The Blogg

In response to funding shortages and transportation infrastructure in need of repair, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has been pushing a plan to lease the PA turnpike to a private corporation. The state recently announced that the highest bidder has offered an up-front payment of $12.8 billion, which would be invested to produce a projected $1.1 billion in interest yearly. A more thorough summary is available here.

The Libertarian in me wants to applaud this idea. In general, taking what has been a government responsibility and opening it to the competitive market is good for everyone involved. In this specific case, however, I think it would be a mistake. Ownership and maintenance of roads is one of the few “public goods” where the government can legitimately provide a better service than private enterprise. They have been doing a reasonable job of it for more than 50 years, and the thought of multiple competing road systems and competing companies squabbling over the intersections between them is frightening.

If someone is willing to pay $12.8 billion dollars for the right to operate the Turnpike for 75 years, they must think that they can extract significantly more than that in profit during that time. If the state is willing to enter such a contract, then Rendell and other officials must think that running the Turnpike themselves would not produce those profits, or they would simply borrow the money needed now and pay it back with Turnpike revenues. This supports my general belief that large governmental organizations are inherently corrupt and wasteful. Based on that, accepting this bid seems wise. What bothers me is that the state *should* be able to do just as well. Why can’t we charge the same toll rates that the private company was, throw out bad management, and squeeze out cost inefficiencies ourselves, and thus retain all of the profits beyond $12.8 billion for tax relief? I am not sure where this angry optimism is coming from, but I suspect it will not last long.

On another note, using revenue from tolls on one road to fund the upkeep of all other free roads in the state is not exactly an ideal model. Essentially, people who live in the southern part of the state pay to keep Rt. 80 in good order for those citizens in the northern part of the state, who contribute nothing. (This is a simplification, of course. PennDOT also receives funding from taxes, federal grants, etc.) A competing plan already approved by Pennsylvania legislatures but requiring federal approval would convert Rt. 80 to a toll road as well. This would be a better option, but still not ideal. Charging tolls for the use of a road makes sense for one purpose only: to finance the construction of that road itself. After that debt has been paid, continuing to charge motorists for the use of that road is unreasonable.

There is a reasonable, equitable, and simple source of funding for transit infrastructure, one that the state legislature has already rejected because it would be politically infeasible: an increase in the state’s excise tax on gasoline and other automobile fuels. For the much more than 99% of road users who drive a vehicle with an internal combustion engine, the amount of fuel purchased is roughly proportional to the value that person gains from the availability of safe roadways. Not only would such a tax on fuel mean that transportation services are paid for by people who actually use them, it would provide another small incentive for people to purchase fuel-efficient vehicles and to drive responsibly. The only significant difficulty is that tractor trailers cause a very large proportion of damage to roadways, but probably have tanks large enough to travel from Maryland to New York without stopping for a fill-up. I am not sure how this should be taken into account, but I am sure it could be. The reason the state has not elected to do this has nothing to do with its actual drawbacks, of course. It is because lawmakers do not want to have to explain to their constituents that they are partly responsible for high gasoline prices, even if it would be the best plan.

By the way, let’s do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of what such a tax would have to be. My car has a 10-gallon tank, which I need to fill about 3 times a month or roughly 40 times per year for a total consumption of 400 gallons. Some people need to drive much more than I and others much less, but for the purposes of this calculation it should be a decent estimate of the average. Pennsylvania has an estimated population of around 12 million people. Supposing that 30% of those people are children and another 20% are adults who do not regularly drive, we have 6 million drivers. If they, on average, consume as much gasoline as I do, that would be total sales of 2.4 billion gallons. To generate $1.1 billion dollars would thus require a tax of less than a cent on each gallon. Assuming that this increase in price would encourage some people to reduce consumption or drive out of state to make fuel purchases, it might require a very liberal estimate of 2 cents per gallon. By the same estimates above, this would cost the average driver $8 each year. I have the same aversion to higher prices as anyone else, but if this removed the far more than $8 I pay each year in Turnpike tolls it would be good for my bank account. Strangely, the tax proposal killed by the legislature was for 11 cents per gallon, indicating that my estimation has serious flaws. Even at $44 each year it would be no worse than my current costs.

