Calling John...

You have had enough. Statists, illiberal liberals, non-objective law, printing press rights, constricted freedoms, censured property rights...

You have found your your Galt's gulch. It is isolated, it is unowned, it is far from major shipping lanes, it is not in a Hurricane zone.

But there are, um... challenges.

It lies beneath 21 to 100 feet of water in the middle of a very large body of water.

The only resources you can reasonably count on in situ are basaltic rock, sand, coral, other sediments (24inches deep on average) and sea weed. Everything else must be brought to the site.

Here is your challenge John, if I can call you that. Design a structure of any type that will support your gulches infrastructure. Whether it is supported on stilts, floats or consists of a solid structure mounted below the water.

Make it modular and scalable your start point may be a temporary solution to be followed by another more permanent and comfortable design

Money is of course an object, cheaper is better but we are not expecting free or even cheap.

The time is now...

Phase 1- Planning: Knowledge is power

Knowledge is power

Before anything is done all possible information should be gathered and correlated. Planning for the potential colony must be conducted rationally and should include following factors.

1. Demographic Information

· Population density

· Ethnicity

· Nationalism/Tribalism/Religiosity

· Wealth

· Education

2. Resources – both proven and suspected

· What

· How much

· Value

· Accessibility

· Current industries

· Is the area generally capable of self sustaining production? *

*NB* the colony will most likely have to begin secretly and afterward may have to operate without overt external support for quite some time to get politically/ economically established or it may be blockaded politically or militarily by the established State or regional players.

3. Access

· Bordering States?

· Landlocked or Ocean accessible?

· Transportation Routes?

· How isolated is it?

· Trade markets?

4. Security

· Is it defensible

· Regional stability

· Realistic assessment of OPFOR Capabilities

· Preexisting conflicts

5. Climate

*Please make suggestions in the comments and I'll add them as required...

The Failed State Scenario:

One of the possible scenarios for a LFC nation is to constitute it within a failed state. The rationale being that the failed state may not have the military or governmental resources to devote to controlling their nominal territory. The apparatus of the state would be weak if not non-existent and should the LFC colony be discovered the state as such might have neither the ability or the resources to carry out the outright destruction the upstart state.

The best plans are often the simplest so this action will be conducted in 4 Phases

Phase 1 – Planning

Phase 2 – Reconnaissance

Phase 3 – Occupation & Establishment

Phase 4 – Colonization

Welcome to Galt's Gulch

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”

Ayn Rand

If you find yourself here then it is by design, which is to say you that you have been invited to participate in, and be a part of a unique exercise among Objectivists.

While most Objectivists agree that bringing about philosophical change within the nations we currently inhabit is the way forward there are some for whom a concrete example of laissez faire capitalism (LFC) is the preferred course of action.

This preference is in no way opposed to or hostile to the current intellectual activism of any Objectivist groups or individuals but is seen as a complimentary action which will help expose a greater number of individuals and groups to the ideas and ideal of Objectivism, which is to say the practical application of true laissez faire capitalism.

This blog is the first step toward the actual realization of a LFC state. In it we will explore options for the establishment of the LFC state, plan and cost the vital requirements necessary to undertake those options, develop practical governmental models based on Objectivist political theory, and develop theoretical models for private sector control of services currently provided by governments in western democracies.

Welcome to Galt's Gulch.

Open Skies...

America's First Private commercial Airport...

No seriously, it's the first.

Financing A Proper Government - Legal Costs

Courts in a properly governed LFC state would only prosecute 1 crime, the initiation of force. Gone are the state contrived, victimless crimes that clog up our courts like drug use, drunkenness and speeding tickets (though the Road companies would likely have contractual stipulations about such things). As a result the sheer volume of cases being seen by the courts would be drastically reduced as would the cost of running the judicial system.

Although the crime of initiating force deals with exactly that, there is a definite delineation between physical force (and the threat of it) and non-physical force. In order to be clear I will refer to these as Physical and Property crimes respectively. Physical crimes like assault, murder, robbery, extortion and the attempt thereof have at their base either actual physical harm, or the promise of physical harm. Whereas property crimes like fraud, theft (dealing with property not in the direct possession of another person as opposed to robbery), embezzlement and so forth do not have a physical aspect.

