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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, the

• vlovich123 5mo ago
  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 capitalism - of course every economic system will have problems, but potholes are not uniquely a capitalism problem but more a problem of maintenance after huge capital investments for building infrastructure - maintenance is always harder and a debt that previous generations saddled us by building said infrastructure and that’s true whatever economic model you follow. China will have a similar problem in ~100-200 years as the cost to maintain all the roads, power plants, and buildings start to become a reality.
  • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
    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.
    • harpiaharpyja 5mo ago
      Equally dogmatic take. A lot of scarcity is artificial.
      • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
        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!
    • pc86 5mo ago
      I'm not sure what your point is, are you complaining about... compound interest?
      • smallmancontrov 5mo ago
        No, I'm complaining about r>g.
  • dacops 5mo ago
    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.
    • card_zero 5mo ago
      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.
      • dacops 5mo ago
        If they have profit, we should be splitting that money towards addressing other needs. Maybe some profit is fine for ensuring sustainability or whatever, but like, potholes aren't the only need.
        • card_zero 5mo ago
          If money was duct tape, that would follow. I think of it as like gratitude (when paid) and influence (when gained). So we'd be grateful to the road-menders, or broadband-stabilizers, and they could accrue a big pile of influence. What will they do with it? Perhaps they want something stupid and pointless, like building a pyramid. If we're not going to allow that, there's no need for money at all. We'd vote on what needs doing, and it would always be something like mending roads, and we'd all have to knuckle down and do it, through a conscription-like system, on pain of pain. It would never be fixing the broadband, though, because broadband is a crazy imaginative project, like building a pyramid, so there wouldn't be any.
  • c6r87i 5mo ago
    The mistake was made but the entrenched interests of unrestrained capitalism ensure that a new direction will never be pursued.
  • esseph 5mo ago
    > 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.
  • CodingJeebus 5mo ago
    > 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.
    • pc86 5mo ago
      I think a healthy proportion of HN would view a "<=25mph or your car breaks" as a feature, not a bug.
    • vlovich123 5mo ago
      My point is that classifying it as a “need” is strange because it’s in no way the same as eating or drinking or love. It’s useful for modern society but “need” feels wrong.
  • _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
    Commerce drives the economy, and commerce needs roads. Even ancient Rome understood this. Once Rome could no longer protect the roads and travel ranges became shorter the economy declined much more quickly. If society can't afford roads and therefor can no longer afford to conduct commerce, society can't afford to exist.
  • _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
    Last I knew China's new train system wasn't generating the income needed to pay down the construction debt. It's going to be interesting to watch how things play out long term.
• radialstub 5mo ago
  > 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.
  • mmooss 5mo ago
    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 Now we're at point 2. It's not spending, it's lack of revenue. Some large corporations pay no tax. The US has cut IRS enforcement even though it pays for itself many, many times over. The wealthiest people pay a much lower tax rate because their typical form of income (capital gains) is taxed at a much lower rate than other people's (salary), and because their taxes are cut over and over and they have endless loopholes - e.g., trust funds!
    • tmoertel 5mo ago
      > The wealthiest people pay a much lower tax rate because their typical form of income (capital gains) is taxed at a much lower rate than other people's (salary)... A different way to think about this would be to say that a lower tax rate for capital gains is a trick (incentive) to get the wealthiest people to invest their wealth in the market, which provides capital for people trying to grow the economy and provide jobs, rather than spend their wealth on luxuries for themselves. In this way, we have an economy focused more on the needs and wants of regular people, and less on producing what wealthy people want. Can you spot a flaw in that line of reasoning?
      • 5mo ago
• mmooss 5mo ago
  > 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.
• robomartin 5mo ago
  > 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?
  • warumdarum 5mo ago
    But socialist culture leads to corruption repeatetly in all socities where the experiment is run ?
    • pc86 5mo ago
      It's almost as if government corruption is not a byproduct of the system of government, but a byproduct of the fact that it's filled with people, and when people accrue power they will, by and large, abuse it.
      • tmoertel 5mo ago
        > It's almost as if government corruption is not a byproduct of the system of government, but a byproduct of the fact that it's filled with people, and when people accrue power they will, by and large, abuse it. If only there were a system to align incentives toward a common good under the assumption that everyone is corrupt and will therefore seek to maximize their own interests....
• pc86 5mo ago
  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.
  • cousin_it 5mo ago
    I haven't done the math, but my guess is that a pothole might do hundreds of dollars worth of damage over its lifetime, maybe thousands. If society was willing to pay 1/10th of that sum per pothole to anyone willing to fill it, there'd be a lot more applicants. (Though it might lead to people making potholes on purpose, so the payment needs to depend on road health over time, not number of potholes filled.)
    • pc86 5mo ago
      Well your last sentence shows exactly why it wouldn't work and so you're not really talking about "1/10th of that sum per pothole" you're talking about, I don't even know - paying random people random sums of money at arbitrary times based on overall road health?
      • forshaper 5mo ago
        A map, posted on the municipal or county website. You, a private citizen, bid to fill a hole. The city accepts. You upload a geostamped 'Before' picture. You are given a time window to fill the hole (often at night). You fill the hole. Upload 'After' pictures. Get paid in the next cycle.
• fennecfoxy 5mo ago
  Because governments and councils waste money on paying private contractors do do stupid bullshit like installing statues or gardens or other vanity crap meanwhile grass areas are overgrown and the roads are filled with potholes. The general populace aka the voters are too apathetic and absorbed in their little consumer lives and tribally motivated political quibbles to know or care that so much tax money is wasted.
  • deleted 5mo ago
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• Henchman21 5mo ago
  Man, we make enough food for everyone, but throw away tons because poor people can’t pay for it. Our economy is based on scarcity. It seems to create scarcity even when there is none.
• em-bee 5mo ago
  What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs a system that doesn't provide enough education for its citizens. this is why education needs to be made available to everyone, and not just those who can afford it. especially, if you get education for free you also won't need to get a high paying job to pay off your debts.