This is what the Deutsche Bahn does on their train platforms as well. I thought it was one cohort that marks the damage and then comes another and fixes them. But true to Deutsche Bahn they just leave it as that. Now I understand that this can be considered fixing it.
Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
51–60 of 148 posts
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#52My 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?
I'm sure it depends on the city. I reported several large potholes in my city via an online form, and was disappointed to see them unrepaired for several months. Then one day I came and found that they'd repaved the whole street for 50m.
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny how the "hard choices" fingerwagging never comes out to scold the parts of the economy where rich people get paid for being rich in proportion to how rich they are, and it's such a dogmatic article of faith that the gross excess over there couldn't possibly have anything to do with the deprivation over here .
Equally dogmatic take. A lot of scarcity is artificial.
Yep. Move all the money into the capital economy and all the taxes into the labor economy and whoops! The well ran dry! Better cut social programs, nothing else to be done, no sir!
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#54Here in Zurich there's a city office where you can report graffiti that's on city property and they eventually will fix it but they have a big backlog. I learned though that if it's obscene graffiti they move it to the top of the list - there was a typical FCZ (football club Zurich) on a wall near where I live for months then one night someone spray-painted a big penis over it and the graffiti was fixed in just a couple of days later...
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#55I 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, park maintenance, housing shortages, pollution. As long as we're have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done. I also see unemployment.
Stop voting for the people who have consistently allowed this to happen. We give them a tremendous amount of money. They misallocate it, waste it and allow fraud to happen to the tune of billions.
This has nothing to do with this communist/socialist view of the world that I see emanate from your comment. This is plain and simple: Government incompetence, fraud and theft.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with private industry.
This also has nothing whatsoever to do with unemployment rate. You are not going to take a 57 year old bank teller who was let go and put her to work fixing potholes on the highway.
And the connection to maximizing profits is even funnier. Do you realize that a company that maximizes profits pays more taxes? Do you realize that a person who maximizes profits through higher salaries or investments pays more taxes? Which means that the government has more money to allocate towards fixing the problems you noted?
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#56My 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?
I see road workers repairing potholes, and otherwise notice that potholes get repaired over time.
Presumably there is an intelligent process that leads to this. What alternative is there?
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#57I 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…
How many of those unemployed people want to get a job filling potholes, or mowing the lawn at the park? How many are qualified to do anything about pollution in whatever specific sense you mean? What job does your average unemployed person get to "fight housing shortages" or whatever you're trying to say?
> What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs
Any system that isn't designed from the outside? Any system that's goal is not simply maximizing employment? Surely you can imagine a scenario with two civilizations, one has 99% employment, one has 80% employment, but the people in the 99% employed society are, on average, worse off?
> As long as we're choosing to make work about making someone else wealthy rather than satisfying all our needs
Most people would not say the number of potholes they encounter or the level of park maintenance is so poor that their needs aren't being met.
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#58I 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 mismanagemen…
The tax rates in the US are low; that's why there is so much debt and so few services.
Anti-tax groups have long followed the 'Starve the Beast' strategy (and their opponents are completely incompetent and fall for it every time):
1) Cut taxes
2) Point out the resulting deficit, say we're spending
too much, and cut services
3) Repeat
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#59There is a goatse stencil, just saying
Re: Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
#60I 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 mismanagemen…
You are assuming that the obsession with maximizing profit is limited to private industry, where the post you are replying to makes no such assumption.
I agree that the government ought to work for the public good, and not doing so is mismanagement and corruption. But following the logic of the parent poster, the postulate would be that the mismatch between what the government ought to do and what it does is an outgrowth of a society that values maximizing profit over satisfying needs. Which I find hard to deny if we are a bit flexible with the question "whose profit is maximized". This is just a different way to arrive at the word corruption, but it provides a frame for possible societal causes for that widespread corruption