It was fought tooth and nail by Moroun every step of the way, which is one of the reasons the Canadian federal government is paying for the whole bridge including the changes to I-75. Moroun got several US funding bills killed and nearly succeeded in preventing the Canadian government from picking up the tab.
I've never seen a stronger case for ensuring public ownership of key infrastructure in all cases, otherwise you can end up in a situation where two giant economies are held hostage by one person. It's also a cautionary tale on the dangers of special interests and lobbying being able to stifle action so clearly in the public interest.
Yes, this is exactly on point. Moroun clearly tried to not only protect his investment but did so by disadvantaging the general public.
"Manuel Moroun, owner of the Ambassador Bridge until his death in 2020, spoke out against this proposal. He sued the governments of Canada and Michigan to stop its construction, and released a proposal to build a second span of the Ambassador Bridge (which he would own) instead.[38] Critics suggest that Moroun's opposition was fueled by the prospect of lost profits from duty-free gasoline sales, which are exempt from about 60 cents per gallon in taxes even though the pump price to consumers is only a few cents lower.[11] On May 5, 2011, a judge dismissed the case, citing a lack of reasoning for it to proceed.[39] Moroun and his Detroit International Bridge Company contended that the new bridge would affect its proposal for a second span which would be built next to the Ambassador Bridge. "
The idea that a private individual, no matter how wealthy is able to literally exact a toll on society is ridiculous. In Europe we also still have a few toll bridges and tunnels, as well as many toll roads (for instance: in Poland and France). Most of these, but not all, are in the hands of various governments. I can't wait until this particular form of highway robbery disappears. Oh, and Germany re-enacted something similar but only for tourists. They first got slapped down in court then reduced the German road tax to be able to apply the tax on 'everybody' but in practice that means that it is just a levy on foreign traffic.
It's really only because "we don't care enough" - when the rubber hits the road (literally) things like that get steamrolled and nationalized quite quickly.
But we're "so rich" that a few billionaire parasites doesn't amount to much, and so we let the legal fiction continue.
Meanwhile, in an effort to control traffic congestion, certain US states are building privately owned toll roads, which siphon away maintenance taxes that could benefit local road repair.
We've had this in Ontario for over a couple decades in the form of the 407, which has eye watering tolls that I don't think any Americans can understand (certainly Google maps doesn't, as it suggests navigation routes on it just to save 2 or 3 minutes, but which cost $40, $50 CAD).
It's owned by Spanish consortium, and was sold by a previous conservative gov't for a fraction of what it's made in profit, since.
Ontario don't care, it seems. Canadians just bend over and take it.
Around here (Flamborough, outside of Hamilton/Burlington) there's a whole layer of people who rant and rant and rant about being amalgamated into Hamilton.
Except those same people who rant about it, are almost all conservative voters. And it was the conservatives under Harris who forced that amalgamation.
It boggles the mind, the short memory people have.
What's pretty wild is that even though you can later uncover the corruption the deals are allowed to stand. When in fact all of the participants should end up in jail with their assets forfeited.
In general this is never spoken of as corruption here. Not in mainstream discourse anyways. It's spoken of as a "bad deal", but the "C" word isn't really deployed.
In the early/mid-90s recessionary period when this was inked, the justification was excessively high debts incurred by the previous provincial gov't. Austerity was the name of the game, and decisions like these were seen as "wise fiscal management." Those debts now look minor compared to the present, and we'd have been in much better fiscal situation keeping the toll road public and letting that money flow back.
That sounds like what the City of Chicago did with their parking enforcement rights.
They sold a 75 year contract to metered spaces for 1.5 billion dollars in 2008. Currently there have been 2 billion in revenue, and there are 60 years remaining on the contract...
"TORONTO, Feb. 16, 2023 /CNW/ - 407 International Inc. (the "Company") announced today revenues of $1,327.2 million for 2022, compared to $1,023.1 million for 2021. "
So about 1 billion USD annual revenue per year. 99 year lease.
The government of the time sold the lease rights for $3.1 billion CAD. So about $5 billion in today's dollars, about $3.7B USD.
>> TORONTO, Feb. 16, 2023 /CNW/ - 407 International Inc. (the "Company") announced today revenues of $1,327.2 million for 2022, compared to $1,023.1 million for 2021. The Company reported net income of $435.3 million for 2022, compared to a net income of $212.4 million for 2021. Earnings before interest and other, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"1) totalled $1,138.8 million for 2022 compared to $859.0 million for 2021.
Per https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculat..., $3.1 billion in 1999 is about $5.26 billion today. So, in 2022 the consortium had an income of about 8.5% of what they paid. Not nearly as good as your numbers imply. The consortium is making back what they paid every 10-15 years, so over a 99 year lease they'll make something like a 600%-700% return on their investment. That's not great. And they shoulder the risk of collapsing toll revenue.
Indirectly owned subsidiaries of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board 50.01%[36][37]
Cintra Global S.E., a subsidiary of Spanish firm Ferrovial S.A. 43.23%[36][37]
SNC Lavalin 6.76%[36]
But the original lease sale was far more skewed:
"The Ontario corporation, known as 407 International Inc., was initially owned by the Spanish multinational Ferrovial through their subsidiary Cintra Infraestructuras (61.3%), the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin (22.6%) as well as CDP Capital (16.1%)"
Well, duh, the point is that it's the public that lost out. The government could be making those revenues instead, and re-investing them in infrastructure.
Unless they can't. And unless one takes the time to actually understand the circumstances under which the asset was privatized, you have no idea whether that's the case. But golly gee it's a whole lot easier to take the intellectually shallow path of "how dare a company make more money than I think they should" and avoid all that messy 'research' and 'understanding'.
