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[email protected]Rich Daley (Chicago) and Ed Rendell (Philadelphia) and Repub-
lican mayors Steve Goldsmith (Indianapolis) and Richard Rior-
dan (Los Angeles). The Reason Foundation team also played a
leading role in advising Orange County, California, on how to
emerge from bankruptcy.
My own work in transportation policy over nearly three
decades has resulted in real policy changes as well. Pioneering
studies introduced the idea of airport privatization to the United
States, following Margaret Thatcher’s privatization of the British
Airports Authority. Besides encouraging a number of cities to
consider leasing or selling their airports in the 1990s, this work
led to Congress enacting an Airport Privatization Pilot Program,
under which the shabby San Juan Puerto Rico airport has been
transformed, and other privatizations are in the works.
A 1988 Reason policy paper on privately financed solutions
for congested freeways led directly to California legislation that
authorized pilot projects, including the world’s first express
toll lanes, opened in Orange County in 1995. Today there are
41 such projects in operation around the country, and plans
have been adopted for entire networks of priced express lanes
in most of the largest and most congested metro areas. We often
worked with state transportation departments, treating them as
customers that needed some initial guidance as to what, why,
and how.
Reason Foundation’s voice-based
approach operates on two levels,
through journalism and research.
The former’s mission is to introduce
new ideas and counter bad ideas. In
the early days, there was just the print
magazine, but even then we were chal-
lenging the status quo—the public
school monopoly, second-class citizen
status for gay people, the bankruptcy
of the war on drugs, etc. Changing
minds is not easy, but over the decades
Reason has contributed meaningfully
to pro-liberty changes in the way peo-
ple think about many subjects.
The research division’s goal is also
to change the conventional wisdom
about a wide variety of public policies.
But unlike most other think tanks, our
M.O. focuses considerable effort on
getting policy changes implemented.
Doing that requires more than just pro-
ducing solid policy studies. It requires
seeking out and working with custom-
ers, mostly in the public sector, as dis-
cussed above.
In attempting to shift America’s troubled air traffic control
system out of the hands of the federal government (as 60 other
countries have already done), we helped former Michigan Gov.
John Engler, then the CEO of the Business Roundtable, create
an expert working group able to present a respectable reform
proposal to key aviation stakeholder groups. That led to find-
ing an enthusiastic government customer: the chairman of
the House Transportation Committee, Rep. Bill Shuster (R–
Pa.). Although we ended up with a large and credible coalition,
we were defeated (this time) by the politicking of status-quo
aviation groups.
Promising technologies might make certain aspects of mod-
ern government irrelevant or easily evadable, but in our world
of enduringly powerful nation-states, voice is essential and has
proven effective. Nobody ever said this would be easy. But the
fact that Reason’s work has led to meaningful changes in a host
of areas at all levels of government convinces me that the voice
approach is well worth pursuing.MAX BORDERS is author of The Social Singularity and founder of the nonprofit
Social Evolution.RO B ERT W. P OO LE J R. is direc tor of transpor tation polic y at Reason
Foundation and a former editor of Reason.REASON 43