The US is utterly dependent on the highways. Because of the economic theory of externalities, the economically rational way to pay for them is general taxation and fuel taxes. Everyone benefits, everyone should pay.
why do you want a complicated toll system to add useless antijobs to the transportation industry? You are contradicting yourself here. Either you are for useless jobs or you are against useless jobs. Make up your mind.
In retrospect I hadn't thought of it in that manner. Fuel taxes achieve the same result without unnecessary startup costs or eating up labor that could be used elsewhere.
However, that doesn't affect the argument of if the actual maintenance of the roads could be done by private contractors for better efficiency. The main problem here is contracts can and have been influenced by politics (the state has no interest in efficiency so much as rewarding friends), so that wouldn't go over well. Really that just compels me further in favor of banning all private contributions and having all political campaigns funded through taxation. While I don't think a perfectly efficient government (or private market) will ever exist, it would certainly be improved by less clout in politics by money. Big businesses ultimately seek to squeeze out little ones (which basic economic theory says is bad for us in the long run), and so keeping their paws off politics would assist better economic decisions.
As for devolution of responsibilities to the states: they are still a government with no concern for financial solvency. Of course giving them control of things is going to go over just as well as giving it to the federal government. The state is the state, doesn't matter if its leader titles itself President, Governor, or Mayor. A private business actually has to worry about turning a profit, or it's going to go bankrupt. A government can just borrow more money.
Because the world is run by simple generlaisations like this, as cleary the publci is ineffective and private is super.
Even the states with heavy government intervention in areas such as Europe are still capitalist at the end of the day. I wonder why?
Could it be a country that is entirely state-run nine times out of ten ends up an atrocious failure?
The private sector generally does its job better than any government could. For the cases where it doesn't, that's what regulations and subsidies are for.
The profit motive is powerful... it is why allocation of resources tends to improve dramatically when you are given ownership of something. Compare how your bathroom looks to a public one. People overall do not care about the prosperity of others as much as themselves.
