The Road-book in all its glory.

"Just as no one 'opposes' or 'protests' a volcano, which is believed to be beyond the control of man, there are very few who oppose the governmental roadway control"

- Walter Block

Its no small task to criticize the current road-management system, but to also offer up alternatives to something as fundamental and socialized as roads, is a mountain few would want to climb. Where do you even start? Well, in Mr. Blocks case he just starts in one corner and continue forward until there is no stone left to turn on the subject.Huge chunks of the book is Walter Block picking out critique from other economists (mainly, with a few exceptions) on the topic of a possible privatization of the road-system, quoting it and then trying to dissect and dismantle it.The footnotes of the book isn't only used to inform the reader about the various sources of quotes and concepts, but is also used as a tool to explain road-specific economical problems and terms to any layman that happens to stumble upon the book. I learned a lot about the peak load-problem from the footnotes of this book in a very practical way, to give an example.[traffic jams]Walter BlockA treasure trove of anecdotes and stories gets inserted here and there to give a little flavor to the books (sometimes) very dry subject. I giggled at the story of outdoor cinema owners battle with peeping truck drivers that watched porn without paying for tickets, to Walter's personal frustration of standing in line at the Motor Vehicle bureau in New Orleans. Mr. Block has a quirky sense of humor that he lets loose on the reader every now and then (", brightening up the reading. Even if I personally would have loved a bit more humor in the book, I think the author found a good serious-to-funny ratio so that it doesn't distract.One point I haven't seen anyone else use in favor of privatizing roads is the managerial/accountability problem that publicly owned roads present - Something that gets repeated throughout the book from different angles. There are a lot of traffic accidents and deaths on American roads and Walter Block argues that if the roads would have had private owners, it would be easier to find out better practices and that bad road managers would go bankrupt and become replaced with better ones.- Walter BlockThe book gets a bit repetitive after a while, something the author warns about in the introduction, and it is a bit weirdly structured. The main exception is the middle of the book (specifically chapter 11-13), where the author does a good job at boiling down all the best parts and presenting it in a coherent format and takes the reader from point A to point C in a quick fashion.If you get frustrated by the question about roads and need a handy book to study the subject more in-depth, you should invest in the Privatization of Roads and highways for your library today. Walter Block has made a podcast guest appearance on the Agora to discus this book (and the other two books in this series) which you can listen to on soundcloud here: Sal Mayweather's Agora - Space Capitalism --------------------------------- Alex Utopium | Twitter