Maybe the place to start is not by reinventing the wheel and thinking we need to create another Heritage. Chances are we aren’t going to get the big donors that the other think tanks get so maybe we should look at combining resources with other organizations (nationally and internationally) until something substantial can be done in this country.

For example, I see no reason to form another pro-family organization when Allan Carlson has done such a fine job with the Howard Center and the World Congress of Families. As to economics I know that the Chesterbelloc and the Distributist Review are doing good things but so is Stratford Caldecot’s Center for Faith and Culture which has a whole division devoted to Catholic Social Teaching on Distributist and Neo-Distributist economics. Likewise there has to be other localist and communitarian environmental groups out there that cover public policy and I am sure we could find common cause with groups that favor a realistic and humble foreign policy that takes the threat of radical Islam seriously.

Here are two of my suggestions for the conference idea:

First a small private meeting should occur between an international body of traditionalists, localists, and communitarians in which they lay out a statement of principles from which they all agree to move the traditionalist movement forward. This would serve as the “Sharon Statement” of the traditionalist movement (the Sharon Statement was the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom back in the 1960s).

Second two conferences should be held, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K. to capitalize on Red Toryism, progressive conservatism, traditionalism, communitarianism, localism, etc. get as much input from other parties and the public.

Also, what the traditionalist/civic communitarian/localists need is their own think tank like Res Publica since Heritage and Cato and the American Enterprise Institute don’t address our issues.

We also need more traditionalists to run for high office so we can eventually have a better quality bench of presidential aspirants down the road. No offense to my libertarian brethren but Ron Paul and his disciples just don’t cut the mustard when they care more about the Fed and free markets instead of issues that matter to traditionalists like localism, the environment, and families.

Re tolls, even if they can’t entirely substitute for fuel taxes, they can at least replace fuel taxes on those roads where excludability is feasible. The most equitable way to do it, IMO, is to fund the Interstates with weight-based tolls that fall mainly on trucks, to fund urban freeways with a combination of weight-based tolls and congestion pricing, and to reduce the total gasoline tax by a revenue-neutral amount. Then all the gas tax revenues go to roads where excludability and tolls are not an option (like county roads).

As for the urban residential and commercial street grid, one idea to toy with is privatizing streets to the residents and businesses located on them, and letting them take responsibility for funding their own repairs via assurance contracts and other voluntary funding mechanisms.

To your excellent suggestions I would add devolving, insofar as practical, as many decisions–and costs–on the local entities.

I don’t know why you maintain that the trucks shouldn’t pay usage fees for using state and local roads. I would say that if they don’t use them much, they don’t pay much; it they use them a lot, they pay a lot. This is not rocket science.

You say they build the big box out on the freeway because its “cheaper.” Of course. It’s subsidized. But this destroys the local business and exerts a centrifugal force on cities, pulling them apart. This makes the provision of all services more expensive: the sewer lines are longer, the patrol beats are wider, everything a gov’t does costs more. But that’s not the end of it. Now you cannot walk to a store, as we did when I was young. So to the cost of a gallon of milk, you have to add the cost of the drive to get it. It even contributes to obesity, since there is no longer any place to walk to.

Subsidies defy not only the laws of economics, but the laws of physics. An engineer cannot pronounce one system more efficient than another without knowing the costs of the inputs. If these costs are externalized, engineering itself is no longer possible. That is not to say we should never subsidize; there are public goods which may require it. But one needs to do so consciously and cautiously. The problem now is that there is a general expectation of subsidies; everybody becomes a special interest group. But the whole system is no longer sustainable. There are no “solutions” out there; the whole uneconomic system has reached its end. We need to be thinking not about how to fix what we have, because we can’t have that any longer, but about “What comes next?”

Now I think it’s obvious that the term “freeways” here is misleading. In the very least we have a system of cross-subsidizing going on. If we were to eliminate all fuel taxes (a fantasy) and replace them with tolls you acknowledge that while trucks would pay more on the highways they travel (as we all would), regular passenger car drivers would also pay more for the State and Local roads that we use. We would also pay more for mass transit – a true “subsidy” paid on the part of the trucking industry.

Given your model, tolls would replace the higher diesel fuel taxes trucks pay – at both Fed and most States’ level, and, if we’re really trying to “get into the habit of what we’re using”, they really shouldn’t pay State or Local sales tax on gas (I’ll allow it on the Slim Jims at the truck stop).

So now we have a pure toll-based system – probably somewhat more expensive for all trucks – how much you haven’t opined. We’d have to create some master-”Fast Pass” for all of us, which would work across State-Lines – not to mention County and local roads. Oh, heck, why don’t we just put a microchip in every car and toll-taking monitors every few miles or so…on every road. Sounds like a real Front Porch operation…centralized and high-tech.

