Marriages are fucking contracts.
Actually, in most states a fucking contract can get you jailed.
From your criticism of local standards I can't tell if you're supporting national/international standards or individual standards, so I'll point out the flaws in both. In the sense of a standard meaning a criterion the same for everyone, "individual standard" is an oxymoron. National education standards ends up with the censorship of history so common in totalitarian governments.
The standards of education need to be appropriate for the community. It's pointless to teach Eskimos to surf or Hawaiians to build igloos. At the other extreme, not every parent is capable of defining educational goals for their children; illiterates can't be allowed to prevent their children from reading.
The history of cable laying must vary by community, because where I live it was paid for by the cable company.
Railroads built a lot of bridges.
Do you pay to drive from one end of a WalMart parking lot to the other? It's private. Why aren't there any tolls?
Neighborhoods sometimes have private roads, and don't charge tolls. The residents pay for road upkeep through a property owner's association. Private roads through a business district could be maintained the same way, either through contracting work on their road or paying a road company in possession of the road a fee for its use. The net effect would be the same as paying for road maintenance through taxes, with the additional advantage that road owners don't have to go begging to the government to fix that pothole that's been growing for five months.
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira