But who will build the roads... in France? While French politicians debate infrastructure spending, private highways consistently outperform their state-managed counterparts in every metric that matters. The contrast hits you immediately: smooth private motorways carry you swiftly from Paris to Lyon, then dump you onto crumbling state asphalt where orange cones and half-finished repairs create endless bottlenecks. Private highway operators like Vinci Autoroutes maintain 8,000 kilometers of French motorways through direct user fees. No political interference. No budget committees deciding whether pothole repair can wait another fiscal year. When your revenue depends entirely on drivers choosing your roads, maintenance becomes urgent business rather than a bureaucratic afterthought. State highways rely on tax funding filtered through layers of political calculation. Politicians prefer ribbon cuttings for new projects over unglamorous repair work. Bureaucrats face no immediate consequences when roads deteriorate because drivers have no alternative. The incentive structure guarantees inferior outcomes. Private operators face immediate market discipline. Poor road conditions mean drivers seek alternate routes, killing revenue instantly. Customer complaints reach decision makers within hours, not election cycles. Quality maintenance protects profit margins while political highways drain budgets regardless of performance. The French model proves what free market economists have argued for decades: property rights and profit motives solve coordination problems that democratic processes cannot. When you own something, you maintain it. When everyone owns something, no one does. Private road quality reflects ownership and accountability. Public road deterioration reflects diffused responsibility and political time horizons.

POV you’re flying to Midland for the first time during the day (When you visited for your interview, you were flown in at night - with intention)

I used to teach Election Law. One of the first things you do when you get to redistricting is show that, in single member geographic districts, this kind of thing can happen without an intentional partisan gerrymander. It all depends on where the voters favoring the respective parties live. Because we know that D voters are more concentrated that GOP voters, you would not expect the composition of the legislature to match the statewide vote for Ds. In fact, you have to gerrymander - i.e, draw districts with partisan intent - to make that happen. You can argue that the GOP in WI added partisan slant - politicians tend to do that - but this type of comparison is not the proper test for a partisan gerrymander.

funniest shit i’ve ever seen