At this point I do not propose an overhaul of the justice system, (though certainly punishments ought to be more objective and less arbitrary than they are) what I would like to do is create a system that recoups much of its own costs. The thought that leaps to mind almost immediately is that if the court is relying on money recouped from the criminals for its own continued operation then that creates a situation where there is an incentive to convict and the impartiality of the court could be compromised, and that is true. Our legal system is supposed to be based on the idea that one is innocent until proven guilty. A judge has no incentive to prove guilt or innocence and that is the way it should remain. For as this story shows, if you monetise and incentivize the legal system judges can prove to be the real criminals.

So the decision of criminality must remain separate from the financial recovery of costs that accompany a legal punishment. With this in mind I propose that a financial audit be conducted for each legal case and that it be done by an independent 3^rd party whose payment is unrelated to the financial recovery.

The system could be designed so that it objectively determines the actual cost incurred by each party (prosecution and defence) and determines the financial responsibility based on an objective set of rules and regulations as well as the courts findings.

I do not think that this would necessarily mean that the guilty would automatically be charged for all the costs incurred. For example, if the prosecution in a murder trial spent thousands of dollars tracking down a false lead that had nothing to do with the actual crime then the defence should not be liable for that cost.

There may be another benefit of this plan in that taking another person to court could mean significant financial cost should a case be deemed to have no warrant, or the ruling is unfavourable. I wonder how many small claims and civil disputes would be handled by rational people on their own without the law being involved if the cost of the trip to court was objectively determined?

Financing A Proper Government - Lotteries

Now this may seem as a little bit of a strange way of generating revenue for a government but it has been done in Europe. In the UK the national Lottery Funds such things as "heritage" programs, and while certainly not a legitimate function of government is does demonstrate the utility of this method.

The question is how much utility?

In fiscal year 04 U.S. lotteries turned over $14.5 billion ($US) to their beneficiaries. * Since their creation Lotteries in the US have generated $234.089 Billion dollars. * Now obviously this is a total from all the lotteries played, and there is no reason to believe that independent, private interests would not still use lotteries to generate money for their causes, but that is not to say that a voluntarily funded government could not use the same vehicle to money.

Of course the government lottery would have to be run by a private company (to keep the government out of the business of business) but that is a much easier way to do it anyway. Why have all the bureaucracy when you can pay someone else to manage it?

It's impossible to determine how much revenue the government would realize through a program like this but if it is even equal to 1% of the total that is still a sum of $145,000,000 a year (using the 2006 figures). Just in case you were wondering that is more than enough to fund the Supreme Court ($.088b) of the US with enough left over for the Congressional Budget Office ($.043) *

Over time the amount becomes quite impressive. Since the New Hampshire Lottery was formed in 1964 it has raised more than $200 billion for government programs in North America.

Financing A Proper Government - Contingency Financing

Contingency financing is not like the other methods of financing I've covered, it is more of a method of ensuring accountability and limiting waste than of raising revenue.

Way back when, before the government figured that it was its right and responsibility to forcibly take our money to pay for things that we needed things were done differently. When the local Fire Department needed a new firetruck they raised the money by selling the idea to the public they protected.

There would be bake sales, and community events held to raise funds. Volunteers would set up stands in front of the grocery stores to ask for donations, all working toward the goal of raising enough money to buy that nice new firetruck. If a citizen though it was a good idea for the town to buy a new truck then he opened his wallet and helped out, if he didn't... he didn't.

So what if this principal was applied to government spending? If the government of Laissezfaireland decides that it's time to buy that nice shiny new Aircraft Carrier it's always wanted. Why should they not go to the people to see they want to finance it through their donations?

Now I'm not suggesting that the government hold a bake sale or anything so hokey, but if a political fundraising dinner can sell out a 500 seat hall at $2000.00 a plate then certainly there is some utility here.

Remember all those private donations? Well, I would imagine that any time a citizen made a donation to the government he could be presented with a list of things the government was trying to raise money for. So with this wishlist in hand he would check off the item or items he wanted to fund. He could also check off to have the money returned to him should the item not get the necessary funding or that it should go to another item or perhaps into the general operating budget.

So a citizen could place a condition to his/her donation that says "This donation is to go toward a new aircraft carrier, or become part of the general fund" - or - "This donation is to go toward a new aircraft carrier, or be returned to me" - or - "This donation is to go toward a new aircraft carrier, or toward the Justice system". This type of contingency funding would show government exactly what it is that the citizens value, what they are willing and unwilling to fund.