"If I throw shade at you, it's because I'm your elder and better. If you return the favour, it's an unconscionable smear and you're a juvenile". Classy...should I get off your lawn too? There are tons of thin skinned old people just like you who vote, think their minimally informed preconceived notions are 'understanding' and don't want to know about inconvenient facts. I stopped pulling the 'older makes me better than you' shtick in my 40's, and that was a long time ago.
Also, from boots on the ground in North Texas, parts of NTTA-proposed systems were won by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte in the early 2000s. Parts have been built, but it didn't complete by its 2015 target date. https://journalrecord.com/2004/12/spanish-firm-to-build-6-bi...
I drive on Texas toll roads quite often. I don't follow how they take the tax revenue away. While there definitely has been failed projects but I am curious if this method of infrarstructure takes money out of the tax coffers? A private business foots a massive infrarstructure bill with its own risks with and turns over the road after N number of years. Has anyone run the math to see if these projects are net winners/losers for the state?
I don't know the extent of this practice, and maybe someone from Italy can provide more info, but last summer there was a news item on Dutch TV how residents in a south-Italian town on the coast could only afford to seek solace from the heat wave by swimming in the polluted harbour area, because all of the beaches were privately-owned and charging beyond their means. And it was suggested in the news item that that holds true for large chunks of the Italian coastline.
I think a vicious PR campaign against the people doing the lobbying and the people being lobbied is a good first step in situations like this.
THe public should know the names and faces of the people involved and they should associate negative and petty emotions with them.
Most Canadians hve no clue about this bridge or the people like Moroun and his lawyers who are involved. These should be names that people spit on the ground when heard, there should be political cartoons and memes that satirize their faces everywhere. There should be boycotts against his businesses and the businesses of his lawyers and accountants.
> In Europe we also still have a few toll bridges and tunnels, as well as many toll roads (for instance: in Poland and France). Most of these, but not all, are in the hands of various governments. I can't wait until this particular form of highway robbery disappears.
Uhm, what?
Toll roads are about as fair as it gets. The alternative is spreading the cost over all (national) drivers.
I hate toll roads too when I encounter them, but making non-users pick up the tab for users is the actual highway robbery.
There is also a middle ground: vignettes. Basically, only a car with a valid vignette can get on such a road, but unlike tolls, the fee is not per-trip, but valid for some time period (week, two, month, year).
So in the result, only those who use (or intend to use) the toll road pay, but without the toll booths that slow everything down. The price also happens to be more reasonable.
How do you define "users"? Say something you ordered or bought in a store was shipped along that road, did you "use" it? If one of the employees of that company had to use that road to get to work, did you "use" it? one of their family members, without whose job they wouldn't have theirs?
Should the owner of a toll road have to pay money back to subsidize the costs of the roads which give access to their toll road? Vehicles need to be able to get on/off the road before tolls can be collected.
Or, if we apply your logic, then it is impossible for people to live in rural areas, because the cost of the roads is more than the local economy can bear.
Road networks are an infrastructure investment. Since they are networks, the value comes from the entire network. What is the value of a road with no on or off ramps?
Because the value is so diffisive over both space and time, the only effective way to account for and recoup the cost is through a mechanism that can take a share of the economic growth resulting from the network.
Everything you write also applies to railways, but in most of the world there are taxes to pay for all/part of their construction and maintenance, and use fees to pay for all/part of each journey made.
> The idea that a private individual, no matter how wealthy is able to literally exact a toll on society is ridiculous.
How else do you think that individuals are able to become billionaires? They're not ten thousand times smarter or stronger or harder-working than the rest of us. Bezos is worth $180B because he's paying his warehouse drones $13.60 an hour while they run from shelf to shelf and pee in bottles, contributing value to society far in excess of the pay they're receiving. The difference is pocketed by Jeff.
Everyone else is also paying their warehouse drones $13.60 per hour and have. been doing that for decades before Amazon, and none of them are billionaires.
> The idea that a private individual, no matter how wealthy is able to literally exact a toll on society is ridiculous.
Key recent articles on how the US government is dependent on Elon Musk; how Ukraine depends on Starlink for communications, and how Elon is talking DIRECTLY AND IN PERSON to Putin, while watching Ukrainian troop movements live by monitoring Starlink usage.
You're frankly spreading nonsense...Starlink remained active in Ukraine at all times. Musk only refused to activate it in Crimea, where it was never activated before because of sanctions [1]. After that, the U.S. military signed a formal contract and now decides whether to activate it or not.
Musk admitted to talking to Putin a few times. But you've somehow cooked up a conspiracy of him actively monitoring Ukrainian troop movements and feeding the info back to Putin...seriously?
I really struggle to understand the mindset of people like Manuel. He was already obscenely rich, to the level where gaining additional resources must have been useless to him. He had surely already discharged any responsibility he might have to provide for his future descendants.
What did he gain by attempting to protect his investment in this way? He made the world a bit worse, and in doing so gained... absolutely nothing of any practical utility. Why bother?
> He was already obscenely rich, to the level where gaining additional resources must have been useless to him.
You could have said the same thing when he was worth $50 million instead of a billionaire. For people like that, the mindset is endless growth at all costs...that's why they still turn up to work despite having money to live like kings for multiple lifetimes.
$50 million is enough for you and maybe a few descendants to live comfortably for the rest of your lives, but certainly not an amount of money where you'll be able to do anything you want for perpetuity.
