4 ms·

I believe their point is that you should be that person for your city, not them... In any case: fixing potholes is just about the least inefficient government

I believe their point is that you should be that person for your city, not them... In any case: fixing potholes is just about the least inefficient government service possible: it's a guy/gal making $x per hour, plus some extremely commoditised materials. Meaning: it's extremely hard for anybody to screw this up. If your city isn't fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed to be the result of a general lack of funds. With the perennial bogeyman of "wasteful spending", governments in the US have simply been starved of resources. The behaviour you're describing makes perfect sense in this situation: moving on to the next pothole that someone complained about is simple prioritisation, even if it's slightly less efficient long-term to drive a block or two for every pothole instead of fixing a whole street at once.

jessaustin 9y ago
If your city isn't fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed to be the result of a general lack of funds. Have you ever lived in a city? I cannot reconcile this proposition with my understanding of any municipal situation I have ever seen. Cities certainly have enough money to patch potholes. They already have a compactor and a dump truck, and asphalt is cheap. If any city is not fixing potholes, it is a question of priorities. There is probably some byzantine explanation of e.g. why potholes on this street are fixed while those on some other are not, but that can't be simplified to "we don't have enough money".
Spooky23 9y ago
That’s why I’d like some anarchist pothole fillers. The act of filling a whole with tarred stone is trivial, managing a municipal government so that the guy is filling a hole instead of doing something less productive (like driving a truck around looking for leaf bags in February, for example) is filling holes is not.

jessaustin 9y ago

If your city isn't fixing potholes to your liking, it is almost guaranteed to be the result of a general lack of funds. Have you ever lived in a city? I cannot reconcile this proposition with my understanding of any municipal situation I have ever seen. Cities certainly have enough money to patch potholes. They already have a compactor and a dump truck, and asphalt is cheap. If any city is not fixing potholes, it is a question of priorities. There is probably some byzantine explanation of e.g. why potholes on this street are fixed while those on some other are not, but that can't be simplified to "we don't have enough money".

Spooky23 9y ago

That’s why I’d like some anarchist pothole fillers. The act of filling a whole with tarred stone is trivial, managing a municipal government so that the guy is filling a hole instead of doing something less productive (like driving a truck around looking for leaf bags in February, for example) is filling holes is not.