Thomas Frank: Toll Roads Are Paved With Bad Intentions

Conservatives have stoked hostility toward the state.

By THOMAS FRANK

Back in the days when the market was a kind of secular god and all the world thrilled to behold the amazing powers of private capital, the idea of privatizing highways and airports and other bits of our transportation infrastructure made a certain kind of sense.

Private businesses did everything better than the state, we were told. And that meant even tasks as inherently public as maintaining bridges and roads.