Tolls on Freeways Are Coming: Anti-Democracy
All of life is a trade-off between time and money. We either stand in line or we pay a premium to avoid standing in line. There is no escape from this trade-off. There is a time value of money and a money value of time.
At the end of your time on earth, the trade-off ends. You cannot buy any more time with your money. Death is the great democratizer.
The freeway system of Southern California is about to add a toll lane for rapid driving. This will let people who value their time pay for the privilege of saving it. It lets people offer high bids to get to their destination early.
This allows richer people to out-bid poorer people. This is a very positive political development, ideologically speaking. The principle of “high bid wins” governs the free market. The principle of “most votes win” governs politics.
The need for revenue in Southern California is primary. This need is allowing the shift from democracy to the free market.
This will be good for productivity. It is a bad idea to keep a rich man sitting in a slow lane on his way to work. Let him buy time for productivity.
If this experiment works politically in heavily Democrat Southern California, it will spread.
The fees can be adjusted in terms of the time of day: traffic load.
RFID technology makes this possible. To get into the high-speed lane legally, you will have to sign up to have your car tracked. That is the downside. The government owns this information.
Think of it as RFID Mayberry.
Civil libertarians had better pressure the bureaucrats to turn on the tracking system only when a car enters a high-speed lane.
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Published on July 4, 2012. The original is here.