But you said it would “collapse” the Wal-Mart distribution model.

Now, here’s a little problem. They build all those Wal-Marts on the interstate for reasons. Part of it is the cheaper land to be sure, but the other part is the ease of supply. The Big Box stores rarely build in town. The trucks that drive on your local roads – County/town – are not Wal-Mart trucks. They’re Shop-Rite trucks or the Tru-Value trucks for the store in town. You’re building up your local roads (those that actually allow long-haulers) to supply local businesses…not Costco, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart.

Again, it does not matter how much the trucks use the local roads, these roads still have to be engineered for the trucks. This adds tremendous cost.

The point about the roads being “more durable” is nonsense; it is the weight that destroys the roads, it is the major cause of the maintenance costs. Pete, these are simple matters of physics; this is not where the debate lies.

As for the mass transit funds, it is 2.86 cents/gallon, which works out to 15.5% of gasoline and 13.3% of diesel taxes, not 20%. But mass transit is another story; maybe I’ll address it in another post.

The subsidies distort the shape of industry and the shape of the cities. Instead of being for inter-city connections, the highly engineered roads become a necessity for cities that are now too spread out to be economical without subsidies. The whole thing is perverse, and has a perverse effect on cities and industries.

You do raise an interesting point in this last response in the greater costs to build roads that must take long-haul trucks. Still you don’t mention how much more a “heavyweight” road costs over a “lightweight” road, and, also, how this reinforcing might contribute to overall durability (ie if a heavyweight road lasts twice as long as a lightweight road there may be economic advantages). Also, remember that part of the reason for the development of the Fed Highway System was national security – enabling military transport across the country. This can only happen on heavyweight roads.

Am glad you mentioned the American Trucking Association in an earlier response. It prompted me to take a look at their site and actually correspond with their VP of Public Affairs. Here’s what I found out:
1. You mention that trucks pay 35.7% of Fed/State gas taxes, while they constitute 10.9% of the traffic
2. I wondered if “traffic” meant miles, and checked out this chart – http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2007/vm1.cfm#foot2
where the DOT says that in the most recent year studied (2007), on interstate highways, passenger cars travelled 122Billion miles, and trailer trucks went 42B – still about a third of total mileage – a heavier weight on those miles, no doubt, but passenger cars are the majority users of interstate highways.
3. To your point that trucks use local roads too…well, they do, but the DOT says that in “All Rural Roads” traffic, cars travelled 529B miles and trucks, 82.9B or 1/6 of car traffic. And again, through State gases and sales taxes, trucks are subsidizing our byways. Subsidies may not get better by multiplying them, as you say, but, by neglecting the trucks’ portion in subsidizing our roads you’re not looking at the full equation regarding your “free rider” supposition…not that I blame you for doing this…it weakens your argument.

To your earlier point that the transportation fund is running out of $$, I had placed a link to an article on that in my first post. I’ll just say here that the major reason for this is that 20% of Fed gas taxes go to “transit subsidies” (bus, light rail, subway systems). These much more closely approximate the types of subsidies you feel we’re paying for truck traffic in that a much smaller portion of the population uses public transportation that interstate highways. Again, the highway portion of the Fed Transportation fund is in the BLACK. And in this, the 20% of the trucks’ 35.7% is definitely a subsidy as trucks are not using light rail or buses. Trucks pay for local roads they rarely use, and local transit systems they never use.

I will ignore the silliness about trying to “prove” that trucks are heavier than cars to say that the road has to be built for the heaviest weight. If you are building for 80,000 pound trucks, it doesn’t matter if you have 90% 2,000 pound cars and 10% 80,000 pound trucks (actually, its about 15%); you still have to build it for the 80,000 pound truck. The major cost will occur at the margin, at the last pound the roadbed or the bridge is engineered to take. By their own claim, they only pay 33% of the cost. But they cause most of the damage and most of the initial expense.

Further, the trucks do use the streets; I don’t know of any warehouses on the freeway off-ramp. Even if they didn’t use the streets, that would just make it a case of cross-subsidies. Subsidies do not get better by multiplying them.

And it is the poor who subsidize the rich in this system. The middle class moves 30 miles from the city to buy a MacMansion in the suburbs. They got there over a two-lane blacktop, but as they move traffic increases, so they demand the legislature build them a six lane highway. And they get it. So they tax the single mom in the inner city to pay for the suburban road.

I don’t mind people living where they want to live; I do mind them demanding a subsidy to live there. They can have six lanes if they are willing to pay for them. It is a mindset that caused the Californication of the nation, that determined the very shape of cities, a shape that is more difficult and expensive to service, and will soon cause intractable problems.

The toll gets us in the habit of paying for what we use. It is a habit familiar to free men and to adults.