You probably won't even be able to buy a superyacht comfortably, and a megayacht is absolutely out of your reach. For that you need to be a billionaire
I’m not being hyperbolic here, in my experience with the super rich there area few common things:
1. They don’t have to do anything they don’t want to so generally have a relative lack of empathy
2. just a few notches above average intelligence but are rarely “genius”
3. They live in mental/emotional bubbles and almost never spend time with “regular” people doing things like shopping, cooking, sitting in traffic or using the infrastructure that unwashed use
That means they can think far enough in the future about “macro“ trends (which don’t really exist), while also fucking over everybody in the process because they don’t have to even experience any of the “externalities” that their actions take.
They see themselves as kings and better educated, more traveled, more cosmopolitan etc… so it’s purely ego
Imagine you walking alone in a beach eating chips. You wouldn't just throw the empty bag into the beach, would you? Even though nobody sees you, the sea is vast, and the chance that throwing it or not would make any difference to any living human is close to zero. It's a matter of principle.
I believe it's the same to people like Moroun. They didn't get rich by passing up opportunities to invest, and the very thought of leaving an asset to slide away, when it could still generate more profit, is offensive to people like them. Whether they actually need the profit is beside the point. It's a matter of principle.
Note that the new bridge is a Public-Private Partnership (P3) job. It's basically owned by the private companies that are building the bridge for a number of years and the toll revenue goes to them. After the set amount of years, it is transferred back to the government.
The delivery and operation is P3, but the ownership remains firmly public. It will belong to the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority which is a Canadian Crown corporation controlled by Parliament. The consortium will get funding from the tolls, but that is specifically for running the operations and maintenance.
A bridge that is operated and maintained by a private party for 30+ years and whose tolls also go to that private party is, for all intents and purposes, owned by that private party for those 3+ decades. WDBA's ownership and oversight is a legal fiction - they have no way to displace the private company without compensating them absent gross mismanagement by the private company, and even that would be stalled in court.
30 years on a design lifespan of 100+ years. If it were a 99 year lease on like the disaster that is the 407 I'd agree with you, but in this case the contract is well short of lifespan.
Looking at the wiki, looks like the government failed to start a bridge or tunnel for over 100 years
so is it wrong that an individual risked millions of his own money for a "public service" ?
> ... construction of a tunnel under the river ... Construction started in 1871 and continued until ventilating equipment failed the next year; work was soon abandoned
> so is it wrong that an individual risked millions of his own money for a "public service" ?
No, nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when that person tries to stop any "competition" (e.g. a new bridge). Infrastructure like roads and bridges aren't "just" a business, they're needed for basic economics and trade to function. "We invested in this bridge a 100 years ago so now no one can build a new bridge in the general area until the end of times" is nothing short of delusional. When people complain about "capitalism" what they usually mean isn't the basic concept, but this kind of hyper-narcissistic money-grabbing wankery.
its kind of the government's fault for having many ways it can be "corrupted" or that politics are inefficient and too slow to move (having a new bridge approved and built)
The new feodalism. We let space,transport housing, land and more in the hands of the lords. And they are building their bunkers and moats and private armies.
The Canadian government is paying for it in the sense that they're advancing the US federal government and Michigan the money that will be collected from tolls for using the new bridge. Canada will be paid back, as everyone agreed in the first place. Whatever I think of Moroun, he had very little to do with the necessity of doing that when this bridge was being proposed and planned in the mid 2010s, as Michigan had serious budget problems from the 2008 Great Recession.
I've never seen a stronger case for ensuring public ownership of key infrastructure in all cases, otherwise you can end up in a situation where two giant economies are held hostage by one person.
This doesn’t make sense to me. Presumably some entity more specific than the “public” would be responsible for such a work. It would still require a toll in order to exist in a revenue positive way. It would need to be revenue positive in order to build a future replacement. What difference does it make if the entity is controlled by something called an “agency” or by a “company?”
Are the various entities chartered by government somehow immune to turf battles and protection of proprietary interests?
In case you aren't a hockey fan - naming the bridge after Gordie Howe is perfect. Besides being a great player with nickname "Mr Hockey" he was born in Canada but played most of his career just over the bridge in Detroit. And he was strong like bridge.
I live on the other side of the river in Windsor. I came here to say exactly that.
I don't know how it is in Detroit but on this side Manuel Moroun is (was) reviled because he bought up a lot of residential property near the bridge, presumably for planned expansions (I don't know the details) which never happened so all of those houses are just boarded up and rotting. Crime and decay in that area is very high and this is surrounding a major port of entry into Canada. Not only is it so wasteful and destructive, but it's also not a great way to welcome people to our country.
From what I gather, Manuel was kind of a "fuck you I'll do what I want" personality and never really wanted to work with municipalities to find mutually beneficial solutions.
So the planned replacement has been in the works for quite a long time and is planned to complete and open soon.
Why is this a problem if other sectors, of great importance to society, can be privately own too? Something like >99% of all food consumed daily in the US is privately owned and sold.
Edit: to the downvoters, I'm legitimately confused about why government control is generally seen as bad in the US, and why this case should be an exception.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordie_Howe_International_Br...
The owner tied to stop another bridge being built. "First proposed in the early 2000s, the project was met with prominent opposition by Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel "Matty" Moroun, who believed competition from a publicly owned bridge would reduce his revenue.". Private owner wants to maximize their income even if it means worse service for the public.
It is an issue in other sectors. Private healthcare, infrastructure ownership, education and so on all have negative societal effects. They also increase the gap between poor and rich and there are feedback effects involved that work across generations.
It's an issue everywhere. Private property creates an incentive for people to weaponize democracy for their own zero-sum/negative-sum gain. For example, farming subsidies. That doesn't mean private property should be illegal. You need some private property for prosperity. It means the democratic system needs to be very carefully designed to minimize this corrupting influence.
It is a problem in other sectors. I don't know about your education level US history, but in highschool (ages 13-17) people are generally taught that private ownership of crucial infrastructure such as oil and railroads ended up having such negative effects that it was actually good the government stepped in and broke them up. It is also why the government mandated several regulations in things like food safety and telephone services.
For the region it is 99% of the traffic, nobody will drive for half a day to avoid the bridge. But when the alternative opens (and it is not a toll bridge) you can expect traffic on the privately owned bridge to drop like a stone and likely it will eventually become public property.
They are if they are the result of an artificial monopoly and there is an alternative on the drawing board with better rates. In general infrastructure should be free to use, toll is friction on commerce and development.
I agree with you. The bridge didn’t exist and a private company saw a need, so they built it. Clearly the private company was right considering the volume of trade that moves over it.
Government planners have their own priorities, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Waiting for central planners to make decisions as the ONLY way is always bad.
That was fine. What wasn't fine is then to try to manipulate both the American and the Canadian government to stop building additional bridges. And it almost worked.
On one hand I want to be outraged, but on the other I realize that corporate lobbying does this every day in other industries to try to lock out potential competitors and protect their territory.
It also happens the other way (but less attention is paid to it) - government bureaucrats will throw roadblocks ahead of attempts to build companies that they feel threaten their jobs. It's usually low-key and less obvious.
You can blame the public, as you always can do in a democracy, but the reality is that there's only a limited amount of attention and outrage available, so if people "don't care" about something, it's easy enough to postpone it indefinitely. Usually some sort of disaster eventually brings it to the forefront and then the issues are solved.
Many major infrastructure projects are this way - it's held up in court and other areas for decades, until a nearby bridge collapses, and then suddenly it's greenlit and moves forward.
Why does it being standard prevent you from being outraged? On the contrary, it should make you more furious that it’s normalised.
Plenty of bad things used to be standard: slavery¹, doctors not washing hands between handling cadavers and assisting in births², radioactive children’s toys³, throwing feces out the window⁴. As a society we should aim to discontinue or change those standards to something better, but we can’t do it if we shrug our shoulders because something is already commonplace. That only makes the situation worse, as the industries which take advantage of that complacency and lack of information continue to thrive.
Whether something is 'standard' or not has no bearing on whether it is ethical, productive, makes economic sense and in general improves society or not.
That seems like a problem with the governments, not the private company.
If I ask the government for something unreasonable and they give it to me, you should blame the government and not me. I'm within my rights to ask for whatever I want.
Food distribution is an actual market with competition. A bridge over a river is a natural monopoly that Moroun abused like crazy to his personal enrichment.
Canadian, not American and we tend to have a much more government-friendly position. I view public ownership of natural monopolies as vitally important. Then private enterprise can fairly compete in a reasonably regulated way to deliver services via that publicly owned infrastructure (like food distribution). When private entities own the infrastructure they can hold the entire society hostage, which was exactly what happened with the Ambassador Bridge.
This makes me laugh. Canada is the most anti competition, everything is a monopoly country in the world. That is why food prices and telecom bills are so high. The govt owns nothing. This is another major failure of Canada.
Exactly this. People on the right in Canada like to blame all this on "socialism", but it's really the opposite. The state in Canada has always been captured by private interests, for the purpose of enforcing monopolies. Sometimes justified by nationalism (protectionism relative to the massive US economy next door), sometimes justified by expediency, but almost always working in some private sector interest at the expense of the public's.
In the west it's the oil & gas sector (or forestry), in Central Canada its banking, service, and manufacturing.
The reality is we have very little "socialism" in Canada, and a whole lot of corporatism which has worn a liberal facade for its own survival. It dates back to colonial times, we just replaced the British colonial parasites with our own local ones.
This bridge is far from a natural monopoly, as the border is considerably long. The justice system however, which allowed the bridge owner to maintain his unnatural monopoly, is publicly owned.
You could remove them all, and punish them all severely, but without change to the system which they were the most successful at working, they will all be replaced by indistinguishable figures working the same systems in the same ways.
So what? I mean... after a few dozen people are sent to prison for a few years, there should be at least a few people willing to say 'no' to the lobbyists.
So what? I mean... after a few dozen people are sent to prison for a few years, there should be at least a few people willing to say 'no' to [stealing/drugs/speeding/fraud/murder/etc.]
So long enough to fit hundreds of bridges. And also a few miles to the north there is the St Clair river which is even longer and less populated and already has a bridge.
What do commuters have to do with this? One bridge is plenty for them considering Windsor has a population of like 200k. And the toll over this bridge is only like 6 bucks which would be the same as a government bridge. This is an international trade issue.
City borders are often much smaller than city population areas. Population of the metropolitan areas on both sides of the Detroit River is over 5 million people.
Reading [1] which talks of frequent delays, it sounds inconvenient. It isn't really "efficient for an international border" compared to the Schengen area in the EU, or India-Nepal, Russia-Belarus, UK-Ireland etc. At those, there are no checks at all; so no need to stop.
You say that we tend to have a more government friendly position, but if you look at the actual management of e.g. toll roads in Ontario vs the US it's entirely the opposite. Canada is riddled with private-public partnerships that have led to private monopolies enriching themself off the public dime, starting in the Mulroney era and it's never let up since.
The toll system on the New York interstates is a dream compared to what we have here on things like the 407.
Even our much lauded "socialist" single payer healthcare system actually consists mostly of many private entities (doctors) billing the government. Public pays, private profits -- just has the advantage (vs the US) of cutting out the parasitical insurance companies in-between.
