Boomers
- Thread starter Diogenes
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Jerry Mathers
Was it me?
course, Stefan molyneux, while brilliant, does not believe in public roads.
I liked this guy a lot before he got cancelled for race truth.
You've been lied to by the usual suspects, Jerry.
No. Stefan Molyneux does not reject the existence, usefulness, or desirability of roads. As an anarcho-capitalist/voluntarist, he rejects the idea that roads must be provided by the state through taxation and coercion, and he has repeatedly argued that they can (and historically often were) provided privately.
The “who will build the roads?” objection is a longstanding, often sarcastic critique of libertarians and anarchists who oppose government monopolies on infrastructure. Molyneux has addressed it directly and at length, including in an essay titled “What about the Roads?” He treats roads as a standard challenge to a stateless society and responds by outlining market mechanisms rather than denying the need for them.
Key points from his arguments:
- New development (housing, malls, commercial areas) creates strong incentives for private road construction and access because property values and business viability depend on it. Developers and investors would fund or require roads as part of projects.
- Existing roads could be maintained through arrangements among businesses that benefit from them (e.g., stores on a block contributing to upkeep once taxes are gone), GPS/electronic billing for usage, advertising subsidies, long-term contracts that lock in rates, or other voluntary methods. Cumbersome stop-and-pay tolls at every corner are not required.
- Government roads, in his view, are inefficient, poorly allocated, safety-compromised, and shaped by special interests rather than user needs (he contrasts them with experiments in shared-space designs, roundabouts, etc.). A market system would not replicate the exact current network because users would pay more directly and demand efficiency and safety.
- He frames the deeper issue as moral: people readily accept taxation, war, and state power but struggle to seriously consider non-coercive alternatives for something as everyday as roads. One of his noted statements is that it has been easier to get people to surrender large portions of income, send children to war, and accept permanent losses of freedom than to examine how roads could work without taxation.
In short, Molyneux believes roads are valuable and would be supplied in a free-market/stateless order through voluntary means. The caricature that he (or similar thinkers) “doesn’t believe in roads” is a misrepresentation of the actual position, which is opposition to compulsory public provision funded by force, not opposition to roads themselves. He has discussed the topic across essays, podcasts, and books such as material related to Practical Anarchy.
Jerry Mathers
Was it me?
he does reject it.
I watched an hour long show between him and styxhexenhammer, who is now running from authorities.
molyneux is a libertarian radical who does not believe in public roads, but I love him anyway.
Post a link to said show, Jerry.
Jerry Mathers
Was it me?
it was like in 2014 or 2016 before the YouTube apocalypse and before Stephen got fully cancelled.
I will look for it.
You do that, Jerry.
Jerry Mathers
Was it me?
There is no evidence that Stefan Molyneux says (or has said) he does “not believe in public roads” in the linked video—or in his broader body of work—in the sense of denying the existence, usefulness, or need for roads.
Molyneux’s longstanding position (detailed in essays such as “What about the Roads?”, podcasts, and related material) is that roads are valuable and would be provided in a free-market/stateless society through voluntary means (developer funding for access, business contributions for local roads, electronic/GPS billing, contracts locking in rates, advertising subsidies, etc.).
He criticizes state monopoly provision funded by taxation/coercion as inefficient, poorly allocated, and unnecessary, not the concept of roads themselves.
He has made this distinction explicitly elsewhere, for example noting that he disagrees with public funding of roads but still uses them, because one participates in the existing world while arguing for improvement rather than demanding purity.
Claims that he simply “doesn’t believe in public roads” are a common caricature of the anarcho-capitalist/libertarian “who will build the roads?” discussion, not an accurate summary of his statements.
No publicly indexed quotes, transcripts, or secondary reports associate that video with Molyneux claiming he does not believe in roads.