It has been observed that physical infrastructure provides society a way to “manage chaos” by channeling people’s movements, eliminating the daily search for drinking water, facilitating the movement and delivery of food and supplies, facilitating communications, and generally structuring people’s lives so that they can be economically productive and live comfortably, even when in close quarters in cities.

Articles in the financial press report on “the infrastructure market” — from headline deals such as the regulator-induced sale of London’s Gatwick Airport to breathless projections of the sums needed to modernize infrastructure in markets from India to Indiana where public spending on roads, bridges, water supply and sanitation services has been too-long deferred in favor of flashier or more politically profitable uses of funds.

At the same time, it is generally recognized that even stimulus-bloated public budgets are unable to catch up and keep up in