Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

ule of the land offers an instructive example of how the voluntary methods
of the free market can successfully provide services that are almost always
regarded as uniquely governmental. For the settler-proprietors themselves
built roads, bridges, mills, and schools. The proprietors realized that speedy
construction of roads would encourage rapid influx into the town and thus
raise the value of their lands. In a couple of years after founding, however, the
towns were invariably incorporated and town governments created, and with
them the inevitable accompaniment of burdensome taxation and compulsory
labor on the roads. It is interesting to muse on what would have happened if
these New England towns had remained permanently under proprietary rule.
For one thing, services would have been voluntarily provided to earn a profit
from their consumers, instead of the imposing of a compulsory governmental
tax burden necessarily severed from any link with voluntary consumption by
the members of the public.
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