Every good prag­ma­tist knows that one of the absolutely essen­tial func­tions of gov­ern­ment is to own, oper­ate, and main­tain pub­lic roads. Sev­eral argu­ments I have heard advanced in favor of publicly-​​​​owned roads include: Uni­form stan­dards; Unre­stricted access; Cost-​​​​free access; Uni­ver­sal access to an essen­tial resource; Safety; Effi­cient allo­ca­tion of scarce resources; Avail­abil­ity of emi­nent domain power to effi­ciently locate major road­ways; And of course the vague but ever pop­u­lar, “that’s what gov­ern­ments are for!” And every good econ­o­mist knows that all of this is bunk. But is there some­thing more nefar­i­ous in the insti­tu­tion of the pub­lic road? Con­sider cable tele­vi­sion. Or [ . . . ]

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Alex Tre­bek asks a con­tes­tant, who boasts that she has slept in a hotel room float­ing on the Kwai river in Thai­land, whether the orig­i­nal bridge (of cin­ema fame) is still there.