Free-market roads

Free-market roads is the theory that a society should have entirely private and/or community owned roads.

Free-market roads and infrastructure are generally advocated by anarcho-capitalist works, including Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty, Morris and Linda Tannehill's The Market for Liberty, David D. Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom, and David T. Beito's The Voluntary City.

The free rider problem has been cited by proponents such as Murray Rothbard as a reason for privatizing roads: since traffic congestion is the result of excess demand for transportation infrastructure, it may be treated as any other economic shortage - in this case, a shortage of roads, lanes, exits, or other infrastructure. Seeing the pricing mechanism of a free market as a more efficient means of meeting demand than government planning (see Economic calculation problem), Peter Samuel, in his book Highway Aggravation: The Case For Privatizing The Highways, compares American traffic jams and Soviet grocery store lines:

B. H. Meyer stated, "It is evident that the turnpike movement resulted in a very general betterment of roads." The book Street Smart claims that Brazil has saved 20 percent and Colombia 50 percent through efforts to outsource road maintenance to the private sector.

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