Stop Me, Before I Engineer Again!

This post is based upon the local newspaper's article: "Citizen Activist Grates On State Over Traffic Signals" found here.

Here's the summary of the story.  In North Raleigh, the city is going to widen a few streets and some nearby residents would like additional traffic signals to ease the new traffic patterns.  The group petitioned the City Council.  The City Council agreed and said if the DOT agrees, then the signals will go up.

The DOT said that the traffic conditions did not warrant new signals.  So, the residents put together a report for the DOT and not only did the DOT reject it, the Chief Engineer for State DOT said that the report contained "engineering-quality work in a report that was not signed by a licensed professional."

"When you start applying the principles for trip generation and route assignment, applying judgments from engineering documents and national standards, and making recommendations," that's technical work a licensed engineer would do, the chief engineer said.

Then the DOT has asked the Engineers Licensing Board to investigate the residents who wrote the report!  The Executive Director of the board said that the investigation will take 3 to 4 months.  He said there is a potential for violation if DOT and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"- even if the authors did not claim to be engineers.

If the author of the report, a resident who simply wants a traffic light, is found to have practiced engineering without a license, the director said, the likely action would be ... drum roll please ... a letter telling him not to do it again.

How much money are we going to waste pursuing this mockery of justice?  All to assuage a bruised ego and to protect this fiefdom?

In North Carolina, we have more than 183 professions that require a license.  There are some doozies on this list like: Cemetary Sales Contractor, Chick Dealer, Boxing/Kickboxing/"Toughman" Promoter, Egg Dealer, Electrologist, Embalmer, Fee-Based Practicing Pastoral Counselor, Fruit and Vegetable Handler, Histologic Technician, Librarian, Public Weighmaster, Recreational Therapist, Senior Parachute Rigger, and so on.  You can find them listed here.

And the list continues to grow because later this year, a license will be needed if you want to braid hair for money.

The state carves out these little areas of benefit for special groups, all to the detriment of the general public.  Each of these licenses creates a mini-fiefdom, a protected class.  These licenses do not protect the customer.  They protect the producer from competition. 

Competition is the consumers' best friend.  It is high time to repeal these licenses and open the economy to competition.  Let the consumer determine who the best egg dealer is.  Let the market determine who the best Fruit and Vegetable Handler is. 

Or to put it another way, do you think that we can really live in a society with an unlicensed librarian?  I'm thinking, "Yes, we can!"

The Terrible Red Line

I live in a town next to Raleigh: Garner, North Carolina.  For several decades the highway has looped around Raleigh and not unlike other growing cities, another loop has been planned for.  This outer loop has been planned for the past 20 years.  As a result, land has been set aside and businesses have planned for future traffic over these past decades.

It was much to everyone's surprise that at the beginning of September several other routes were added to the map for consideration.  These additional routes are known as the Red, Blue and Purple Lines.  Within a period of six weeks, the transit authorities met with communities and an overwhelming number of citizens stated that the original Orange Line was the one everybody preferred.  At the end of the initial six-week period, the Blue and Purple Lines were removed from the map.

The Red Line, the route that literally passes through my neighborhood, the route that will be about six or seven houses away from my house, was not removed as an alternate to the original Orange Route.

Why?

There is a mussel that lives in a river on the south side of the nearby lake.  It is on the endangered species list.  There is no sign of it on the streams and creeks on the north side of the lake.  (Nevermind that the mussel is found all along the eastern seaboard of the U.S.; where North Carolina is just the southern most edge of its habitat.)  As a result, thousands of homes could be destroyed so that the mussel isn't disturbed.

There are many things that an economist could use here for comment: the value of unowned mussels, the competing interests of dividing a town, the destruction of many, many homes and businesses, the diminution of private property rights and the ascension of "community/environmental" standards, the economics of urban planning, etc.

Instead of recapping any of those subjects, I want to describe last night's meeting. 

Last night there was a meeting with the Mayor, the engineering firm and my neighborhood.  (This was just one of a series of such meetings.)  What struck me was the absolute helplessness that my neighbors and I felt.  We were up against raw, naked power and there was nothing that we could do but talk, be upset and grow angry.

The people who have the ultimate authority in the decision were nowhere around.  We could only question the engineering firm that has no power or authority whatsoever.  The ultimate decision will be made be a small group of people, who I will never know.  The decision will be made without my knowledge.  The location will be unknown to me.  I am merely a pawn, and an inconvenient one at that.

This is the fate that happens whenever we place our faith and our fate into the hands of the government.  The bureaucrats have their rules and regulations and, to them, I am no longer a citizen or an individual.  I am merely something to be dealt with.

Such a dehumanizing system is not "bad" or "evil."  It is simply the nature of bureaucracy.  Mises wrote one of the best books on this subject, simply titled Bureaucracy.  It is found here.  I highly recommend chapter 2, "Bureaucratic Management."

