell your land to the private road builders, then they can simply build a bridge over the top of your house. I don't know about you, but I do not wish to live under a bridge. *I would much prefer to sell my land and move on.*


At least you possess the freedom to choose if whether or not you want to sell your land in Block's hypothetical society.

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## heavenlyboy34

+rep for curtd

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## Travlyr

> At least you possess the freedom to choose if whether or not you want to sell your land in Block's hypothetical society.


And if you don't sell then your rights are violated anyway in Block's scenario. Again, compromises have to be made here on Earth because there is no Utopia here. No one gets the right to just do anything they want to do. No one. Restrictions on liberty are necessary in order to protect peaceful liberty.

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## Travlyr

> +rep for curtd


Did you put your cheerleader skirt on today?

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## heavenlyboy34

> Did you put your cheerleader skirt on today?


Why did you take me off your precious "ignore" list?  Could you put me back on, plz?  All you do is detract from conversation.

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## Travlyr

> Why did you take me off your precious "ignore" list?  Could you put me back on, plz?  All you do is detract from conversation.


Nobody is on my ignore list anymore. I enjoy the stupid people's comments.

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