Time – Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007:

For states and cities looking to upgrade or replace aging infrastructure, partnering with private players is the biggest idea to come along since the interstate highway system started ribboning the country with asphalt in the 1950s. The appeal: governments can stop worrying about roads, bridges and tunnels, and companies get lucrative leases that allow them to collect money from drivers for generations. The craze is being driven by investors who crave the steady cash flow of decades’ worth of tolls

So what’s not to love? The most common gripe is populist. Tolls often skyrocket under private owners, though with the blessing of elected officials, who avoid the political costs of raising tolls or taxes themselves. That’s how privatized roads deliver double-digit returns for investors and often lead to upgrades like electronic tolling. But there are other devils lurking in the details, like noncompete clauses that may prevent transportation agencies from building new roads, or the inability to use roads for economic development by, say, adding a new exit to attract businesses. Some officials get queasy about locking themselves into long leases; Colorado officials already regret offering a 99-year lease for the Northwest Parkway. Others are turned off by the hard sell from investment bankers who advise states on some deals and bid on others. “This should be the last option,” says Texas state senator John Carona, “not the first.”

This really isn’t an issue of letting the free market work it out. Under a true free market it’d be nearly impossible for the private sector to buy the sufficient property under actual market prices to build roads, as property owners along the proposed roads would hold out for the very top dollar. Only the government, through its use of eminent domain, can force land owners to sell, not for whatever the market will bear, but for a government dictated “fair price.”

Once the government gives select corporations greater property rights than citizens and the right of eminent domain, the market is no longer free. It’s fascism.