All this cost so much money that drivers in Indiana didn’t use the toll road. They preferred the slower old routes.

That’s my impression of what’s happening with the beautiful toll roads in Greece. The things are superb but virtually devoid of traffic. Not only were they likely financed, designed and built largely by foreigners, but I believe the tolls go out of country as well. I could be wrong tho.

What a deal for the 人 of Greece!

When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie. Yevtushenko

To write about privitization of infrastructure without writing about the out-of-control costs of government due to the public employee lobbies is to omit the truth.

And, yes, I agree with Derb, they are 大堂, not unions.

Here’s a cheerful thought about the new serfdom. In other times the elites would have more to gain by inoculating the masses with a whiff of socialism à la FDR. Nowadays, thanks largely to the internet, repression has become a lot easier and cheaper. The opposition can be mapped out and neutered even before it opens its collective mouth.

To be a socialist requires that one be deluded about human nature. Of course governmemts which privatise and contract out also suffer from some of the inadequacies of bureaucrats even when the politicians and bureaucrats are honest. It is an imperfect world.

One neglected benefit of privatised infrastructure is the reasonably secure income stream going to a country’s savers who largely finance rather than rely on social security.

真是个白痴。

“The roads, railroads, airline companies, water and sewer systems and everything that people need, including now the schools can be privatized and instead of providing them to the economy, to make the economy operate at a lower cost, you can make people pay two or three times as much as they were doing. ”

All these things were often originally (before government seizures) and are now increasingly regularly privately provided. The result of ending coerced government monopolies with free choice via re-privatization is the services are increasingly low-cost or free.

The Libertarian Reform is all around us but folks like Hudson still think they’re in Stalin’s 1930’s.

I fear that the way Trump will choose to finance infrastructure is the upside-down way to do it, the wrong way. Its aim is simply to make his class rich.

h.

This may be absolutely correct but absolutely trivial in a world where China is building the future and we are not even playing catch up. The incestuous elite mindset that sees only the US as meaningful is in full bloom currently. The focus we have on the world vs the US, our place in it and the role we play, is so far removed from reality I wonder if our leaders ever look clearly abroad at what’s happening every day in Asia, Europe and Africa.
While we reread from a 50’s playbook China puts down 30,000 K’s of new rail this year to link three Continents. We, on the other hand, debate fixing some bridges and roads. When the sun goes down on empire it gets real dark

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

Certainly true and years ago Id have raised you one galts gulch. Its not that Im no longer a Austrian its I think we have worked our way into a situation where blind adherence to what we thought will make things worse.
Infrastructure is a good place to look at where Im coming from (and I think Bannon is too). If we allow formerly American corporations to become international corporations that extract the technology, capital, etc then pass on the domestic labor but come back for the consumer market and then again pass on the taxation, or import the labor but have the labor subsidized by welfare paid for either by the few lucky americans who still have jobs or to offer to loan the government money at interest to pay for the welfare. The inflation that we now lie about that has made everything from housing, medicine, education, fuel,cars,pretty much everything but imported electronics 2-10 times more expensive than a decade or three ago; is directly tied to the cost of this a la carte capitalism. Capitalism where third world misery (caused by oligarchy and communism but sustained by emigration ) Is triangulated against first world labor markets. Its not sustainable eventually americans are going to be able to compete with third world wages, but not the way they told us. that any day africans would be just like canadians and all would be well, no america is halfway to brazilification.
Now heres the thing My problem with libertarianism is they cuck on on property rights when it comes to the nation itself. Its as if every border contract one property right is sacred to them except the most important one the one that is the impetus of all civilization and law; the national boundary the one that keeps the other tribe from raping and pillaging, the one the violent men banded together to enforce giving the traders a safe space to operate in.And giving a safe space for all the benefits of civilization that also support trade.
The nation, the school system that fosters tech development, the court and law making system and police that enforce contracts, the idaho farm boy on an aircraft carrier protecting the trade routes, The transportation and communication infrastructure that facilitates everything from shipping to financial trading,The first world labor market, access to the wealthiest consumer market in the world, etc etc is worth a lot. Its not moochers demanding free stuff. Oh sure their are moochers demanding free stuff for minorities, but its not them that own this infrastructure it the generation of americans that pioneered built maintained and defend it. If you doubt its value Imagine somehow say to support the subsidies globalists insist are basic human rights, our government sold it all off and Halliburton owned it. Do you think Halliburton would give it away to all these corporations that enjoy it.Do you think Halliburton would let amazon just use the highways for free, do you think it would allow Apple to simply sell iphones here while eschewing the labor and Halliburton’s potential income tax? Do you think Halliburton would allow Tyson and walmart to import third world peasants paying them $11 hr while Halliburton fed clothed medecined educated policed their entire peasant family and the family of whites they displaced? You think Halliburton would protect the property enforce the contracts and manage the 350 million inhabitants of their consumer market for free while they offshored their profits and bribed halliburton’s middle managers for deals? No of course not.
No doubt the author is likely a commie and we dont want to give commies an inch.But in some ways blind loyalty to the outer party is how we got into this headlock.The capitalists have made a devils deal with the globalist marxists. Maybe they each plan to doublecross the other in the future or maybe they have both given up on the 60s version of capitalism and communism and settled for a 1000 year reich of corporatism.Lets not forget they are supported by cuck christianity and Israel, and of course because immigration and HBD its inescapable this becomes a racial issue, appalling the neocons and reactionaries. But of course the commies realized a long time ago communism didnt sell well in wealthy white countries so they morphed into racial redistributionists and hit on a way to partner with christians and capitalists,and of course the power hungry who wish to remake the world.
This is the hope I think that some have with trump that he will break the dynamic, hes trying to beat the commies to the pivot back to white socialism while there’s an opening and hold the banksters over the hole they dug. Its doesnt look to be working, Trumps an idiot who only intuits vaguely, Bannon may not be fully woke or able to control trump and of course the deep state seems pretty much committed to killing trump if they have to. That might set off a civil war.But they probably wont have to hes pretty much been pwnd by the confederacy of dunces having no consistent outlook hes easily swayed piecemeal out of his gut feelings by his jew and neocon advisors

