Relying, of course, on the government’s eminent domain powers to buy up the route.
No, you don’t understand. We would allow the market to determine the path of the road.
People who don’t want to sell their property would not have to, and if the people who do want to sell their property leave us with a road that meanders back and forth like a river, and requires 25 miles of driving to travel 5 miles, then that is just the efficiency of the market at work.
This is essentially what we have here now - when some capitalist wants to build a bunch of houses, they have to build the roads to get to and service those houses. Which I approve of - they want to cram more houses in, they should pay for the infrastructure to support them.
Obviously there would be an economic benefit to building roads to farmland, therefore the market would provide roads.
If the land is more valuable to the road-builders, he can buy the property from its owner. This way nobody is disenfranchised. Only land that is more valuable to drivers collectively as a road than to a single property owner as a home or business will be available to road builders.
Not if the land owner refuses to sell. As I understand it, in Libertopia, property ownership is sacrosanct, and eminent domain is outlawed.
Meh. Economic progress and falling prices would eventually make it profitable to expand into more remote parts of the country.
When you say “cities would only exist where businesses needed them, because businesses would build the roads” you are slightly off. Settlements would exist wherever citizens found it desirable to live and the cost of creating such a settlement was within their means. For example even if there were no businesses in Hawaii folks would save money to move to such a location if they thought it was worth the cost. it would cost these people a lot of money, but it would be their money. The hammer swinger in Pittsburgh wouldn’t be paying for their roads.
So instead of having roads take the most efficient route from A to B, they’ll go from A to B via a meandering path of whichever property owners sold cheaply. Great example of capitalistic efficiency!
(Yeah, it was already mentioned by mhendo, but it doesn’t seem to have sunk in.)
It would be cheaper to send in men to lie, cheat and threaten people out of their land. That’s the ‘good old fashioned way’ of getting these things done.
You understand correctly. If there was a single landowner refusing to sell a different route would need to be found or more money would have to be offered to the landholder. Eventually, like I said, the amount of money drivers would be willing to pay to drive on such a property would be greater than the amount the landowner is willing to sell for. If this didn’t happen, the road wasn’t a benefit to society because the land was worth more to the landowner than to the all the drivers combined.
This would be illegal in a libertarian society. Par for the course for our current government, of course.
The market? What? The farmer’s market? The great nebulous hand of free market? Will it reach down with its concrete mixers and magically pave the way from large area to small area?
Seriously. I want you to sit down and think this through. Someone in your hypothetical world has to pay for the roads. It’s not “the market” so don’t give me that line. Who? Who specifically pays for a road from, say, Kansas City to an outlying area 30 miles away with 5 farms? Is it the farms themselves? Do they pay for their share of the road individually or do they all get together, take time out of farming to plan between the five of them, divide up the costs, hire the contractor, and built a 15 mile road until they meet up with 3 other farms and then subdivide the cost and contractual obligations? And can the farmers really afford, let alone negotiate strongly for the building of, a 30 mile road?
Or maybe it’s the buyers of the farmer’s wares who pony up the money for a road. What if a new grocery store comes on the scene? Can it get any produce from these farms? Fuck no. It didn’t pay for the roads so go curl up and die says its competitors. And if its the wholesaler who pays for everything and it has too high of prices and the farmers want to try another distributor? “OK fine. But the road’s mine so good luck with that.” Which means wholesaler #2 has to either buy the original road or build another one as a price of doing business with these 5 farmers.
Oh and do you have any clue at all of how much a road costs? Go ahead and give me a per mile estimate.
So really, this is a *very * simplistic hypothetical and I want you to answer who pays for the road and how would it logistically be possible to do so?
And if you answer with “the market will provide” so help me god I’ll reach through the internet and rip your fingers off so you can’t type anymore.
A direct route would be a benefit to drivers. Would it be safe to say that drivers would be willing to pay for such a route? If so, if this amount they are willing to pay is greater than the stubborn landowners price, a direct route could be secured.
So eventually we’d be able to get farmed food to the population centres that need it. Whew, that’s a relief - I’m glad that eventually the food riots will settle down.
When did this thread morph into “naive libertarian idea of the day”?
This circular logic is the basis of many things in libertarianism; anything the market does is beneficial to society, and anything the market doesn’t do is, by libertarian definition, not beneficial to society. Thus, libertarianism achieves a 100% efficiency, simply by redefining words.
It’s illegal in this society. Something being illegal doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
When Will started mouthing off about stuff he doesn’t understand. 
Any reason you’re so darn certain the market would provide roads to farms? After all, historically the market didn’t provide electric service to farms:
“In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged significantly behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads.”
"In 1934, less than 11% of US farms had electricity. (In Germany and France that same year, nearly 90% of farms had electricity.) "
But then, something did change:
“By 1942, nearly 50% of US farms had electricity, and by 1952 almost all US farms had electricity.”
So did the market (somewhat belatedly) provide? Not exactly. The Feds stepped in via the Rural Electrification Act to provide loans to farmers to create electrification cooperatives.
(Quotes from Wikipedia’s article on the Rural Utilities Service [Successor to the Rural Electrification Administration]: Rural Utilities Service - Wikipedia).
The market works in mysterious ways.
The quoted post is the rhetorical equivalent of being hit by a linebacker with a 2x4. Will WillFarnaby show a molecule of class and honesty and admit he was completely wrong and just shouting prayers to the invisible hand?
I have my doubts.