Why not in fact advocate for time and location specific fees for use of public roads and streets whether for vehicular traffic or parking. (With parking no longer a free perk enjoyed by homeowners zoning battles over multi-unit residential and commercia development ought to be lessened. The road use fees would mean lower property taxes.
Arnold, I sympathize with your desire to replace a failed government with a private sector alternative. However, I do not believe private sector solutions can solve social decay when the government responsible for that ruin is still in power. Sell the administration of public goods (education, roads, parks) and as long as the corrupt and reckless overseers of that privatization are in charge, you will end up with a lot of wealthy insiders, and the same social problems you started with, and more.
I wish I could be more optimistic but when I see crooks and grifters in power, I don't see any social improvement under any system until the corruption is eliminated.
Your top picture looks like either the San Gabriel or the Santa Ana flood control channels. If the latter, is it a valid inference from your comments that Orange County has gone the way of Los Angeles County in re garbage? It's been 40 years... back then, the flood control channels were the only routes I knew with (brand-new) dedicated bike paths. But I never felt unsafe bicycling 20 miles down Del Amo/La Palma Ave in rush hour to get home from work. Angelinos were still mellow then, and I was young.
A related question might be whether you get something like LA in the first place if you start off with libertarian policies?
The usual assumption is we might have hyper-crowded, high density metropoli but maybe a true market approach would work against that?
Let's take zoning as an example. Presumably, in the absence of an ability to keep people out with zoning, many existing homeowners (who represent the wealthy economic "makers" in an area) would simply move away to areas where they could get their preference of "more green and less neighbors". There'd be less economic concentration, and this, in turn, would perhaps reduce the demand for high-density government services.
So you might end up with more dispersion across the board. It would still be a big city, because ultimately you've still got Hotelling's Law and central place theory and increasing returns to scale for industry operating against this, fact, but at the margin, people who are currently willing to get what they want with zoning restrictions can be expected to vote with their feet if they can no longer do so.
I very much like your privatized infrastructure model, and would like to join or start a group to try to implement it wherever possible. Here are some features I would add to your list:
* There would be no restriction, except the common law of nuisances, on what an owner can do with or build on his property. Thus I would expect to see not only more multi-unit housing but also more of the kind of innovations found in places like the Santa Cruz mountains (where a lot of illegal homes are built because it's hard for governments to find them).
* "Greenbelts" would mostly go away, since the main real reason for their existence today is to drive up the price of housing for the benefit of existing homeowners. Thus a lot more housing would be built, much of it cheap and substandard like the poor neighborhoods in Latin America. The vast majority of the homeless would move there and be much less dependent than today.
* The LBJ welfare system, which now makes single parenthood pay, would be abolished. Thus minority communities would see more families stay together and teenagers behave better. The destruction of the black community that Thomas Sowell writes about would be reversed.
* Public schools and their bureaucracy would be replaced by private schools. Education would continue to be compulsory but only until you pass a high school graduation exam. Thus children would have a reason to learn. The tests would be deliberately biased in favor of the national culture to reward assimilation by kids and parents.
* Not only streets and beaches but parks and shopping districts would be privately owned. Thus you would find a lot of what we would call ordinary city parks, some with guards and admission fees (mostly to keep the bums and druggies away), others simply fenced off for the private use of residents as they are in Britain.
Ok song, and quite fitting album name. But this one's much, much better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMiAQPABgHA
Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light?
Or just another lost Angel.
City of night...
Hadn't seen this particular vid with cool car scenes of '71 movies.
LA is a city of cars. A more Libertarian city would be far far more gated. But as mentioned, can't get there from here - for So. Cal.
Tho I wonder about big tracts of beachfront property in Baja, South of Ensenada.
The question is when is the next meet up for In My Tribe subscribers that live here in LA??
Why not in fact advocate for time and location specific fees for use of public roads and streets whether for vehicular traffic or parking. (With parking no longer a free perk enjoyed by homeowners zoning battles over multi-unit residential and commercia development ought to be lessened. The road use fees would mean lower property taxes.
Arnold, I sympathize with your desire to replace a failed government with a private sector alternative. However, I do not believe private sector solutions can solve social decay when the government responsible for that ruin is still in power. Sell the administration of public goods (education, roads, parks) and as long as the corrupt and reckless overseers of that privatization are in charge, you will end up with a lot of wealthy insiders, and the same social problems you started with, and more.
I wish I could be more optimistic but when I see crooks and grifters in power, I don't see any social improvement under any system until the corruption is eliminated.
Your top picture looks like either the San Gabriel or the Santa Ana flood control channels. If the latter, is it a valid inference from your comments that Orange County has gone the way of Los Angeles County in re garbage? It's been 40 years... back then, the flood control channels were the only routes I knew with (brand-new) dedicated bike paths. But I never felt unsafe bicycling 20 miles down Del Amo/La Palma Ave in rush hour to get home from work. Angelinos were still mellow then, and I was young.
it's from the Ballona Creek bike path
Ah, there's one I did not know about. Thanks.
A related question might be whether you get something like LA in the first place if you start off with libertarian policies?
The usual assumption is we might have hyper-crowded, high density metropoli but maybe a true market approach would work against that?
Let's take zoning as an example. Presumably, in the absence of an ability to keep people out with zoning, many existing homeowners (who represent the wealthy economic "makers" in an area) would simply move away to areas where they could get their preference of "more green and less neighbors". There'd be less economic concentration, and this, in turn, would perhaps reduce the demand for high-density government services.
So you might end up with more dispersion across the board. It would still be a big city, because ultimately you've still got Hotelling's Law and central place theory and increasing returns to scale for industry operating against this, fact, but at the margin, people who are currently willing to get what they want with zoning restrictions can be expected to vote with their feet if they can no longer do so.
I very much like your privatized infrastructure model, and would like to join or start a group to try to implement it wherever possible. Here are some features I would add to your list:
* There would be no restriction, except the common law of nuisances, on what an owner can do with or build on his property. Thus I would expect to see not only more multi-unit housing but also more of the kind of innovations found in places like the Santa Cruz mountains (where a lot of illegal homes are built because it's hard for governments to find them).
* "Greenbelts" would mostly go away, since the main real reason for their existence today is to drive up the price of housing for the benefit of existing homeowners. Thus a lot more housing would be built, much of it cheap and substandard like the poor neighborhoods in Latin America. The vast majority of the homeless would move there and be much less dependent than today.
* The LBJ welfare system, which now makes single parenthood pay, would be abolished. Thus minority communities would see more families stay together and teenagers behave better. The destruction of the black community that Thomas Sowell writes about would be reversed.
* Public schools and their bureaucracy would be replaced by private schools. Education would continue to be compulsory but only until you pass a high school graduation exam. Thus children would have a reason to learn. The tests would be deliberately biased in favor of the national culture to reward assimilation by kids and parents.
* Not only streets and beaches but parks and shopping districts would be privately owned. Thus you would find a lot of what we would call ordinary city parks, some with guards and admission fees (mostly to keep the bums and druggies away), others simply fenced off for the private use of residents as they are in Britain.