Telco sector (split into a 3 parasites, mainly), wine/beer/liquor (special distribution and retail privileges just for Andrew Peller and Vincorp in Ontario, no inter-provincial trade, monopoly private Beer Stores), the list goes on. And we're getting new ones, e.g. Shoppers Drug Mart exclusive contract for COVID vaccine deliveries. Moving Service Ontario facilities into Staples stores. Likely based on whoever attended Doug Ford's daughter's Stag & Doe, etc.
Been that way since the Hudson's Bay Company. The most "successful" way to do business in Canada is via regulatory capture.
This case shouldn't be an exception..., it should never have been a private bridge in the first place, along with 100s of other things that corporations have taken private control of.
A lot of lobbying is done to get people to believe the government is bad at everything and that corporate rent seeking should be the defacto way a country is run. And lots of people dying from lack of affordable health care believe it.
They didn't take control of it, they raised the money and built it because the government didn't want to fund it.
> However neither Ontario nor Michigan wanted to finance a river crossing. Michigan automakers subsequently decided to take the initiative to connect the Midwest to central Canada. After they created a bridge company, the project got into trouble when a Toronto financier hired to sell its securities instead embezzled the money and ran off, before ultimately committing suicide in a prison cell after conviction for murdering a drugstore clerk. The bridge boosters turned to New Yorker Joseph A. Bower, a businessman who specialized in rescuing mismanaged companies. Bower succeeded in raising the necessary initial $12 million. "The only way things can be done today, is by private business," said Henry Ford, who backed the project.[15] The bridge was constructed with investment from Detroit business people incorporated as the Detroit International Bridge Corporation.
I think it's the international and infrastructure aspect that is heightening reactions?
For example seaports (or at least LA and NYC) are broadly operated by government (or government owned) organizations. The St Lawrence seaway is operated by government or government owned organizations. US airports are generally operated by publicly owned organizations.
Commenting on your edit, the founding principle of the United States is that government (particularly Federal) is untrustworthy and should be as small and as hamstrung as possible.
Americans lost the battle for small government, but not the distrust.
That is an extremely simplified view of the founding principles of the US. The federalists were a pretty well known contingent of the founding fathers as well.
Of course, it's two sentences on HN where I'm as likely to be down voted to oblivion as anything else...
This said, the Federalists also argued that a Bill of Rights wouldn't be necessary because good governments don't infringe the rights of the people and nothing in the Constitution allowed them to.
Turns out they were wildly optimistic, like every project/ideology that relies on a unbounded set of humans to be rational, forward-thinking, altruistic, unselfish, etc. for more than a day or three for success.
But that's just, like, your opinion man. It's not actually one of the founding principles of the country. Even when they were talking about limiting the powers of the federal government explicitly, as in Federalist 45, they were talking about devolving it out to the states. The Bill of Rights didn't even apply to the states for almost 100 years after Madison.
Second paragraph of "Common Sense" (1775): "... Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil;". Second article of the Articles of Confederation (1777):
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
Those powers delegated were foreign diplomacy and declaration of war, minting of coinage, and resolving disputes among/between the states. Pretty "small government" stuff. In fact, the entire purpose of the Constitution (pushed by the Federalists, opposed by the Anti-Federalists, including many of the founding fathers) was to centralize power and remove it from the states. That's why the second article of the Articles of Confederation (where Article I is the name of the country) guarantee sovereignty of the states, but a similar guarantee is not seen in the Constitution until the 10th amendment (all of which amendments were opposed by the Federalists).
The Federalists papers are just the opinions of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay (which is not to diminish them entirely, only to apply needed perspective). The powers were almost entirely with the states at that time, so the papers are mostly convincing the states to give that power up. It was the first step away from the small federal government of the founders.
First: note that the Articles of Confederation devolve all the powers of the governments to the States. It doesn't repudiate those powers, it just keeps the out of the federal government.
Second: the Constitution is a repudiation of the Articles of Confederation. It doesn't incorporate the principles of the Articles even implicitly.
So the best case for your argument is that the federal government is untrustworthy, but the governments of the several States are not. But you don't even get to that best case, because your evidence is refuted by our controlling founding document.
I think the problem isn’t private ownership nor the tolls; we have lots of private infrastructure including roads and rail, and historically we also had roads, bridges, barges, etc. The problem is the company lobbying against competition (a parallel bridge).
I think the american anti-government stance comes partly from the fact that most citizens are not represented by the government, and their taxes are not used in a way that benefits them. Effectively, it's more of a feudal system than a "democracy", where majority of the taxes go to fund a standing army and to (corporate) lords to do with as they please.
"In July 2020, Matty Moroun died aged 93, with his family maintaining their ownership of the Ambassador Bridge. In 2022, the Detroit Free Press reported that Moroun's family were preparing a case for damages, following the acquisition of properties by eminent domain for bridge construction"
This bridge is infuriating because you cannot walk across it. It was even worse during COVID when the tunnel bus shut down, which is the only way to cross the border without a private vehicle. There is a rail tunnel too, but only for freight of course. Windsor/Detroit is a great example of exactly what not to do if you want to build a walkable city.
Whats the problem? The government of canada has made it abundantly clear they can seize any bank account at will for no legal reasons whatsoever. I am sure whoever "owns the bridge" likes his bank account and will bent to whatever shaft is aiming at his bootyhole
Canada likes SPOF bridges. There's a single bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipigon_River_Bridge - that is the only paved land path between the eastern and western parts of Canada. When that bridge is out, people have to drive through the United States to get from Montreal to Vancouver.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadhttps://www.gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com/en
I've never seen a stronger case for ensuring public ownership of key infrastructure in all cases, otherwise you can end up in a situation where two giant economies are held hostage by one person. It's also a cautionary tale on the dangers of special interests and lobbying being able to stifle action so clearly in the public interest.