There has been a lot of noise in the media recently about the possibility of Sen. Barack Obama asking Sen. Hillary Clinton to campaign with him as vice president. The “dream ticket” has been mentioned before, but never with any real thought that it could happen; there has been too much vitriol between the candidates. Recently, however, commentators are almost making it sound likely.

If this were to happen, I would be extremely disappointed, perhaps so much so as to join McCain’s camp. Senator Clinton is the embodiment of everything wrong with the system, and everything that I thought Obama was campaigning against. The Obama campaign has been based on the belief that it is possible to be elected and to run the country without political patronage or back-room deals, that government can be for and of the people rather than the corporations, unions, and lobbyists, and that voters can be made to care more about issues than smoke and mirrors. To welcome Clinton into his administration would be a betrayal, an admission that either these things are not possible, or worse yet that they are not desirable. If there is any justice in this world, this possibility exists only in the minds of pundits looking for a story.

(Personally, I am still clinging to hope for the nearly impossible Obama-Paul ticket.)

The California Supreme Court ruled yesterday to strike down a legislative ban on gay marriage, a move that will surely further inflame recent attempts to pass a court-proofed Constitutional amendment banning the same. I’m not a big fan of justices setting public policy, but I think they made the right call here. Both long-standing statutes and case law forbid the government from engaging in discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the challenged law is clearly a violation.

While I do not agree with them, I do understand some of the reasons people have for trying to pass such laws. For many people, myself included, marriage is a sacred, spiritual relationship between themselves, their spouse, and their God. To apply the term indiscriminately can be seen as an affront to what is the most important commitment a person makes. No one with sufficient love and wisdom would consider this a valid reason to oppress someone else, but there are sadly very many people lacking those characteristics.

Of course, it would be possible to find a solution that satisfies nearly everyone. The problem is that marriage has two separate but intertwined meanings in our culture – one socio-religious, and one legal. Because the socio-religious institution of marriage is far older than the corresponding civil concept, the government should be getting out of the business of marriage immediately. Thus, marriage would be a matter between spouses and the socio-religious groups to which they belong. Anyone who wishes to consider themselves married would be free to do so, but no one else would be required to recognize their marriage.

At the same time, the government would institute a new system of civil unions. Any two consenting adults would have the option of entering a civil union, which would come with all of the legal rights, responsibilities, and privileges currently associated with marriage. All persons currently married would be automatically considered to be in a civil union, but couples would be free to enter into a civil union without being married or vice versa. (In practice, I suspect that most religious organizations would refuse to marry people who did not intend to enter the civil contract.) Of course, none of this will ever happen because it is both too drastic and too reasonable for either of the major political parties to seriously consider it.

What about other forms of relationships? I have never quite understood why polygamy is illegal. Recent events suggest that polygamous societies frequently also practice forced marriages and sexual abuse of children, but these activities are already themselves illegal. A largely polygynous society will result in a large underclass of men with no realistic chance to reproduce, which I can only imagine would result in a rather unstable society, but if only a small percentage of Americans practiced polygamy it would not be a problem. Is it possible that bigamy laws are solely a result of discrimination against Mormons?

I have little doubt that there are groups of three or more people who legitimately love each other in much the same way as a husband and wife in a traditional marriage, and it seems to me that the only reason there are not protests against bigamy laws is that polygamists are fewer in number than gays. If the government got out of the marriage business, it would be natural to extend the protection of civil unions to groups of three or more persons that wish to enter one. This would not be trivial, because many of the current legal advantages of marriage are designed for two partners, but I am sure they could be appropriately adjusted.