alt Hacker NewsI 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 making someone else wealthy rather than satisfying all our needs, we'll never have enough jobs to get the work done.
Potholes are a visible manifestation of society saying it's more efficient to prioritize capital than care.
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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.
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.
> 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.
> 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?
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.
> 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.