Dear Ezra,

Thanks again for elevating the conversation about American capacity. Your work has helped bring into focus how much of our crisis stems not from a lack of vision, but from our inability to execute.

In my last letter, I shared a story about a stormwater ditch we built in my hometown—a process that could have taken ten years on paper, but was done in a day through community will and a bit of permitting jiu jitsu.

Today I want to offer another parable, this time from the pavement beneath our feet.

Let’s talk about potholes. Not as a punchline, but as a reflection of the deeper dysfunction in how we manage public infrastructure.

Right now, many cities assess street quality by sending someone to drive around and take notes through the windshield. Sometimes they rely on no data at all. Yet these are the inputs for decisions involving millions of dollars in public funds.

There’s a better way. A few years back, a venture-funded startup called RoadBotics built a simple but powerful tool. Using a smartphone camera mounted on a vehicle dashboard, they captured video and ran it through computer vision algorithms to classify pavement conditions—cracks, potholes, surface wear—on a granular, block-by-block basis. The result was a standardized, objective street condition map that public works departments could actually use to prioritize maintenance. Learn more here.

RoadBotics had real traction. Dozens of cities signed on. The tech worked. It was faster, cheaper, and more accurate than the status quo. But then something all too familiar happened: the company was acquired by Michelin and later shut down. Not because the technology failed, but because the municipal market never scaled to meet it.

And the reason for that gets to the heart of what I think your abundance thesis must confront.

Governments aren’t structurally incentivized to choose the better option. There’s no bonus for trying something new, no safety net if it doesn’t go perfectly, and often no reward even when it does. Cultural risk aversion, institutional inertia, and arcane procurement pathways all play a part. But so does something even harder to fix: the tangled knot of state and federal funding requirements that are often layered with outdated rules, complex compliance checklists, and opaque administrative processes.

Even when good technology emerges, it must navigate not only the bureaucracy but also a thriving consultant industrial complex that profits from complexity and delay. These consultants often serve as gatekeepers, translating public dollars into reports and RFPs rather than results.

What we’re left with is a game-theoretic stag hunt. A better outcome exists—cleaner data, more equitable repairs, smarter use of public funds—but it requires coordination, trust, and courage. Most cities, understandably, choose the rabbit. It’s safer.

That’s why I think you should invite Benjamin Schmidt, the former CEO of RoadBotics, onto your podcast. He has seen all of this firsthand and can speak powerfully about what it means when promising civic innovations die not from failure, but from neglect.

You can also read more in a short piece we wrote a while back: The Future of Street Maintenance Is Here.

Because if we can’t fix potholes using tools we already have, what hope do we have of building the more complex layers of abundance—housing, transit, climate infrastructure?

The road to abundance must begin with the roads themselves.

Kind regards,

Patrick

Dear reader, if this open letter resonates with you, please consider copying and sending to the Ezra Klein show staff by emailing: ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Feel free to have fun and include a personal anecdote or two with your experience with potholes!