Smaller is better Non-government is better

The partial article that I posted below explains how the highway system can be handled better at a smaller government level or by private enterprise.  Imagine if this same principle was applied to medical research , space exploration , food safety and more.......

99guspuppet

The Road to Better Highways

What should the federal government do about the nation's highways? On May 17, Independent Institute Research Fellow Gabriel Roth addressed this question at a hearing on financing twenty-first-century infrastructure convened by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. His recommendation: the federal government should fund no transportation infrastructure at all, and the federal Highway Trust Fund should be phased out.

Getting rid of federal financing would encourage state and private-sector funding, Roth argued. In addition to describing the current role of the private sector in road transportation--and why that role should be enlarged--he sketched a fascinating picture of what a high-tech private road system might look like. One alternative would use a payment system based on GPS technology.

Here's how it might work: Every vehicle would contain a device--an in-vehicle unit--that would record the vehicle's data about miles traveled, locations, and times, and the owner would submit some of that data (distances traveled, for example) to a billing agency. The biller would debit the vehicle owner's account and credit the road owners' accounts. This way the privacy of the vehicle owner would be guaranteed. Also, mobile inspectors could ensure that vehicles that use the new charging system carry the right equipment and that it operates property. The use of surveillance cameras could be minimized. "Payment could be made directly to road providers (in the public or private sectors) with no need to send them to the federal government," Roth writes. Science fiction? Hardly. More than 900,000 vehicles in Germany and Slovakia have utilized a GPS-based payment system.