Comments on: “Inefficient” ICE doing roadwork is “absurd” idea: Otto Guevara https://insidecostarica.com/2015/06/04/inefficient-ice-roadwork-absurd-idea-otto-guevara/ Costa Rica's Leading English Language News Source Tue, 28 Oct 2025 04:55:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.2 By: Derryl Hermanutzhttps://insidecostarica.com/2015/06/04/inefficient-ice-roadwork-absurd-idea-otto-guevara/#comment-11307 Derryl Hermanutz Thu, 04 Jun 2015 22:16:00 +0000 http://insidecostarica.com/?p=18006#comment-11307 Guevara seems to believe on pure faith that “the market” will always produce better results than a publicly owned enterprise like ICE. But name one large privately built infrastructure project that has not gone over budget, and taxpayers have ponied up an additional 20, 50, 100% over the “quoted” cost. The private sector is able to earn profits on projects that the government runs at a loss, only because as taxpayers we pay for all the “market externalities” like cost overruns and worker education and social subsides: costs that are not paid by the private operator. As fee-based infrastructure users (e.g. tolls on Ruta 27) we pay the project’s capital and operating costs and the owner’s profits; and as taxpayers we pay for all the externalities. A few months ago the “private” Ruta 27 operator asked the government for a 50% increase in its contracted road maintenance tolls — or government aid — due to the “unforeseen” high costs of maintaining the road. It is unthinkable that the operator could be forced to perform the contract and lose his own money for underbidding the job, because in “the free market” governments bail out businesses to guarantee private profits, right?

]]> By: Ken Morrishttps://insidecostarica.com/2015/06/04/inefficient-ice-roadwork-absurd-idea-otto-guevara/#comment-11302 Ken Morris Thu, 04 Jun 2015 19:21:00 +0000 http://insidecostarica.com/?p=18006#comment-11302 Since I’m no fan of ICE either, it is tempting to agree with Guevara. However, I don’t.

What Guevara overlooks is that road building and maintenance in CR is already grossly inefficient and riddled with cost overruns, not to mention corruption. He also overlooks the reality that even his libertarian political philosophy understands that public works projects like roads must be undertaken by government.

ICE may not be the right agency to assume responsibility, but it is probably no worse than the alternatives, and Solís does have a point about it having a good background of expertise to draw from.

It’s good that Solís is trying to reconfigure all this, and it would be good if Guevara got on board to help with the reconfiguration rather than simply badmouthed ICE.

In short, Guevara should either proposed a better solution or shut up.

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