The first chunk of necessary infrastructure: a 2000 mile 40′ tall (and 20′ deep) reinforced concrete wall along the southern border…..topped and bottomed off with concertina razor wire. The second chuck of necessary infrastructure: 200 guard towers spaced every 10 miles.

I hope its better than the re-building of Iraq by private companies and corporations which saw millions/billions go down into the black hole of tricky accounting,and as far as the countries savers I’m sure your not talking about the working class for they have little to invest anywhere..

This seems like a good example of government provided infrastructure, at least in the U.S.

Florida’s Government Built a Train — And It Didn’t Go Well

Thanks to the grand vision of politicians, and the financial incentives created by the Federal government, Floridians have now spent hundreds of millions on a train that loses money charging customers to ride it. In the future, as government incentives expire, SunRail will face the issue of either raising ticket prices, likely further decreasing its already underwhelming demand, which will likely decrease the ad revenue the project was projected to be dependent on. The other response, perhaps more likely, is to simply pass the costs on to the millions of Floridians who have rejected the project by refusing to ride it.

https://mises.org/blog/floridas-government-built-train-%E2%80%94-and-it-didn%E2%80%99t-go-well

例如，通过医疗保健私有化，美国的人们必须支付比其他任何地方都高得多的医疗保险。你必须向保险公司付款，而且你不会对制药公司执行垄断规则。你甚至不与他们讨价还价或在最便宜的市场购买。你在最昂贵的市场购买，因为他们是你最大的竞选贡献者，这就是你所承诺要做的。

damn, this is so goddamn true it is crazy. this is why aca cause all the premiums to go up.

I think we have worked our way into a situation where blind adherence to what we thought will make things worse.

I don’t know quite what I said that your long “reply” is in reference to, but it does not refer to much of what I believe (or disbelieve). I do believe that about the only thing we can do to “make things worse” is to engage in an all-out nuclear exchange with another of the world nuclear powers. Other than that, our present circumstance is not sustainable and we are headed for some very hard times involving great loss of life and human pain. But not to worry, some will survive and life will go on.

My comment to Mr. Hudson is prompted by the fact that I find half truths distasteful, especially so if they are told with political intent.

…third world misery (caused by oligarchy and communism…

“Third world misery” has been the lot of most humans since the dawn of agriculture, but the fact is that most hunter-gatherers will opt for it if given the chance. Life is hard because life is hard.

You seem to think that there is some “solution” for society somewhere. I do not, other than continued evolution.

Yeah let’s sink tens of billions of hard earned U.S. taxpayer dollars into a worthless border wall, and concern ourselves with a $20,000,000,000,000.00 dollar national debt some other time.

For those too naive to realize it, the border wall’s a joke and the joke’s on Americans. You want a cost-effective and efficient way to keep non-citizens from entering the United States illegally, then place legal liability firmly on the shoulders of self-serving contractors and small businesses who hire them.

