By Connor Harris, includes “Why do infrastructure costs in the U.S. run so high? Two recent examples from Texas illustrate one of the reasons. … New infrastructure projects, in Levy’s description, are large enough investments that there’s much less of a competitive market for them than there is for consumer goods. Therefore, new projects tend to generate considerable surplus in the form of public benefits or profit for private investors. But this surplus can be ‘extracted’ by various groups with either local political power or privileged access to the legal system.”