The War on Waze
As someone who leans quite strongly libertarian, I do not understand what seems to be the default libertarian position on roads.<p>The default view seems to be that government-funded highways are essentially a god-given right. If I want to travel 30 miles every day from home to work, well, somebody had better build me a 8-lane highway to get me there with a minimum of congestion. (Sure, maybe sometimes we&#x27;ll implement congestion pricing that will cover a miniscules portion of the cost of building and maintaining the highway. This is still a <i>massive</i> government subsidy for people who drive.)<p>Bike lanes, on the other hand? Public transit? Those get the more typical libertarian viewpoint on government spending. How dare the government try to distort our incentives by spending millions of dollars to provide bike infrastructure?! (Fun fact: As of 2008, the replacement cost for all of Portland&#x27;s bike infrastructure was estimated at $60M, the rough cost of <i>one mile</i> of urban freeway. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s gone up by then--it&#x27;s still a rounding error.)<p>It&#x27;s genuinely <i>weird</i> how libertarians--generally not ones to ignore the effects of government spending on incentives--don&#x27;t appear to notice that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a transportation system that you can only use if you&#x27;re in a car might actually, you know, cause more people to drive.