Had a discussion over the weekend with my family (mostly republican, but becoming more libertarian/voluntaryist every chat we have!) about taxation [is theft], muh roads, the military, the police, etc.
Roads are almost always the main one that they (and many statists in general) can't seem to get past. They don't realize that all the other examples I've given where the government running things is much less efficient than the private sector: post office, DMV, police, etc. But roads are always one thing they can't comprehend or get over.
The 2 main concerns are:
- Private companies would be too greedy and would charge exorbitant prices thus making you have to pay way more to ride on the road they manage, to the point where it might not even be possible and you couldn't get to target to go shopping!
- Who would pay for the roads to be built to my house out here? Or who would build a road to get to this small business out here? It would cost too much money for a ma&pop shop to build an entire road!
Let's tackle those 1 by 1.
- Greed - First of all you don't want people to run the roads because people are greedy, so you're going to have the government do it.
-What is the magical "government" composed of? -The same people you were concerned are too greedy. Except worse people because these are people who want to rule over their fellow man. Having the roads managed by the government leads to MORE greedy people running the roads.
-Would it really cost more? The government is the most inefficient entity that exists, they don't "build" the roads, they don't "pay" for the roads. They simply take the money from you, scrape some (read A LOT) off for themselves and their "administrative services" then use what's left over to pay a construction company to build the roads.
- Who Would Pay For It? - I get the idea here, basically if we all come together and pool our money then we can build those roads where as I wouldn't be able to build the road by myself to get to my house.
No one is stopping us from pooling our money in order to pay for the roads; if I move into a neighborhood that has dirt roads, what's stopping all of us from getting together, pooling our money and paving our roads? But even before that, why wouldn't a community, when building the homes, build roads that go to their property then just roll the cost of the road and maintenance into the cost of the homes? -easy!
-The other idea is that companies are going to be building their own roads to get to their locations. For example, the multiplex isn't going to build their theater out in the middle of a field, build their big beautiful parking lot and not build a 100ft road that connects it with the road already going to walmart. They might then pay walmart a bit to connect to their road, and then any small businesses that want to be in that area can use the same parking lot and roads as the theater or walmart and just pay a little bit more rent for the price of the road and maintenance. And, since they're not paying taxes to pay for the inefficient middle man, they'll save money which means their customers will save money!
