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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mama Bear who wrote (4010)	8/13/2000 3:26:30 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13060

I can't think of any reason off hand why airports should be gov't entities though. Under a pure libertarian philosophy, they shouldn't. However, they are an infrastructure which is shared by a lot of different private carriers. Since they are hard to site (particuarly without the power of eminent domain -- one landowner having a half acre in the middle of the runway could hold up the airport for millions), and very expensive, you can't have every airline building its own airport. If a private unregulated business owned one, they would have a virtual monopoly, and the price of air travel would probably be much higher. (Would definitely be if they had to pay taxes on all that land.) Actually, though, most airports don't cost the taxpayers directly (only indirectly in being tax exempt property) since for most airports I am familiar with user fees pay for most or all of the cost of operating the airport and paying off the bonds sold to build them. That doesn't, however, count subsidies from the FAA and lots of local infrastructure (roads particularly) built to service them. But overall, private ownership of airports would be one area in which I would worry whether pure libertarianism would actually be beneficial to the average person.