CAPITAL MATTERS: “Detroit is a dramatic example, but every time you write a too-large check to a terrible utility monopoly, the same dynamic is at work. All those people standing in line at the DMV or seeing potentially productive days wasted because our airport authorities are so completely incompetent, all those millions of man-hours wasted during any given work week by the traffic in Houston or Los Angeles — every one of these represents a theft from the future. Every instance of overregulation and political favoritism that keeps capital in the hands of less-able users and away from its best use makes us all — all of us — poorer, even if it is in ways that are not always plainly visible to us. What’s the plan for Detroit? Politicians and their plans did this to Detroit — and they’ll do it to the rest of us, too, if we let them.”

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