public policy - drewsview

Soapbox idol speech: The libertarian case for trains and urbanization

Why do so many libertarians hate trains? It’s like hating guns or free beer. Dagney Taggert would like to have a word. So, let’s talk about why trains and urbanization are wicked awesome.

First off, did you know a double-tracked rail line can move as many people as an 8-lane highway? That’s right! That’d be like squeezing Chris Christie and Lizzo into a smart car—ridiculously efficient and a bit hard to believe, but it’s true!

We live in a car-centric society. Sure, cars are great, but let’s be real: being stuck in traffic is the opposite of freedom. If freedom means yelling at Masshole drivers and crying over gas prices, I’ll take a train ticket please.

Now, trains—especially those powered by overhead wires from clean, cheap nuclear energy—are a sustainable alternative. Pollution from cars? Forget it! It’s a property rights violation! Over 50 thousand Americans die every year from respiratory illnesses caused by pollution alone. Trains can help reduce that, and guess what? They’re safer and faster.

Urbanization isn’t just for hipsters. It’s about creating ‘third places’ where people can mingle. You know, like the libertarian version of Cheers or PorcFest.

Contrary to popular belief, our car obsession isn’t a free market triumph. It’s because of restrictive rules that make other transportation options nearly impossible. And don’t get me started on zoning laws—they’re like the fun police or the Federal Reserve. They ruining everything.

I dream of a New Hampshire with greater supply of housing and walkable towns. This isn’t a leftist conspiracy. Towns like Portsmouth and Peterborough are popular because they developed without these silly restrictions. Picture hopping on a train in Nashua, heading to the White Mountains for a ski trip, and not worrying about getting into an accident in a snowstorm. You can read a book, sip coffee, and enjoy the ride.

Trains can be privately operated, but to make this viable, our socialized highways and roads need to be privatized too. Look at France—their entire highway system is privately operated and funded. Who knew we could learn something from the French?

Cars and trains complement each other. A highly developed society needs a mix of transportation options. And let’s face it, automating trains is way easier than automating cars, Elon Musk!

So here’s my call to action, libertarians, let’s start by privatizing parts of our road system. Let’s create a New Hampshire where multiple robust and private transportation options make us truly free and happy. And who doesn’t want that? Probably the same people that think Bernie Sanders should run PorcFest next year.

The power of persuasion

When I was younger, I used to find myself debating people more often than I do now. As I’ve gotten older the more I realize that it’s extraordinarily difficult to change people’s minds. I’ve found that the best form of persuasion is leading by example.

When I’m in the ideological minority of a group, I’ve learned to hold back my thoughts, but if someone asks my opinion on an issue, I’ll provide an honest answer.

I have particularly strong convictions on economics. I see laissez-faire voluntaryism as immutably the optimal system for the allocation of scarce resources, which means to stay that just as the church should be separated from the state, the economy should be separated from the state. The government should have no business in interfering with agreements and exchange between individuals.

When I lived in New Jersey, I got in a debate about minimum wage with a housemate that I did not particularly like. This individual was a body piercing technician (?). He would commute two hours each way every day from Princeton to Brooklyn, made very poor financial decisions, and managed to total two brand-new Honda Civics in the 9 months he lived with me. I still use his Hulu account, ha! (The worst housemate, however, was an unemployed middle-aged carpet salesman that had two strokes on the floor and was an absolute jerk).

Long story short, he could not get over the fact that I believe that minimum wage laws cause more suffering for the poor than if we did not have them. This is also happens to be the prevailing view of most mainstream economists. I found out months later that my housemate was so upset after talking with me that he cried over it. It’s amazing to me that politicos have much of society lead to believe that the government has the power to bend gravity and that a planned economy produces better outcomes. Hint, hint: time and time again, price controls are proven to create more suffering. I respect people that disagree with me, but often they are woefully off-base.

