Feature for sure from the anarchist perspective. I’m just arguing against the idea that you prop up an authority by taking on their work.
I made an analogy to organized crime taking over the policing. Obviously in that case there is a quid pro quo with protection money and such.
I think we also know what it would look like if a functional anarchist collective actually took over (even if we don’t think that’s realistic). But the intermediary stages are confusing. Like if a local business said, “Hey, these guys are fixing roads, I’m going to donate some supplies/tools to them” then to the anarchists that would be a good step towards how anarchy is supposed to work, but to the people living inside the capitalist system, it reads more like an analogue of the protection racket - funding a new authority that is usurping the old, non-functional authority.
I think that’s a real challenge for anarchists, that if they start to get widespread support, most of those supporters will still culturally be capitalists and will still see their exchanges with anarchists in those terms.
What happens when a pothole fill fails? Will the anarchists be sued, or the city? I lived in 2016 & 2017. I paid more in income tax then I did in Chicago. They only have two snow plows, and I only saw one street cleaner. Coming from a city that knows how to handle weather, I was shocked to learn that they keep the snow plows two inches off the ground so they don’t damage streets. They just run them, create a nice two inch thick sheet of ice that is pushed into every crack and then rips apart streets. There was a pothole on my way to work that kept getting bigger and bigger. One day, from the time I saw it to the time I passed it, three cars were able to get flat tires.
I don’t think these guys should be doing this, mainly because there should be more than enough money to pay for street repairs. They say that there’s a problem with too many people driving there, but the amount of Ubers and Lyfts are what I saw clogging the streets.
These guys did not “fix” anything. If potholes were that easy to fix, we would never be talking about potholes.
The one thing they did accomplish was, they got their picture taken and have taken credit for something they didn’t really do.
They kinda remind me of some politicians.
I would be more impressed to hear year after year follow ups on their dedication to caring for the potholes they claimed to fixed. They might actually learn and understand a few things about how things work. Of course, we won’t hear about it and they will brag about there good deed for decades.
They’re probably not expert in this. They should hire someone. Maybe get together with their neighbors and collectively decide on a person who could be in charge of hiring road-repair people. Then all pitch in money to do it.
Wonder what you’d call that system?
I know this has been done. When i lived in Vegas a particular neighborhood offered the city money to prioritize street repair on an avenue near them. Granted this is easy when you’re talking about a wealthy group of people, but it is possible to engage in those kinds of conversations with the city and reach a compromise.
All this fuss about a few potholes on a couple blocks… It doesn’t mean nearly as much if you know how much of the city’s streets are simply dirt roads. (ETA:this is from 7 years ago. The roads did not get paved, and there is no plan to pave them.)
They don’t have as much power as the local people though.
Local elections were held in March 2015. The DFNS system of community government is focused on direct democracy. The system has been described as pursuing “a bottom-up, Athenian-style direct form of democratic governance”, contrasting the local communities taking on responsibility versus the strong central governments favoured by many states. In this model, states become less relevant and people govern through councils.
I realize I’m honing in on one thing that’s a hobby horse, but I have a problem with this line of thinking, in that I blame it for the Professionalization Of Everything. I think tamping down volunteerism because volunteers tend to not have deep pockets or insurance is getting the cart and the horse backwards.
(just by way of example, a few years ago in San Diego, the beach fire pits were going to be closed because even though volunteers were willing to do maintenance, because it might be less than perfect and there’s liability involved they were not allowed to pursue that option.)
I like having a society in which amateurs with time are “allowed” (my, how gracious of us) to, well, do the work of having society. The legal system should find a way to accommodate that, not the other way round.
It is, but there’s a difference between doing cold patching and actual asphalt restoration. An asphalt cold patch can erode pretty quickly. if the weather is bad or if there’s a lot of traffic The city here recently did a temporary patch on my street, it lasted without a problem for a month and as soon as it rained a giant pothole opened up within the course of two weeks because of traffic and water. Thankfully they resurfaced and did the actual paving this week
