80Property Law

free-rider problems would make private ownership either economically inefficient (as in the case of national defence systems) or too politically contentious to be generally adopted (in the case of privately owned roads). Essentially, the argument is that national defence systems provide benefits which cannot easily be made available only to those willing to pay for the services, and so non-payers can confidently free-ride on payers, knowing they will benefit from enemy attacks being deterred and repulsed just as much as payers will. As far as private ownership of roads is concerned, the free-rider problem is rather different. Private ownership of public roads would be feasible if road owners were entitled to charge for road use, and indeed charging for road use (whether the road is state owned or privately owned) would arguably have the advantage of reducing road use. However, in a situation in which use of roads is free, those who put a low value on their time and therefore do not much mind congestion free-ride on those who put a high value on their time and would therefore pay a toll in order to control the level of traffic (consider why). These free-riders will therefore oppose privatisation of roads, and traditionally there have been enough of them to make their opposition successful. It is worth noting in this connection that the London congestion charge (where the roads remain publicly owned but use is charged for) was made politically acceptable (to the extent it is) only as part of a scheme under which the profits from the charge (i.e. the charges collected, net of costs) are dedicated for use on paying for improvements to public transport, which can be seen as a way of making the internalisation of the externality of congestion politically acceptable.

3.2.3. Criteria for measuring the success of a particular form of ownership

Economic efficiency is not the only criterion by which we might want to measure the success or the justifiability of a particular form of ownership. Most people would want also to consider the impact that a particular form of ownership regime might have on the organisation of a society that adopted it, and to assess success and justifiability from a moral perspective as well as, or rather than, from an economic perspective. We explore this second point in the next chapter, but it is important to emphasise here that economic efficiency is not something that can be ignored in assessing the moral justifiability of a property regime. As Grunebaum points out (Grunebaum, Private Ownership, p. 159):

The moral perspective takes precedence [over the economic perspective]. But . . . [it] should [not] be assumed that economic criteria are wholly irrelevant to a moral justification of a specific form of ownership. Economic inefficiencies can imply a wasteful utilization of resources or labor which from a moral perspective might be unjustified because people might be forced to labor without any productive or beneficial outcome. In a similar way, high administrative costs might consume wealth which morally might be put to better use. Thus an examination of the allegedly