"Manuel Moroun, owner of the Ambassador Bridge until his death in 2020, spoke out against this proposal. He sued the governments of Canada and Michigan to stop its construction, and released a proposal to build a second span of the Ambassador Bridge (which he would own) instead.[38] Critics suggest that Moroun's opposition was fueled by the prospect of lost profits from duty-free gasoline sales, which are exempt from about 60 cents per gallon in taxes even though the pump price to consumers is only a few cents lower.[11] On May 5, 2011, a judge dismissed the case, citing a lack of reasoning for it to proceed.[39] Moroun and his Detroit International Bridge Company contended that the new bridge would affect its proposal for a second span which would be built next to the Ambassador Bridge. "
The idea that a private individual, no matter how wealthy is able to literally exact a toll on society is ridiculous. In Europe we also still have a few toll bridges and tunnels, as well as many toll roads (for instance: in Poland and France). Most of these, but not all, are in the hands of various governments. I can't wait until this particular form of highway robbery disappears. Oh, and Germany re-enacted something similar but only for tourists. They first got slapped down in court then reduced the German road tax to be able to apply the tax on 'everybody' but in practice that means that it is just a levy on foreign traffic.
But we're "so rich" that a few billionaire parasites doesn't amount to much, and so we let the legal fiction continue.
It's owned by Spanish consortium, and was sold by a previous conservative gov't for a fraction of what it's made in profit, since.
Ontario don't care, it seems. Canadians just bend over and take it.
Around here (Flamborough, outside of Hamilton/Burlington) there's a whole layer of people who rant and rant and rant about being amalgamated into Hamilton.
Except those same people who rant about it, are almost all conservative voters. And it was the conservatives under Harris who forced that amalgamation.
It boggles the mind, the short memory people have.
In the early/mid-90s recessionary period when this was inked, the justification was excessively high debts incurred by the previous provincial gov't. Austerity was the name of the game, and decisions like these were seen as "wise fiscal management." Those debts now look minor compared to the present, and we'd have been in much better fiscal situation keeping the toll road public and letting that money flow back.
They sold a 75 year contract to metered spaces for 1.5 billion dollars in 2008. Currently there have been 2 billion in revenue, and there are 60 years remaining on the contract...
So about 1 billion USD annual revenue per year. 99 year lease.
The government of the time sold the lease rights for $3.1 billion CAD. So about $5 billion in today's dollars, about $3.7B USD.
>> TORONTO, Feb. 16, 2023 /CNW/ - 407 International Inc. (the "Company") announced today revenues of $1,327.2 million for 2022, compared to $1,023.1 million for 2021. The Company reported net income of $435.3 million for 2022, compared to a net income of $212.4 million for 2021. Earnings before interest and other, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"1) totalled $1,138.8 million for 2022 compared to $859.0 million for 2021.
Per https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculat..., $3.1 billion in 1999 is about $5.26 billion today. So, in 2022 the consortium had an income of about 8.5% of what they paid. Not nearly as good as your numbers imply. The consortium is making back what they paid every 10-15 years, so over a 99 year lease they'll make something like a 600%-700% return on their investment. That's not great. And they shoulder the risk of collapsing toll revenue.
It's actually majority owned by CPP( Canadian Pension Plan).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_407#:~:text=As...
> Indirectly owned subsidiaries of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board 50.01% Cintra Global S.E., a subsidiary of Spanish firm Ferrovial S.A. 43.23%
Cintra Global S.E., a subsidiary of Spanish firm Ferrovial S.A. 43.23%[36][37]
SNC Lavalin 6.76%[36]
But the original lease sale was far more skewed:
"The Ontario corporation, known as 407 International Inc., was initially owned by the Spanish multinational Ferrovial through their subsidiary Cintra Infraestructuras (61.3%), the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin (22.6%) as well as CDP Capital (16.1%)"
It doesn't usually make sense to buy something in order to break even.
Duh.
I question whether you were, though.
Sounds like yall should get a beer and hash it out.
Also, from boots on the ground in North Texas, parts of NTTA-proposed systems were won by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte in the early 2000s. Parts have been built, but it didn't complete by its 2015 target date. https://journalrecord.com/2004/12/spanish-firm-to-build-6-bi...
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cintra_Infraestructuras
https://www.ntta.org/whatwedo/fin_invest_info/Documents/2022...
it's a huge scandal and yet very hard to solve because of the same dynamics of the bridge above: special interests, and hideous lobbying
THe public should know the names and faces of the people involved and they should associate negative and petty emotions with them.
Most Canadians hve no clue about this bridge or the people like Moroun and his lawyers who are involved. These should be names that people spit on the ground when heard, there should be political cartoons and memes that satirize their faces everywhere. There should be boycotts against his businesses and the businesses of his lawyers and accountants.
Uhm, what?
Toll roads are about as fair as it gets. The alternative is spreading the cost over all (national) drivers.
I hate toll roads too when I encounter them, but making non-users pick up the tab for users is the actual highway robbery.
So in the result, only those who use (or intend to use) the toll road pay, but without the toll booths that slow everything down. The price also happens to be more reasonable.
Should the owner of a toll road have to pay money back to subsidize the costs of the roads which give access to their toll road? Vehicles need to be able to get on/off the road before tolls can be collected.
Or, if we apply your logic, then it is impossible for people to live in rural areas, because the cost of the roads is more than the local economy can bear.
Road networks are an infrastructure investment. Since they are networks, the value comes from the entire network. What is the value of a road with no on or off ramps?
