[pc86]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[pc86]

You take a sledge hammer to the street a block over. Repeat. Profit.

You do a bad job filling the hole. Some hits it and their car breaks. They sue you and the city. The city attorneys successfully push the blame onto you since you're a contractor. You have no liability insurance because you're not a professional because that's the whole point of this thing, right? You're on the hook for the car, a few grand for a medical check-up, and a spurious mental anguish claim. You declare bankruptcy and on the way back from your last visit with your attorney, you hit another pothole and your car breaks. Full circle.

[forshaper]

Taking a sledge hammer to a street is a crime.

[pc86]

Yes, it is, and this is a financial incentive to commit a crime.

[_DeadFred_]

I wonder how much of roads today being worse are because we have added a large amount of buried services under roadways? There are streets in my town that are a patched up messed. Thinking about it, all of those streets/the worst streets in town are ones without overhead lines.

[dacops]

You take care of my needs I'll fill potholes. Plenty of folks would.

[pandaman]

Yeah, you will fill the potholes to the limit of your abilities and the society provides for your needs. This had been tried many times and does not work because the balance of abilities and needs comes out unbounded: even if your abilities to fill potholes were greater than your needs initially, having all needs satisfied generates more needs and diminishes the ability to work. Even sending someone to poke you with a bayonet in order to have more abilities won't work because, again, the dude with the bayonet is the subject to the same abilities/needs disbalance. So it ends up with very little needs satisfied, a lot of bayonet poking and tons of waste since the ability/need balance is calculated by vibes instead of market.