It is about how he used to believe his world was the product of a free market, and how he slowly realised that this was not the case - that market forces are ir

It is about how he used to believe his world was the product of a free market, and how he slowly realised that this was not the case - that market forces are irrelevant in the world of civil engineering, as public investment does not typically even involve doing the simplest possible analyses of long-term costs and revenue. From "idealogue", pinning his entire perspective on a limited set of theoretical principles, to someone who recognises the messy and broken reality that doesn't actually fit into the theoretical mold. >At this point in my life, I was a self-described free-market Republican with an outspoken passion for markets and my chosen profession of civil engineering, which to me was a technical way to say “city building.” If I had been pushed to reconcile my rejection of congestion pricing with my support for the free market, I would have had no problem. I would have said something like: > Markets are about the expression of personal preference. It was clear that, since most people drove automobiles, auto-based infrastructure was the clear market preference. Since most people lived in single-family homes, they were also the clear market preference. Given those clear and obvious preferences—combined with the fact that people paid taxes and expected the government to respond to their desires—charging people more for something they already paid for was a ploy to benefit the rich. Instead of congestion pricing, the state should have been building more capacity.