An added bonus of contingency financing would be that if a pacifist was morally opposed to donating his money to the military then he could stipulate that his donation only be spent on the Justice system or administration.

What possible mechanism could ensure accountability in government spending better than the individual having a say of where his money is spent?

Financing A Proper Government - Contract Insurance

Today every financial transaction in which credit is accepted is enforced by the government. This is to say, that when you decide to buy anything from a chocolate bar on your debit card to signing for a mortgage you are entering into a contractual agreement to pay that amount.

Currently all such transactions are enforced by the government “for free” (we know it isn’t free it’s our taxes paying for it) but what if that protection was converted from a hidden charge in taxes to an overt transparent fee?

So when I go the store and buy my chocolate bar for $1.00 and instead of paying cash I decide to use debit card a small fee of 1 or 2 % is added onto the actual amount and that percentage represents the government’s duty to enforce my compliance with the terms under which I just used the credit system. If I had decided to use the dollar in my pocket the Chocolate bar would only have cost a dollar, not a dollar and one cent.

Just thinking of myself, that simple transparent process would generate quite a healthy revenue stream. I would say that on average I use my debit card about 20 times a month and always for more than a $1.00 transaction. For arguments sake I’ll average the amount spent per transaction at $50.00 x 20 = $1000.00, 1% of which is $10.00. Per year the total is $120.00. This amount, taken as an average for the USA (using the same figures I used to determine the number of people contributing to private donations) with 155 million persons accruing this level of charges per year would generate $18,600,000,000.*

To show that the above estimate is on the low side, this site says “U.S.-based financial institutions relied on Visa's processing system, VisaNet, to facilitate $1.6 trillion in transactions”. At 1% that is 16 billion dollars in revenue, and that is only from 1 Credit card.

Now most transactions carried out by individuals are small change when compared to business transactions. The same 1% applied against a multi-million or muti-billion dollar business contract would create an enormous sum per year. How many credit transactions are conducted by all the business’ in the USA every year? I can not find any specific data on this but this table provided by the US census Bureau gives an indication of the amount of revenue that business could generate for government. The total of all the figures listed for “Sales, shipments, receipts, revenue or business done” equals $99,732,837,593,000. If even one tenth of that amount was deemed to be from credit transactions, at 1% the total revenue would equal over $99 billion dollars per year.

It is important to note that this amount is an estimate only and does not take into account anything other than credit transactions by business’.

Business acquisitions, mergers, takeovers and the like would generate trillions more dollars per year which could be similarly protected by the government. It is important to note that any of these transactions could be conducted without paying to have them insured, but then the participants in the agreements would not enjoy the automatic protection of the government, having agreed of their own free will not to pay for the service.

This is not to say that one of the companies could not go to the government to have the law enforced if their agreement is broken. It would just mean that they would have to pay the total cost of any investigation and all the resources used by the government in investigating and prosecuting their case. When large breach of contract cases often take years to investigate and bring to court and are then followed by numerous appeals it is easy to see that a company would probably prefer to pay the insurance.

* The assumption being taken as a working principal is that banks, credit companies and other parties lending credit would demand their customers pay the fee in order that the credit company have legal recourse to recoup losses from defaulters.

Patents & Trademarks

A patent is legal protection of an individuals, or corporation’s inventions. In the US patents even cover “research, except "purely philosophical" inquiry”. Patents normally have a set period of time (20 years) in which they are in force, but this period can be extended by the creator/s paying a maintenance fee. [source]

The US Patent Office issued 484,955 patents in 2007 according to this document. When it comes to fees for patents it is not as simple as you might think. On page 2 of the document referenced above is a list of the fees applicable to patents. To simplify my calculations I will use the “Basic Filing Fee – Utility Application” amount to determine the revenue from Patents, which works out to $412,211,750

Trademarks are another legal protection of property (usually intellectual), this time covering products or services originating from a unique source and to distinguish the property from other sources. Trademarks do not have to be registered and can still be prosecuted by law when not registered but may only be protectable within a certain geographical area.

According to this document in 2002 the US registered 469,000 trademarks. There are three different fee amounts listed which average $342.00 for total estimated revenue of $160,398,000.

I’m sure there are some other contractual agreements that the government ought to have a hand in but it would be far too much to spell out each of them to provide an example here. Needless to say that just from these few examples I estimate revenue of $118,905,447,343 and the actual amount would probably be far in excess of that sum.

