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For the Bob Barr activists that keep emailing me: stop por favor. Out of principle I don’t vote or donate to any campaign, not even Ron Paul — a person I generally agree with. Plus, I’ve never really liked Barr let alone his running mate.

And speaking of Ron Paul, I saw this picture over at his CfL site:

Ignoring whether or not you like Paul or libertarianism in general, I find the quote spot on.

While the collapse of the I-35 Minneapolis bridge comes to mind, the fact of the matter is the interstate highway system (which the federal government refuses to deregulate or privatize) has been a state of disrepair for years.

For instance, over the past decade, studies published by the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) have estimated that it will cost $1.3-1.6 trillion to upgrade highways to a “good” condition.

Remember, these are the same highways in which 40,000 people die each year.

Yet as Walter Block recently noted in a podcast, if 40,000 people died on private highways, every human rights or consumer rights activist would be screaming at Congress to do something. But because the roads are already owned and maintained by the government, it is just seen as a fact of life. No one is ever fired or held accountable. And there is no incentive to upgrade or fix the roads because there is no outside competition.

In contrast, private companies have an incentive not to kill their consumers because customers will take their business elsewhere. Furthermore, entrepreneurs would be held accountable for negligence as they are in every other market-based industry.

But let’s ignore road socialism and look back at that quote.

According to the July report from Congressional Research Service the total costs for just the Iraq war is roughly $650 billion. If the troops were magically withdrawn today, the long-term costs for funding healthcare and welfare liabilities for the soldiers would reach more than $1 trillion or even $5 trillion.

If you include Afghanistan then add another $170 billion for a bill higher than Vietnam.

The human toll is at least 86,000 dead Iraqis from coalition-related violence and up to 1.2 million due to a combination of sectarian strife and civil war. And roughly 10,000 have died in Afghanistan.

So, the question remains: is either political party going to solve the quagmire they created? I am willing to bet all of the money I have earned this past year in Asia that neither party will solve these issues.

And that by next election cycle, government highways will still celebrate 40,000 fatalities annually and there will be a sizable presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan (think of Japan, Korea, Germany or Italy for continued US occupation).

Any takers?