The standard libertarian position on cars goes something like this: the automobile represents individual freedom, the market delivered it, people chose it, end of discussion. If you dislike car dependency, you are probably a statist who wants to ban things.
That position is wrong on every count. And I say that as someone whose political commitments run about as libertarian as they get.
My contempt for car-centric infrastructure follows directly from those commitments. The environment that forces car ownership on everyone who wants to participate in ordinary life was built by the state. The only thing the libertarian position gets right is the conclusion: government intervention produces bad outcomes. It just misidentifies which intervention produced this one.
Our cities and suburbs, jammed with traffic, stretched out with isolated houses miles from anything useful, sliced up by massive highways: none of this happened from people voting with their wallets. It is the direct product of government policies that spent decades subsidizing automobiles and dismantling every alternative.
The most prominent piece of infrastructure in America is the Interstate Highway System, a monument to government planning and spending. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Pub. L. No. 84-627, 70 Stat. 374, didn't bubble up from real market demand; it was a top-down power grab that remade America in the image of the automobile, driven as much by federal ambition as by the political muscle of auto, oil, and construction lobbies. Congress authorized $25 billion over thirteen years and renamed the network the "National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" to sell the expenditure on Cold War grounds. Eisenhower had watched the German autobahn give the Wehrmacht a logistical advantage in World War II and returned determined to build an American equivalent. The eminent domain and demolition that followed were structural features of that program: highways were routed through urban neighborhoods, largely in poorer sections of cities, where residents had the least political capacity to resist.
The Government's Heavy Hand
Eminent Domain: To carve out these massive arteries, governments wielded the power of eminent domain, forcibly seizing private land, demolishing communities in the process. Where in the libertarian ideal is the justification for the state to bulldoze your property for the sake of a government-favored industry?
Zoning Laws: The ubiquitous single-use zoning ordinances that corrupt our cities are anything but a free-market phenomenon. These government mandates dictate where different types of buildings can be located, forcing residential areas to be segregated from commercial zones. This artificial separation makes walking or biking for even basic errands impractical, effectively mandating car ownership.
Minimum Parking Requirements: By forcing developers to include a certain number of parking spaces with every new building, regardless of actual demand, governments have inflated construction costs, consumed land, and ensured that our urban landscapes are dominated by parking lots. This is a direct subsidy for car usage, baked into our legal code.
The Myth of Car Capitalism
The myth that cars are a purely capitalist creation ignores the massive government role in forcing this reality on us. Real capitalism thrives on choice and the efficient allocation of resources based on genuine demand and accurate pricing. Our car-centric system distorts these principles at every turn.
Consider the externalities: the costs associated with driving that aren't borne by the individual driver. Congestion, pollution, and wear on public infrastructure are all socialized costs. In a truly free market, these costs would be internalized through mechanisms like congestion pricing, making driving more expensive to those abusing it and making other options more competitive.
What a Real Free Market Could Deliver
What kind of transportation landscape would a truly free market produce? I suspect it would be far more diverse and human-scaled:
- Privately funded transit systems competing for riders
- Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods driven by consumer preference and efficient land use
- Smaller-scale transit options built around actual ridership, not parking mandates
- Cars as one option among many, not the default necessity they are today
My desire for walkable cities is an argument for capitalism, not against it. The free market didn't build this car-dependent world. Government did. And I'd prefer to see what a truly free market in transportation could create.