Try entering Mexico illegally, and asking its federal government to pay for your kid’s diapers and flip a $20,000 bill per year per kid for public education. “Buena suerte con eso, gringo!”

In the mean time, it appears as if the House of Rothschild’s trust-fund nation is positioning itself, hoping to reap a cash windfall of U.S. taxpayer dollars, from this artificially engineered sociopolitical albatross of a border wall.

“Israel’s Magal sees Mexican wall as no barrier to business” (https://goo.gl/haOeZZ)

Working class people do well in two main ways. Until recently there were plenty of bright and potentially energetic people who didn’t have the opportunity to rise through education and good health but most now leave the workung class. The other way is to belong to a nation which has conferred the luck on them of sharing in bountiful resources they have played no part in discovering or developing or in the product of superior brain power applied with imagination and discipline. Australia exemplifies (mostly) the first case, Germany the second. The US is spreading its generosity (not willed as such) to Latin America’s working classes …

Sure we are that’s why we have a 100,000,000 unemployed and rising, with only God knows how many living in poverty, where even grads from institutions of higher learning can’t find a job, while running up a tab in the thousands for their education, why wages were drove down and have remained stagnant due to outsourcing and flood of people from South of the border, I suggest you read David Stockman’s book ‘The Great Deformation” The Corruption Of Capitalism in America and then you might just have an idea of where we are headed and its going to be a nasty ride…

There is a kernel of truth here. It is true that you definitely do not want to privatize a monopoly, or, at least, privatize it in a way that regulates it like a public utility. Privatized infrastructure has monopolistic characteristics that need regulation.

It is, however, wrong to imagine the supposed public benefits of government subsidy. This is the same multiplier fantasy that Keynesians use to prove how much more efficient government is. in effect, there is no government efficiency. When a road is built, a government contracts with a private company to have it built and maintains it using private resources. That government will pay at or above market rates for all of the inputs, depending on the level of corruption and cronyism. And where does the money come from to pay for these toll roads? Why, either budget surpluses, tax increases, or bond issues…ultimately from the tax payers. And taxpayers always pay through the nose, whether directly in toll rates or indirectly in fees and taxes. The only difference is how hidden it is.

Furthermore, I happened to drive through Illinois and Indiana. Indiana has beautiful roads, built in a state with a budget surplus and a low cost of living. The ipass tolls were comparable to Illinois…with terrible roads. So, I don’t see Hudson’s take on Indiana.

Yes it hasn’t been great for at least half of US natives for a long time despite great new technology for those with reason or the time to use it. Mostly left side of the IQ Bell Curve but not all. Can democracy survive, or as some might say, begin? Oh, did I forget? Democracy has been exported

Michael Hudson, a Marxist, trying to tell everyone about economics.

权利。

No democracy is one item we never export well unless it comes from the muzzle of a gun, but we do export our brand of loot and steal or regime change to embrace our form of parasitic type capitalism..

i use toll roads/areas for dumping garbage and paint ball practice.

Really? A Marxist? On what basis of what’s posted here do you draw that conclusion?

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” Milton Friedman

30年2011月XNUMX日公司法西斯主义：美国中产阶级的毁灭

一种新的法西斯主义接管了美国：公司与政府合并，从而由公司权力主导。 随着越来越多的跨国公司的出现（由于美联储无休止的FIAT资金的推动而使合并），法团已经可以真正收购美国国会。

这篇文章的许多说法都是正确的。但在大城市，特别是大都市地区，与政府相比，私营部门的管理效果更好。达到一定规模的政府会变得不负责任、腐败、无能、充满懒惰的工会工人、遭受使命蔓延之苦，而且通常根本无法正常运作。因此，大都市地区特别适合私有化，在我看来，这是两害相权取其轻。私营部门可以以更便宜、更有效的方式运营它。上述内容是“理论上”的。理论上大政府是可以运作的。在实践中，很难给出任何例子。你继续用希腊作为政府做得正确的例子，这有点滑稽。希腊是一个废墟，政府在那里不起作用。希腊政府是一个黑洞，无论投入多少钱，资金都会消失，而政府效率却不会提高。我无法理解这对任何人来说如何算是进步。

在政府可以被关在笼子里的小城市，私有化可能没有意义。

And you don’t think the private sector is corrupt the companies and corporations that are just as corrupt as any, when the money is on the table with their over runs contributions to the political hacks to get the contract,spare me please…