Twice in the past week the topic of rent-control has come up among friends since it might be an upcoming ballot measure in Massachusetts. The principle remains the same: price controls directly cause more human suffering than without. Rent control causes developers to flee, thereby reducing the supply of housing, and greatly increasing prices to renters looking to enter the market. For people who already have housing, rent control discourages landlords from making vital investments in their properties thereby leaving apartments in states of disrepair. More suffering! Just because a supposedly altruistic policy like rent control or minimum wage sounds wonderful, does not mean it comes without horrendous ramifications for the human condition.

John Stossel does an excellent job explaining rent control in this video:

Rent control ruins cities

How far can you go in a train in 5 hours?

Excellent interactive visualization of 5-hour train journeys in Europe

One of these days I’ll write more about my life and times in Europe. I’d like to think I have a unique perspective having lived and traveled extensively on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some Americans, especially on the left, love to praise everything European. Many right-wingers like to take the opposite stance. Regardless of which tribe you gravitate towards, from the perspective of an unabashed libertarian from New Hampshire, there are a number of categories where western European countries out perform in.

One of these areas is passenger transportation. I’d even go so far to say that Western Europe currently has a much more free market passenger transportation system than that of the United States. Nearly all long-distance highways in France, for example, are leased to private corporations and funded through direct user fees in the form of tolls. Guess what? There are no potholes. European railroads operate on a similar public/private premise.

More well-run options for consumers leads to more competition. Trains, cars, and planes all complement each other nicely. This comes in large juxtaposition to transportation in the United States, which is almost entirely and ineptly run by government agencies. There is little reason reason why 2 to 5-hour car trips in the Northeast could be supplemented with private train travel, even New Hampshire. The population densities are very comparable in this part of the country to many areas in Europe. Sure, we have very car-dependent towns, but this could be easily fixed over time with better mixed-use development and libertarian-esque zoning laws, see Japan.

The United States once had the largest mass transportation system in the world. Nearly all of it was privately operated I might add. The US still has the largest freight railroad network in the world in terms of tonnage. Passenger train travel and freight train haulage peaked in 1917, however the rapid decline of the system did not occur until the late 1940s after the war. The decay was largely attributable to the subsidization of highway projects, which was a boon for truckers, and removal of streetcars, which spurred high demand for automobile ownership. General Motors was largely responsible for lobbying government officials to forcibly remove streetcars and thereby increase car sales.

To its credit, GM did play a large role in helping supply allied machinery during the war. Correspondingly, the attitude thereafter in Washington was: “What’s best for GM is best for the country”. Additionally, more locally, in New Hampshire, there was a lot of resentment by the 1940s by state politicians against the Boston & Maine Railroad, which had effectively held a tight grip over the New Hampshire legislature for over 75 years. Giving rein to the automobile was seen as a way to get rid of the old guard. It’s no coincidence that New Hampshire has the lowest density of rail traffic in the country (except for Hawaii, which effectively no longer has railroads). In fact, it’s by design. The state government wanted to monopolize control over transportation to sweep away the Boston and Maine Corporation. Even Vermont, which has half the population of New Hampshire and less than half the GDP, has considerably more rail activity.

From a purely physics perspective, railroads have profound efficiency advantages over auto roads in terms of theoretical long-term cost (depends who’s running it; ideally an entity with profit motive) effective throughput (freight and passenger volume), and energy use, especially if using nuclear power like what is done in France. It’s foolish to dismiss this fact. Every analysis written on this subject by Cato Institute and even Drew Cline of the Bartlett Institute clearly did not consult a physicist or at least willfully ignored the hard science.

I digress. This post was inspired by this interactive visualization that shows on the map how far you can get in 5 hours by train in Europe. France is a very well-connected country due to the SNCF’s TGV. Germany’s DB isn’t quite as fast, however it is quite good, without requiring the same level of subsidies. In France, roughly half of a train ticket price is subsidized by its central government. I will end that French rail system (especially the high-speed rail system) is heavily subsidized at the opportunity cost of encouraging growth in other areas of society. France is no darling in the perspective of free market economists, however it is light years better in terms of transportation options than that of our current American system.