For those that have been keeping track, of our original estimated budget requirement of $550.611,000,000 we have so far eliminated $273,921,655,346 leaving us with $276,689,344,654. We are over half way to our goal of proving that a government can be financed completely through voluntary donations, legitimate fees and service charges.

Financing A Proper Government - Service Fees

The LFC state will have certain legal functions for which it must provide services. I’m talking about things like issuing passports, registering ownership of real estate, registering business names, copyrights and patents and so on. Now being that the state as a paid servant is the ideal of LFC then individuals would pay up front for these services.

However, instead of the government growing a bureaucracy of its own to provide these services what if it licensed private administration companies to act as agents on the its behalf? So rather than going to the government run and operated Passport Office you went to “Al’s Administration” and paid the good folks at Al’s for your passport.

To you the change is seamless; you fill out your forms, pay your money and get your passport just like normal. “Al’s Administration” on the other hand has to operate in compliance with the applicable government regulations and procedures and pay a fee in order to be licensed to issue passports for the Government of Laissezfaireland. This system could be applied to Passports, Real Estate registration, drivers licences, marriage certificates and other similar consumer services*.

How much money could be generated through service fees? Obviously that would depend on the system the government decides to use (one flat fee for a yearly license to the “administration business” or a percentage per transaction) and how much that fee is.

Well since I began talking about Passports in 2008 the US government issued 16,208,003 passports. If the Government asked for a set fee of one dollar per transaction that is over 16 million dollars from a single legal and necessary function of government. Imagine how much revenue there would be if all necessary transactions between government and the citizen earned a dollar toward providing the funding for a proper government.

The beauty of it all is that it would create a competitive marketplace, generate jobs and that competition would lead invariably to streamlined processes and all of this is done without creating a bureaucracy, as a matter of fact it is done BECAUSE there is no bureaucracy. Ignore the monetary aspect for a moment and think of it… Transparent, accountable, reasonable and accessible government services provided by private business…

*Registering a patent and or a copyright could be done the same way as buying a passport but protecting those things is a responsibility of law and I believe would fall under the next revenue stream… contract insurance.

Financing A Proper Government - Donations

Private and Corporate Donations:

Today almost 50% (or more) of my hard earned money goes to taxes, be it income tax, sales tax, prohibitive taxes (like on alcohol), land tax, transfer taxes… There are so many and while I could go on, Kelly at “Rant from the Rock” made a list already so I’ll let her help me out with her post… How Much Do You Really Pay In Taxes?

And that is just the “taxation” part, what about all those inefficient bureaucratic “services” that governments at all levels currently provide? How much savings would we see there with market competition and its focus on efficiency replacing monopoly and dogged bureaucracy?

So... In a LFC society I keep ALL of the money I make. What is that worth to me?

Thinking logically I would recognize one thing right off the bat. The lack of taxation in Laissezfaireland means I have 100% of my pay while my counterpart in Welfarestateland is legally robbed of 50% of his. That freedom from state imposed robbery would be quite valuable to me. As a corollary I would also recognize that the only way that I am going to be able to continue to keep all my own money and use it as I see fit is if Laissezfaireland is properly funded and able to defend my rights.

With this fact staring me right in the face I would certainly donate a portion of my disposable income to the maintenance of the state that protects my rights.

Well how much would I be willing to donate?

That would be a personal choice, and individuals would decide when and how on their own, but if each employed person contributed just $1000 the amount generated (using US data from 2005, - median income - 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked = $28,567.) would be $155,000,000,000. So, with a very small average donation one fifth of the annual operating costs are paid… This does not include any corporate donations and the same logical chain of thought would apply to them.

Now some will likely give more, some unfortunately will give less and a few who are able will shortsightedly give none. The point being that just one of the seven alternatives I had for taxation has already been shown to have the possibility of paying one fifth of the required budget…

NB: For what it’s worth, if I were donating the amount would be much higher than $1000.00, after all that freedom, that proper application of the right to property just doubled my take home pay, saving me about $50,000.00 in a single year.

What would you save?

What would you give?

Financing A Proper Government

This is one of, if not the biggest question facing a LFC country, in that Objectivists believe that taxation is force and therefore immoral. So without the force of taxation how is a nation to fund its proper functions?