Because the value is so diffisive over both space and time, the only effective way to account for and recoup the cost is through a mechanism that can take a share of the economic growth resulting from the network.
i.e. taxes.
In some countries, the majority of motorways are toll roads: https://about-france.com/geo/motorways.htm
How else do you think that individuals are able to become billionaires? They're not ten thousand times smarter or stronger or harder-working than the rest of us. Bezos is worth $180B because he's paying his warehouse drones $13.60 an hour while they run from shelf to shelf and pee in bottles, contributing value to society far in excess of the pay they're receiving. The difference is pocketed by Jeff.
Key recent articles on how the US government is dependent on Elon Musk; how Ukraine depends on Starlink for communications, and how Elon is talking DIRECTLY AND IN PERSON to Putin, while watching Ukrainian troop movements live by monitoring Starlink usage.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-sha...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-pu...
Elon Musk is “wired for war.” At least, that’s what Musk has told Walter Isaacson, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/elon-...
Musk admitted to talking to Putin a few times. But you've somehow cooked up a conspiracy of him actively monitoring Ukrainian troop movements and feeding the info back to Putin...seriously?
1- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66752264
What did he gain by attempting to protect his investment in this way? He made the world a bit worse, and in doing so gained... absolutely nothing of any practical utility. Why bother?
You could have said the same thing when he was worth $50 million instead of a billionaire. For people like that, the mindset is endless growth at all costs...that's why they still turn up to work despite having money to live like kings for multiple lifetimes.
You probably won't even be able to buy a superyacht comfortably, and a megayacht is absolutely out of your reach. For that you need to be a billionaire
1. They don’t have to do anything they don’t want to so generally have a relative lack of empathy
2. just a few notches above average intelligence but are rarely “genius”
3. They live in mental/emotional bubbles and almost never spend time with “regular” people doing things like shopping, cooking, sitting in traffic or using the infrastructure that unwashed use
That means they can think far enough in the future about “macro“ trends (which don’t really exist), while also fucking over everybody in the process because they don’t have to even experience any of the “externalities” that their actions take.
They see themselves as kings and better educated, more traveled, more cosmopolitan etc… so it’s purely ego
I believe it's the same to people like Moroun. They didn't get rich by passing up opportunities to invest, and the very thought of leaving an asset to slide away, when it could still generate more profit, is offensive to people like them. Whether they actually need the profit is beside the point. It's a matter of principle.
“You know," she giggles, "I think I would.”
“Would you sleep with me for 50 dollars?"
"Really, what kind of a woman do think I am?"
“We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.”
so is it wrong that an individual risked millions of his own money for a "public service" ?
> ... construction of a tunnel under the river ... Construction started in 1871 and continued until ventilating equipment failed the next year; work was soon abandoned
No, nothing wrong with that.
The problem is when that person tries to stop any "competition" (e.g. a new bridge). Infrastructure like roads and bridges aren't "just" a business, they're needed for basic economics and trade to function. "We invested in this bridge a 100 years ago so now no one can build a new bridge in the general area until the end of times" is nothing short of delusional. When people complain about "capitalism" what they usually mean isn't the basic concept, but this kind of hyper-narcissistic money-grabbing wankery.
its kind of the government's fault for having many ways it can be "corrupted" or that politics are inefficient and too slow to move (having a new bridge approved and built)
Canada managed to go through with it
This doesn’t make sense to me. Presumably some entity more specific than the “public” would be responsible for such a work. It would still require a toll in order to exist in a revenue positive way. It would need to be revenue positive in order to build a future replacement. What difference does it make if the entity is controlled by something called an “agency” or by a “company?”
Are the various entities chartered by government somehow immune to turf battles and protection of proprietary interests?
Should Canada pay for more of a publicly owned bridge than the US since the trade traversing the bridge represents more of that country’s total trade?
I don't know how it is in Detroit but on this side Manuel Moroun is (was) reviled because he bought up a lot of residential property near the bridge, presumably for planned expansions (I don't know the details) which never happened so all of those houses are just boarded up and rotting. Crime and decay in that area is very high and this is surrounding a major port of entry into Canada. Not only is it so wasteful and destructive, but it's also not a great way to welcome people to our country.
From what I gather, Manuel was kind of a "fuck you I'll do what I want" personality and never really wanted to work with municipalities to find mutually beneficial solutions.
So the planned replacement has been in the works for quite a long time and is planned to complete and open soon.
Edit: to the downvoters, I'm legitimately confused about why government control is generally seen as bad in the US, and why this case should be an exception.
Where are you taking this analogy?
Government planners have their own priorities, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Waiting for central planners to make decisions as the ONLY way is always bad.
I don’t like it, but it’s pretty standard.
You can blame the public, as you always can do in a democracy, but the reality is that there's only a limited amount of attention and outrage available, so if people "don't care" about something, it's easy enough to postpone it indefinitely. Usually some sort of disaster eventually brings it to the forefront and then the issues are solved.
Many major infrastructure projects are this way - it's held up in court and other areas for decades, until a nearby bridge collapses, and then suddenly it's greenlit and moves forward.
Plenty of bad things used to be standard: slavery¹, doctors not washing hands between handling cadavers and assisting in births², radioactive children’s toys³, throwing feces out the window⁴. As a society we should aim to discontinue or change those standards to something better, but we can’t do it if we shrug our shoulders because something is already commonplace. That only makes the situation worse, as the industries which take advantage of that complacency and lack of information continue to thrive.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
³ https://www.energy.gov/lm/articles/holiday-toy-shopping-duri...
³ Alright, not that one: https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/did-people-in-the-m...
