This morning I return to a topic that is but a tiny step removed from that of recreation user fees, the concept being that of road congestion pricing.

I do so because many of my peers in the conservation community are actively embracing this concept, yet they are doing so without any effort to place the issue within its larger context.

Pasted below is my attempt to provide missing context and to move the discussion beyond that of elephant tail hairs.

Scott

Congestion pricing is merely an incremental step in the larger issue of transportation privatization which is merely a step toward the privatization of everything and the transformation of society to conform with the neoliberal model. We can, if we choose, spend all day describing the elephant based upon our own grasp of it's tail, or trunk, or ear -- or we can look at the elephant and describe the totality of the beast.
 
The Reason Foundation (Libertarian think-tank) has been kind enough to lay the various transportation related privatization issues out for those curious enough to study them.
 
In 1993, they published an article titled:
HIGH OCCUPANCY/TOLL LANES:
Phasing in Congestion Pricing a Lane at a Time

But 'Phasing in Congestion Pricing' was not the ultimate objective. Not mile a long shot.
 
Here are a few more links from the Reason Foundations "Reason Public Policy Institute" which provide an excellent, and comprehensive, description of ALL of the major parts of this particular agenda. Read what you see, click on the links provided and keep reading.

• Surface Transportation Innovations
• HOT Lanes Prompted by Federal Program
• More Transportation Commentaries

 
If after reading this material you feel you still don't know enough, then might I suggest you continue to explore the many privatization issues detailed on another Reason Foundation website -- that being www.privatization.org and/or GOOGLE for the word combination "congestion pricing" plus "privatization" and start plowing through the 30,000 hits.
 
Or perhaps you will have decided that you know plenty and that you simply find yourself in agreement with the privatization agenda. Perhaps you believe, as many do, that the world would be better off in an "Ownership Society".
 
If that's the case, then you're in luck -- because barring a miracle,  the "Corporate Takeover of Everything" is, indeed, the default condition and when that occurs, Congestion, Value and/or Differential pricing will be applied to everything.
 
We all need to be consistent with our beliefs. I happen to believe that the ideology being advance by such Libertarian think-tanks as "Reason" is wrong. I will not support it. Others may do so if they wish. I hope no one inadvertently supports it simply because they never appreciated the true nature of the beast.
 
Scott

"The free market means that those without money
to buy what they need do not have the right to live."
                 - John McMurtry
 
"Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they would? ... there would be an American Air-Bottling Association. ... they would let millions die for want of breath, if they could not pay for the air."
              - Robert G. Ingersoll, 1896

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