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Economic Theory is Fun tho.
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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My in-laws live on a private road. They're the fourth lot down from the main road (for the uninitiated, if your property would block access to another property, then there exists an access easement across your property, and you must allow people - principally the owners - to traverse your property so they can get to theirs). Everyone is responsible for (but not obligated to) maintaining the stretch of road in front of their houses. The first couple houses are owned by folks with a good chunk of change and the road is as nice as it gets. The third house down has never done a thing to their stretch of road and it's a piece of shit for that little bit. You're cranking the steering wheel from lock to lock to lock again to avoid holes 6 inches deep. Their house is in a sorry state so there's not a chance in the world they have the money to fix the road up. My in-laws throw some gravel in the holes from time to time to make things a little easier on themselves.
The municipality can't/won't do a thing. They don't own the road and it's not like the neighbors are blocking people in or out. The road is only nigh (not completely) impassable.
Someone I know is a libertarian and when I asked how stuff like road maintenance would work on his ideal society, and he was like, "well everyone would pitch in to pay a company to do it." Ok, so what if someone refuses, are there any mechanisms to penalize them? And who chooses the company and signs the contract and schedules the work? You guys gonna vote for people to do those things? Congrats, you just created government. He also had no real response to what happens if one neighborhood is full of good people willing to pitch in, and the next one says fuck it, we're not doing any of that, so the roads are great for a mile and are undrivable the next mile.
So yeah, sounds a lot like what your parents are dealing with. Paradise!
Sounds like the NPR model of funding. Even if you can get everything else to work, you still have a couple of weeks every year when you can't go anywhere without having to stop and listen to Nina Totenberg lecture you 20 minutes about how important it is for everyone to pitch in as much as they can afford.