I'm just so used to it at this point that this particular instance doesn't seem like a big deal compared to everything else.
These are all big deals and we should collectively and individually never allow ourselves to be pushed into apathy because it has become normalized.
Not even on the radar for me.
Whether something is 'standard' or not has no bearing on whether it is ethical, productive, makes economic sense and in general improves society or not.
If I ask the government for something unreasonable and they give it to me, you should blame the government and not me. I'm within my rights to ask for whatever I want.
Canadian, not American and we tend to have a much more government-friendly position. I view public ownership of natural monopolies as vitally important. Then private enterprise can fairly compete in a reasonably regulated way to deliver services via that publicly owned infrastructure (like food distribution). When private entities own the infrastructure they can hold the entire society hostage, which was exactly what happened with the Ambassador Bridge.
In the west it's the oil & gas sector (or forestry), in Central Canada its banking, service, and manufacturing.
The reality is we have very little "socialism" in Canada, and a whole lot of corporatism which has worn a liberal facade for its own survival. It dates back to colonial times, we just replaced the British colonial parasites with our own local ones.
If we had to decide who's worse, i give my vote (of being the worst) to the politicians.
People still commit all those crimes you say? Oh.
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_River is a total of 24 miles long, and both sides have been populated since at least 11,000 years ago. Good luck.
> And also a few miles to the north
Tell me you don't live here without saying it. What's an added 3 hours of commute one way? No big deal. Employers will be pleased.
City borders are often much smaller than city population areas. Population of the metropolitan areas on both sides of the Detroit River is over 5 million people.
Reading [1] which talks of frequent delays, it sounds inconvenient. It isn't really "efficient for an international border" compared to the Schengen area in the EU, or India-Nepal, Russia-Belarus, UK-Ireland etc. At those, there are no checks at all; so no need to stop.
[1] https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Detroit#From_Canada
In short, yes.
The toll system on the New York interstates is a dream compared to what we have here on things like the 407.
Even our much lauded "socialist" single payer healthcare system actually consists mostly of many private entities (doctors) billing the government. Public pays, private profits -- just has the advantage (vs the US) of cutting out the parasitical insurance companies in-between.
Telco sector (split into a 3 parasites, mainly), wine/beer/liquor (special distribution and retail privileges just for Andrew Peller and Vincorp in Ontario, no inter-provincial trade, monopoly private Beer Stores), the list goes on. And we're getting new ones, e.g. Shoppers Drug Mart exclusive contract for COVID vaccine deliveries. Moving Service Ontario facilities into Staples stores. Likely based on whoever attended Doug Ford's daughter's Stag & Doe, etc.
Been that way since the Hudson's Bay Company. The most "successful" way to do business in Canada is via regulatory capture.
A lot of lobbying is done to get people to believe the government is bad at everything and that corporate rent seeking should be the defacto way a country is run. And lots of people dying from lack of affordable health care believe it.
> However neither Ontario nor Michigan wanted to finance a river crossing. Michigan automakers subsequently decided to take the initiative to connect the Midwest to central Canada. After they created a bridge company, the project got into trouble when a Toronto financier hired to sell its securities instead embezzled the money and ran off, before ultimately committing suicide in a prison cell after conviction for murdering a drugstore clerk. The bridge boosters turned to New Yorker Joseph A. Bower, a businessman who specialized in rescuing mismanaged companies. Bower succeeded in raising the necessary initial $12 million. "The only way things can be done today, is by private business," said Henry Ford, who backed the project.[15] The bridge was constructed with investment from Detroit business people incorporated as the Detroit International Bridge Corporation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassador_Bridge
For example seaports (or at least LA and NYC) are broadly operated by government (or government owned) organizations. The St Lawrence seaway is operated by government or government owned organizations. US airports are generally operated by publicly owned organizations.
Americans lost the battle for small government, but not the distrust.
This said, the Federalists also argued that a Bill of Rights wouldn't be necessary because good governments don't infringe the rights of the people and nothing in the Constitution allowed them to.
Turns out they were wildly optimistic, like every project/ideology that relies on a unbounded set of humans to be rational, forward-thinking, altruistic, unselfish, etc. for more than a day or three for success.
The Federalists papers are just the opinions of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay (which is not to diminish them entirely, only to apply needed perspective). The powers were almost entirely with the states at that time, so the papers are mostly convincing the states to give that power up. It was the first step away from the small federal government of the founders.
First: note that the Articles of Confederation devolve all the powers of the governments to the States. It doesn't repudiate those powers, it just keeps the out of the federal government.
Second: the Constitution is a repudiation of the Articles of Confederation. It doesn't incorporate the principles of the Articles even implicitly.
So the best case for your argument is that the federal government is untrustworthy, but the governments of the several States are not. But you don't even get to that best case, because your evidence is refuted by our controlling founding document.
Maybe they shouldn't be.
> it was owned by Grosse Pointe billionaire Manuel Moroun, until his death in July 2020
Doesn't talk about estate / current ownership (or i missed that).
"In July 2020, Matty Moroun died aged 93, with his family maintaining their ownership of the Ambassador Bridge. In 2022, the Detroit Free Press reported that Moroun's family were preparing a case for damages, following the acquisition of properties by eminent domain for bridge construction"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordie_Howe_International_Br...
We did get to see a couple years ago what happens when the bridge is closed by protests:
day 1: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ambassador-bridge-pro...
day 2: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ambassador-bridge-pro...
day 4: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ambassador-bridge-blo...
recap after 6 days estimating cost: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ambassador-bridge-pro...
retro 1 year later: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ambassador-bridge-blo...
Who knows if it'll actually happen, but it's good to see that someone actually thinking about it for once.