alt Hacker NewsI 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.