Whenever I see someone talk about something like that being "free" my initial reaction is also that they must be trolling. Sadly, it usually turns out they are not.
As long as you put the word "free" in quotes then I am with you.
Although...just to nit pick a little. If you mean less road damage then keep in mind that road damage is proportional to the 4th power of vehicle weight. So buses cause enormously more road damage than cars.
Low transaction costs are an essential factor for free markets to function well, so when the government provides services at no charge, just because they are operating at a loss from an accounting perspective doesn't mean they aren't unlocking large amounts of wealth in the private sector.
People who claim to like markets tend these days to subscribe to a quasi-religious faith that markets are maintained by some ethereal force rather than human institutions. Free markets are an absolutely vital and fundamental aspect of the wealth and power of the developed world, but they cannot exist in their highest form apart from the centralized machinery that enables people to trust each other and easily buy and sell. If anarcho-libertarians were to break that down, perhaps society could still function at some level, but it would be vastly poorer until everything was rebuilt in some other form.
The people I am referring typically just think it is somehow free. They don't seem to understand that somebody is paying for it, and that it might even be them. And that it is being paid for in a round-about and grossly inefficient manner compared to paying directly at the point of service.
Nobody is unaware that somebody is paying for it. The issues are more subtle than that.
Collecting and accounting for payment is overhead. If something is "free", then that overhead can be reduced or eliminated. On the other hand the basic purpose of charging for anything is to allocate limited resources, so the task is how to match supply and demand.
But saying it is "grossly inefficient" not to charge for something makes no sense to me. That's not the issue at all.
I beg to differ. At best, many people just don't really give it much thought. Many others think that when the government does something it is free, not understanding that the people pay for everything the government does.
The thing that is grossly inefficient is the manner in which services are paid for when it involves doing it indirectly via tax authorities. The overhead can't be eliminated when it is done that way - it requires a contingent of administrators and petty bureaucrats.
It doesn't matter how many administrators you have, you need more if you bill people and less if you don't. This would apply to private or public sectors. Don't you think this has something to do with why we see private companies giving away stuff instead of implementing microtransactions?
The obvious problem with providing stuff at no charge is that it will cost too much to supply it, and people will waste it, but that isn't what I would call overhead, and I don't think you are talking about that.
Enlightened self interest is wanting to raise your own taxes to pool money for common goods and services. Wanting to raise someone else's taxes for your personal benefit is just regular old self interest.
