When the almighty government decrees that it needs fewer construction workers on the weekends, chaos ensues. I’ve seen highways that are almost completely closed on weekends because there are no construction workers to guide traffic, particularly when there is only one lane and vehicles must take turns. (Of course, this is not a call for the government to hire more employees but to get out of road management completely.)

It is possible that a private road owner might decide that the loss of weekend revenue is worth the savings that would result from having workers around the clock. I just don’t think it’s likely or that it would happen often. After all, building highways is a major investment and probably every effort would be made to keep customers happy (just look at grocery stores –we now are surprised when a grocery store is not open 24-7). And even if the road owner were completely incompetent, we would not be taxed to suffer the inconveniences. Thankfully, however, the market tends to not tolerate incompetence for long.

The Best of Manuel Lora