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Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

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Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#41

Post by esseph »

vlovich123 wrote: post #27
dacops wrote: post #20

I look around and see work that needs doing all the time. Potholes, park maintenance, housing shortages, pollution. As long as we're have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done. I also see unemployment. What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs... it's a world where work is not focused on satisfying our needs but rather focused on maximizing profit. As long as we're choosing to make work about m…

Or we’ve invested far too much money in building a road network and the economic value from it either isn’t captured to sustain it OR it’s insufficient to cover costs and it’s being subsidized. Potholes being a “need” to be fixed is an interesting take when we had cobble streets and people survived fine. Pretending like capitalism is the thing that creates economic tradeoffs is incorrect and it’s just scapegoating ca…

> Potholes being a “need” to be fixed is an interesting take when we had cobble streets and people survived fine.

Nobody was going 55-75mph+ with multi-thousand pound vehicles on cobblestone streets.

Potholes lead to vehicle damage, property damage and death.

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#42

Post by david927 »

In 1961, Peter Benenson, a British lawyer, read a newspaper story about two Portuguese students who went to jail for making a toast to freedom. He wrote letters to the Portuguese government and got others to do so as well, and it got media attention, and they were freed.

That was the start of Amnesty International, which to this day, simply asks people to write a letter when they see an injustice. The spray painting potholes story has the same theme: "Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness."

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#43

Post by alexpotato »

This TED talk from a former NYC official about small changes leading to big impact on city life is great: https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_burden_how_public_spaces_ma...

EDIT: Realized I meant the video below but both are great: https://www.ted.com/talks/janette_sadik_khan_new_york_s_stre...

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#44

Post by kjs3 »

adampunk wrote: post #22
ikesau wrote: post #15

My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…

Citizens should have a say in how municipalities order work. If they're not given that say through less-disruptive means, then they can choose to harmlessly tag places where maintenance is failing. Why are we excusing civic inaction because it might cause an unexpected schedule change for road crews? Why am I supposed to be so full of concern for the ease of their schedule that I'm ok with broken streets? In short, c…

This is just a dressed up way of saying "I don't care how the road crews work or who else they might be helping, I want them working on the problem I care about". You don't know if the crews are working on bigger problems (or bigger potholes), or they're working in a neighborhood you don't drive through and thus don't care about...if they aren't patching up your annoyance right now, then screw 'em, they suck at their job.

I've gone to our municipal planning meetings for these types of things, and there is always at least one person there with this sense of entitlement. They want to talk about "excusing civic inaction" or similar just like you, but when shown "this is what the crews are working on", the retort is "yeah, but that's not the pothole on my street" (with the usually unsaid "...so why should I give a phuk about those people").

These people usually show up at other meetings to complain about having to pay taxes to pay for those repairs. But that's another little joy of local politics...

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#45

Post by radialstub »

dacops wrote: post #20

I look around and see work that needs doing all the time. Potholes, park maintenance, housing shortages, pollution. As long as we're have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done. I also see unemployment. What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs... it's a world where work is not focused on satisfying our needs but rather focused on maximizing profit. As long as we're choosing to make work about m…

> Potholes are a visible manifestation of society saying it's more efficient to prioritize capital than care.

How though. Roads are a public good and fixing them should come from the governments pocket. How can you say the problem is private industry, when the government is doing such a good job collecting our tax money. You should be asking where is that money going. And then you will see its because of mismanagement by the government. Trillions in debt, for what?

Potholes are a visible manifestation of society saying it's better to vote for people who vibe with you, than people who can provide essential services.

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#46

Post by CodingJeebus »

vlovich123 wrote: post #27
dacops wrote: post #20

I look around and see work that needs doing all the time. Potholes, park maintenance, housing shortages, pollution. As long as we're have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done. I also see unemployment. What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs... it's a world where work is not focused on satisfying our needs but rather focused on maximizing profit. As long as we're choosing to make work about m…

Or we’ve invested far too much money in building a road network and the economic value from it either isn’t captured to sustain it OR it’s insufficient to cover costs and it’s being subsidized. Potholes being a “need” to be fixed is an interesting take when we had cobble streets and people survived fine. Pretending like capitalism is the thing that creates economic tradeoffs is incorrect and it’s just scapegoating ca…

> Potholes being a “need” to be fixed is an interesting take when we had cobble streets and people survived fine.

Have you ever driven on a cobblestone street? There are a few in the city where I grew up and it's pretty obvious why we don't build that way anymore. It's like driving on an uneven dirt road, you're lucky to get above 25MPH consistently lest you want to risk damaging your car.

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#47

Post by kjs3 »

cjs_ac wrote: post #12

Someone in the UK did this years ago, but they painted rather cruder designs around the potholes. Naturally, the media dubbed them 'Wanksy'.

This was exactly what I thought of when I read the headline. Very amusing at the time, and it somewhat unsurprisingly was effective.

I lack your laudable sense of decorum, so I'll post the link...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/street-artist-wanksy-spray-...

There have been copycats...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/guy-paint-penis-potholes-new...

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#48

Post by functionmouse »

ikesau wrote: post #15

My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…

> My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day.

What makes you think that?

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#49

Post by card_zero »

dacops wrote: post #35
vlovich123 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we’ve invested far too much money in building a road network and the economic value from it either isn’t captured to sustain it OR it’s insufficient to cover costs and it’s being subsidized. Potholes being a “need” to be fixed is an interesting take when we had cobble streets and people survived fine. Pretending like capitalism is the thing that creates economic tradeoffs is incorrect and it’s just scapegoating ca…

I mean, I don't disagree with you. But potholes are a stand in for infrastructure repair. I bike everywhere, my bike lanes and paths have holes. Water systems still dump lead, electricity and broadband networks aren't resilient. Potholes are just visible failures we can just to analogize. Don't get too locked in on the specific.

Profit isn't exactly the problem here. We could pay people to fix various kinds of infrastructure, they could make big profits, that would be great - if only they existed and had figured out their business plans.

Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does

#50

Post by mmooss »

dacops wrote: post #20

I look around and see work that needs doing all the time. Potholes, park maintenance, housing shortages, pollution. As long as we're have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done. I also see unemployment. What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs... it's a world where work is not focused on satisfying our needs but rather focused on maximizing profit. As long as we're choosing to make work about m…

> What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs

A system where citizens complain about potholes but don't want to chip in to pay people to fix them - that is, they won't pay the taxes necessary. I've seen some very clean, well-financed, high-tax places in the world.

That's just one part of this issue but it's a necesssary one. And before you say, 'government just wastes money', I say, 'that's just an meaningless talking point against chipping in.' First, everyone and every organization wastes money; larger organizations have both much more power to do things but more inefficiencies, unavoidably - that applies to large software companies too. Government inefficiency can be dealt with if we want to do it; if you don't pay attention and don't vote, others will be very happy to do without you.

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