The relationships between individuals is distinctly different between the market system and a system of bureaucracy.  In a market system of private property, I must treat the person with whom I wish to trade with respect, as an equal.  If I do not, there will be no trade. 

In a system of bureaucracy, there is no such relationship.  It is not a relationship between equals.  A bureaucratic relationship is one of power and powerlessness.  As we move toward National Health Care, as we move toward a increasing regulation over our finances, as we move toward the centralization of power in the hands of fewer and fewer people, we move away from a nation of equals.  We move toward a nation comprised of those who have power and those who do not.

I hope that we can recover our lost Liberty.  It was not too long ago that private property was at the top of the list of protected rights.  Now with the Kelo case, and other eminent domain cases giving power to governments, our Liberty is in increasing jeopardy.  

Finally, I am reminded of the Bugs Bunny cartoon, "No Parking Hare."  It is about building a freeway through Bugs Bunny's home.  After a series of fights, the road is moved because, as Bugs says, 'The sanctity of the American home must be preserved!'"

Can We Get There From Here?--On the NCDOT

If we were to design a new road system from scratch, what would be its basic requirements? Probably the most important issue would be that the roads should be laid out so we could get to where we wanted to go. Quite simply we would need the roads where the most traffic would be. Then, of course, we would want a quality road system that would not have potholes or bridges that fail inspections. When problems do arise, we would like them taken care of quickly and efficiently. There might also be several other factors that we might like to include, such as safety, clear signage, pleasing aesthetics, etc.

If there were no roads, we might think that we could go into business to design, construct and maintain the roads by charging a fee when riders use the road. Others might see how profitable our business is and compete against us. The areas that would have the most traffic would also have the most alternate routes. These businesses would compete on all of the issues listed above such as quality, safety, etc. and we would also compete on price.

We see businesses compete in all these areas in every economic sector. Let’s think of a local grocery store. Nobody tells the grocer when they are coming. But when a customer shows up, they expect to find what they are looking for, in the right quantity and quality, and at a good price. If the grocer fails in any one of these areas, the customer gets angry and refuses to return. The competitive market makes the money hungry entrepreneur serve the customer. The grocer also is able to see which products are selling and which are not. The grocer can tell what to order and on what to cut back. The prices are signals that guide the entrepreneur and allow entrepreneurs to make wise choices when using resources so that we do not waste them.

Now let us compare and contrast the grocer with the NC Department of Transportation (NCDOT). The NCDOT is a creation of government—a bureaucracy. The workings of a bureaucracy are fundamentally different from that of a business. The $57.6 million NC Board of Transportation currently has under consideration does not provide them any information. Unlike the grocer, the board does not know and cannot know the degree of desire for each product (road). There is no price signal to guide them. They cannot look at that number and respond as an entrepreneur would. Unfortunately, there is no bureaucratic equivalent. Surveys are clumsy and inaccurate. It is almost by magic that a market produces goods where there is demand. But it is not magic. It is the spontaneous coordination that occurs as a direct result of the price signaling process. Does the NCDOT build and expand roads where there is the most demand? No, it cannot because it simply lacks that information since there is no market for roads.

All bureaus receive their funds from taxpayers via the state government. When the state gives the NC Board of Transportation money to spend, it does not just write a check. There are rules and guidelines that need to be followed. These rules and guidelines take precedence over everything else. The NCDOT plans and builds roads based upon a formula set in Raleigh—by state government. As a result, roads are built not according to demand, but according to political power.

When the NCDOT says that it agrees that traffic congestion is bad, will get worse, and they won’t get around to building new roads for several years, what recourse do the customers have? Can drivers fire the NCDOT? Can they stop being customers? Being able to fire someone for not performing creates a motivation that is simply not there otherwise. In a market, consumers have the ultimate power to fire the provider of goods and services. We are unable to do the same with the NCDOT and as a result, they only listen to the political winds and not to consumer demand.

Is it possible to make a bureaucracy, NCDOT, to behave like a business? The answer is no. We cannot get there from here. Sometimes economists have the unfortunate duty to say that when you are standing on the platform for the south-bound train, “You can’t go east.” Drivers have unfortunately been relegated to the backseat of the NCDOT’s agenda. There is obviously room for improvement, but we cannot expect a wholesale change. Only with a new consumer mentality pervading throughout the department can we hope for progress. The NCDOT needs to become more businesslike and less an institution of political patronage. The source of its revenue needs to be tied with the demand for the road. We should consider a user-fee based system to replace the antiquated gasoline tax. However, ultimately, if you really want quality roads and bridges and more sensitivity to customer demands, we need to create a market for roads. Thus, road ownership for toll roads and other private networks should be encouraged.