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Author: Walter E. Block
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2011
Total Pages: 497
ISBN-13: 1610163583
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis work is dedicated to my fellow Americans, some 40,000 of them per year who have died needlessly in traffic fatalities. It is my sincere hope and expectation that under a system of private roads and highways in the future, that this number may be radically reduced.
Author: Walter Block
Publisher:
Published: 2009-01-01
Total Pages: 494
ISBN-13: 9781478338444
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com. The Mises Institute is pleased to introduce Walter Block's remarkable new treatise on private roads, a 494-page book that will cause you to rethink the whole of the way modern transportation networks operate. It is bold, innovative, radical, compelling, and shows how free-market economic theory is the clarifying lens through which to see the failures of the state and see the alternative that is consistent with human liberty.He shows that even the worst, off-the-cuff scenario of life under private ownership of roads would be fantastic by comparison to the existing reality of government-ownership of roads, which is awful in ways we don't entirely realize until Block fully explains it (think: highway deaths).But that is only the beginning of what Professor Block has done. He has made a lengthy, detailed, and positive case that the privatization of roads would be socially optimal in every way. It would save lives, curtail pollution, save us (as individuals!) money, save us massive time, introduce accountability, and make transportation a pleasure instead of a huge pain in the neck.Because this is the first-ever complete book on this topic, the length and detail are absolutely necessary. He shows that this is not some libertarian pipe dream but the most practical application of free-market logic. Block is dealing with something that confronts us every day. And in so doing, he illustrates the power of economic theory to take an existing set of facts and help see them in a completely different way.What's also nice is that the prose has great passion about it, despite its scholarly detail. Block loves answering the objections (Aren't roads public goods? Aren't roads too expensive to build privately?) and making the case, fully aware that he has to overcome a deep and persistent bias in favor of public ownership. The writer burns with a moral passion on the subjects of highway deaths and pollution issues. His "Open Letter to Mothers Against Drunk Driving" is a thrill to read!People have known that Block had been working on this book for many years, and some chapters have been seen in journals here and there. But there is something thrilling about seeing it all put together in one place. It comes together as a battle plan against government roads and a complete roadmap for a future of private transportation.
Author: Walter Block
Publisher:
Published: 2014-03
Total Pages: 494
ISBN-13: 9781293826362
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Walter Block
Publisher:
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 9781933550046
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Donald Cohen
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2021-11-23
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13: 1620976625
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe book the American Prospect calls “an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern,” by America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian “An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons.” —Naomi Klein A sweeping exposé of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, the hardcover edition of The Privatization of Everything elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains,” Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it “a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book,” and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a “persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best.” From Diane Ravitch (“an important new book about the dangers of privatization”) to Heather McGhee (“a well-researched call to action”), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can—and are—wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code. “Enlightening and sobering” (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls “a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship.”
Author: Jan-Erik Lane
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 1997-12-12
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13: 085702616X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDeregulation, privatization and marketization have become the bywords for the reforms and debates surrounding the public sector. This major book is unique in its comparative analysis of the reform experience in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Leading experts identify a number of key factors to systematically explain the similarities and differences, map common problems and together reflect on the future shape of the public sector, exploring significant themes in a lively and accessible way.
Author: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 1996-11-25
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 0313021422
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPrivatization began in the 1970s with Carter's deregulation of some business, and increased with the Thatcher administration in the United Kingdom, the Reagan administration in the United States, and many communist and socialist countries. One area of concern in privatization is transportation—airports, water ports, roads, and mass transit. Privatization can be implemented in financing, construction, operation, and maintenance of the transportation system, the main motives being the belief that the private sector can be more efficient than the public sector, and because public funds are becoming less plentiful for a variety of reasons. The focus is on ideas and innovations for expanding the private role in transportation. Specifically covered are ideas and innovations for expanding the role of private sector in U.S. transportation projects, private financing of urban transportation, airport privatization, water port improvement, toll roads, and competitive contracting for transit services. The distinguished list of contributors includes the co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Economics, William Vickrey. The audience for the work are scholars dealing with the discussions concerning the economics and politics of privatization, business people who are likely to be interested in potential opportunities, governmental regulators and staff, and policy makers.
Author: Eduardo Engel
Publisher:
Published: 2012
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe authors attribute many of the problems in highway privatization to the combined effect of features of the highway business and the fixed term contracts used. First, traffic forecasts are notoriously imprecise, and the franchise holder has almost no control over demand. Second, most franchises have been awarded for a fixed term that is independent of demand realization. They propose a new mechanism the --least-present-value-of-revenue auction-- that overcomes flaws in the fixed term franchise because the contract term automatically adjusts to traffic growth. If traffic grows more slowly than expected, the term lengthens and if more rapidly, it shortens. The basic principle underlying the auction is that the franchise holder should not make losses when the long-run demand for the highway is sufficient to pay all costs.
Author: Clifford Winston
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 0815704739
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Proposes experiments in deregulating and privatizing the country's transportation systems to rid them of inefficiencies and significantly improve their performance in moving goods and people around the United States; the book covers roads, airports and airport traffic control, mass transit, intercity buses and railway networks"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Gabriel Roth
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-05
Total Pages: 551
ISBN-13: 1351487892
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe poor health of today's roads--a subject close to the hearts of motorists, taxpayers, and government treasurers around the world--has resulted from faulty incentives that misdirect government decision-makers, according to the contributors to Street Smart. During the 1990s, bad government decision-making resulted in the U.S. Interstate Highway System growing by only one seventh the rate of traffic growth. The poor maintenance of existing roads is another concern. In cities around the world, highly political and wasteful government decision-making has led to excessive traffic congestion that has created long commutes, reduced safety, and caused loss of leisure time.Street Smart examines the privatization of roads in theory and in practice. The authors see at least four possible roles for private companies, beyond the well-known one of working under contract to design, build, or maintain governmentally provided roads. These include testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. Two chapters describe the history of private roads in the United Kingdom and the United States. Contemporary examples are provided of road pricing, privatizing, and contracting out are evident in environs as diverse as Singapore, Southern California, and Scandinavia, and cities as different as Bergen, Norway, and London, England. Finally, several chapters examine strategies for implementing privatization. The principles governing providing scarce resources in free societies are well known. We apply them to such necessities as energy, food, and water so why not to "road space"? The main obstacle to private, or semi-private, ownership of roads is likely to remain the reluctance of the political class to give up a lucrative source of power and influence.Those who want decisions about road services to be controlled by the interplay of consumers and suppliers in free markets, rat
