ABSTRACT
Roads have become the western analog of the dysfunctional Russian supermarkets of the Soviet era. Empty store shelves, the hoarding and queues that formed on rumors of new shipments, the surly store clerks . . . they were all the inevitable byproducts of non-functioning markets. So with roads. The shortage of road space for cars, and the resulting stop-and-go traffic throughout the world are similarly a predictable byproduct of market-defying government monopolies. Like the price of bread in Soviet Russia, the charges for the use of state roads depend on politics more than on economics or finance. Politicians benefit by being in charge of how highway funds are spent, but they don’t want to be blamed for inflating road charges. So they tend to price roads in a way that best conceals their costs—with gasoline taxes, license fees, sales taxes, and the like.