There are three proper functions of government. They all help to ensure the protection of individual rights by providing for the defence of the nation and its citizens, by providing police services and by funding the judicial system.

But in a populous, modern and prosperous country the amount of money required to provide even those few services is staggering.

Because of the federal system, and because of administrative and bureaucratic divisions it is almost impossible to calculate the exact cost of spending that an Objectivist would consider the proper obligation of government. However, thanks to this page (http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/) we can make a rough guess. By adding the cost of the Department of Justice ($22.291b), the Department of Defence ($515.440b), The Executive Office of the President ($.365b), The Legislative Branch ($5.132b) and the Judicial Branch ($7.383b) I have come up with a grand total of $550.611billion

Now this figure includes a lot of what I would consider to be waste or things that are not the responsibility of government, but it also does not include the cost of police services. For that reason I will call it even because I am trying to prove that voluntary and administrative methods could be utilized to generate the operating budget for a LFC state.

Right now we have taxes. So many and so varied are they that many people can not even tell you how many there are. The US Tax code is 44000 pages long. It is so convoluted and complicated that entire industries have sprung up in its service. Many people, especially those in government will tell you that it is necessary to have this system to fund the government, to help the poor, to be equitable and to have progressive in taxation… Because, Surely you recognize progressive taxation as being the fairest method of taxation…

And so it is that invariably when people argue for taxation they refer back to taxation and its structure as a reason for taxation and the structure of it. Never do they question if another alternative is possible. The secret, the thing that those in control now do not want you to know or realize is that there are many possibilities many alternatives to the forceful appropriation of the property of citizens.

In a LFC nation I personally believe that as many as are practical could/would be used in collectively to fund a LFC nation. The possibilities include private donations, service fees, contract insurance, contingency funding, lotteries, punitive damages assessed against rights violators and contractual agreements just for starters.

I will post on each of these methods in turn but before get into that there is something that I believe needs to be clarified.

Rights are the prime mover in a properly governed nation. The state exists ONLY to protect individual rights. It can have no desires or needs beyond that function. So when talking about funding government it is improper to suggest that the government allows people to retain their earned money, it is theirs by right, not by grant. That is what is meant by the right of property, and that right is what makes taxation immoral and I would say that it would be constitutionally prohibited in a LFC nation.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Check your Road…

“Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.” Ayn Rand

How would roads work in the absence of taxation?

It’s an honest question even if the questioner may be angling toward the false conclusion that it is impossible. In such a case, this is the conclusion of someone who has not honestly tried to think of an answer, who has not tried to do anything more than regurgitate concepts, systems and mechanisms already in place. On the other hand perhaps he is honestly inquisitive, either way, sooner or later questions like this do have to be answered.

In a laissez faire capitalist (LFC) nation all property is private property this includes roads. It seems unlikely to me that private individuals and individual business interests would be terribly interested in owning the thoroughfares in front of their homes and business’. It is far more likely that they would only own their private laneways, the parts meant for their private use, and the rest would be controlled owned and maintained by Road Companies (RC).

After all why on earth would a company like Wal Mart spend millions of dollars to own, maintain and control roads when its focus and niche is household consumer products? I’m not saying that they couldn’t but just that it’s unlikely they would, after all, currently they don’t even plow or maintain their own private parking lots…

Anyway…

So how could a Road company control something as large and as public (for want of a better word) as a roadway?

In order to control and generate revenue from the roads they own the RC would need to be able to control access and assess use. In order to do this fairly the RC would have to be able to assess the frequency and type of use, (how many kilometers, what kind of vehicle and so on). In order to maximize their profit the RC would have to make this process as transparent to the user as possible and as seamless between one RC and another as possible.

Due to the nature of roads, all roads, the ability to control access is limited. Building a barrier along each section of road or street to prevent unauthorized use would be cost prohibitive as well as a logistical and administrative nightmare. The solution then is to control the means by which roads are used, namely the motor vehicle.

I suggest vehicle registration as a method that can be used to accomplish this. But that creates a problem assessing the actual type and duration of use. The practical solution is to make the method of payment retroactive. Here is how I see the system working.

Using existing technology all motor vehicles would be fitted with a GPS transponder that would track the distance traveled by the vehicle according to road ownership. By this I mean that where RC “A” owns a series or section of road the GPS in the vehicle, working as a transponder notes when it is on that Company’s road. As soon as the vehicle moves onto a road controlled by Company "B" then that is noted by the transponder too.

All the information would be stored on the vehicle in a tamper proof attachment. Once a year, when the owner of the motor vehicle registers his vehicle the data from the GPS transponder is downloaded and the cost of the travel is calculated according to the prices set by the individual RC’s and the actual usage of their roads. This fee would become the cost (retroactive) of licensing your vehicle to drive on the Road Company’s roads for the next year.

Please note that the “licensing” of the vehicles is NOT a government function but a function of the RC’s working in co-operation to ensure their self-interests are met.

However the information stored on the GPS/transponder would be useful to police, who could request a warrant for the data from a specific vehicle if there was probable cause…But that is a question for laws…and another day.

”What about if someone doesn’t register their vehicle?”

Well that problem would be ultimately decided by courts, but there is no reason why RC’s couldn’t or wouldn’t control the usage and security of their property though the use of private traffic security. Same as any other temporary use commodity such as a rental car, the RC would have the right to impose rules regulating the use of their property including speed limits and requirements for registration/operational GPS/Transponders. They could even seize unlicensed vehicles illegally using their property.

“What about rights of way and easements?”

First off, hypothetically if Joe owns a piece of land and builds a road to connect to the privately owned road network then there is no doubt that the road he built on his property is his property and he has every right to deny or grant the use of it. Though Joe would have to coordinate with the RC owning the road in front of his property to ensure that they agree for his private laneway to join to their roadway.

If Bill buys a piece of land past Joe’s (read farther from the road) and does not confirm that he has deeded or contractual access, and Joe refuses Bill permission to cross his land to get to the road, then Bill is out of luck. Buyer beware! Any other solution that involves the forced compliance of Joe to submit to Bills request to gain access to the road is a violation of Joe’s right to property.

So, let’s say for the sake of explanation that Joe, being the nice guy he is, allows Bill to have deeded access. Further lets say our fictional location of “Highway Hollow” experiences a population explosion. Pretty soon, Joe, being the nice guy he is, has deeded access of his road to an entire community.

Soon the road is being traveled and worn and people start complaining to Joe that it’s in poor shape and he really should take better care of it. The logical result of this would be that Joe would begin to look for some enterprising soul to buy the road from him. Or he goes into the road business formally himself. So lets say Joe doesn’t want or need the hassle. All he wants to do is raise Dobermans and fire his guns.

The property, being Joe’s and Joe’s alone would be his and only his to sell. Once sold the “easement” granted by Joe to the other residents of Highway Hollow would be null and void and each user of the road would either have to negotiate a permanent easement with the RC, pay on a per use basis, or find another way to get to his property.

“What if the deeds were worded in such a way that the easement was in perpetuity?"

Then in all likelihood Joe would never be able to sell that road because no company would buy a road if they could not expect to be paid for the service. Again buyer, or in this case owner beware. This could lead to a community owned/operated road but again anyone that didn’t agree to pay his or her share could be denied use of the road.

So what about the worst-case scenario? What if you buy a piece of property with no access to a road and someone else buys all the property surrounding yours and refuses you the right to cross their property?

What are you stupid? Why on earth would you buy land and not ENSURE that you had access to it? Buyer Beware!!!

NB. There is no provision for protection from stupidity in a truly capitalistic society. That mindset is a construct of the socialism and collectivism that has been forced into our societies framework by the same people that to this day claim that Communism is “a perfect form of government because everyone is equal and everyone has access to the means and method of production…”

What about the eco-nut scenario, where a group buys a portion of land just in order to hinder growth, commerce or what have you?

Well, I know it seems like there are a lot of these nuts out there but I seriously doubt that there are enough to seriously hinder any growth. Like water, capitalism will always find a way to seep in/through/around the damn idiots. (pun intended)

Also in a capitalistic society anyone who did this/belonged to a group that did this, could just as easily be denied the ability to buy food from an affected grocery store, or purchase gas from Jim’s gas station which has to get it’s fuel carted in “the long way around” etc, etc, etc… There is always more than one way to skin a cat and I think personal responsibility for ones actions would be a blessed consequence of a completely capitalistic society.

I would think that the concept of innocent use would be sufficient to allow non-commercial pedestrian traffic like kids riding bikes or folks going for a walk. Bicycle couriers and the like though I would think would be subject to charges.

This is just one option, I'm sure there are many others. The possibilities of a free market are endless.