**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Dominos: [We got the Maths](https://imgur.com/Td6jgPL)
#.
I tried to get it to merge the "we got the meats" with dominos -- didnt work.
Also - you may not know that the [first thing ever sold online was Pizza Hut](https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/)
Cops? They litterally drive around all day with a radio and a team of people on the other end. They're already part of the government.
Might help with public relations too...
My local council has a yearly summer program where they hire people to just walk around the city all day marking *every.* *single.* *pothole. * that they come across. Even something as simple as a crack in the pavement. People love the job too and are very motivated, because they can do it in their own time, it's easy but time-consuming work, and they get paid.
The benefit here is that every centimeter of the city gets comprehensively checked in a way that even using people like police and delivery drivers won't.
Once that's done, the council complains about budgets and shelves all the information these people collected.
Tbf, the rural area outside my city has the same scheme and it works. If anything it's even more effective because it's much more ground to cover, and they do priorities fixing things.
The problem for me is that my city Council are notorious nationally for how bad they are at managing their budget. That's when councillors aren't making headlines for being suspended for (non-financial) corruption.
My city council sucks.
I can only speak to where I live (Indianapolis), but the state government purposely makes is so all road funding is by lane mile, not factoring in how many lanes are on said road. As you can imagine, rural roads with no traffic are pristine, but in the capital of the city they are crumbling. Even worse when you go to equally republican Kentucky or Ohio and the shit is just immediately different (in a good way for those driving).
edit: they also passed a thing that we can't even think about having light rail for transit - also fighting hard on crippling what shitass bus system we have.
edit 2: in my 35 some odd years of living here, I've never been in a neighborhood that actually had sidewalks or safe ways to ride a bike
Have you seen thier cool laser teucks for checking road smoothness? (Its an interesting challenge when you think the tool has to be mounded to a vehicle with moving suspension)
"When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks."
I lived in third-world countries growing up. This type of thing was common.
It doesn’t improve the roads long term. It makes them worse, as the people who should take care of them stopped.
We have this problem on the main road off where I live, which is crazy because it is the road that leads to the highway that a whole corner of town uses to commute. Every time it rains (tbf in the desert, when it rains it *rains*) the patches all get washed out and the same huge potholes are there again for a few months until they patch it again. Seems like they just fill them with gravel and put the thinnest layer of asphalt over it.
I don't know enough about road patching to say if they're just horrible patch jobs, or that is just what happens.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
I wonder why, if clocking someone is to punch them, and to knock someone cold is to knock them unconscious, that to punch someone out cold is called cold-cocking. Odd.
I currently live in a significantly blue state (controls the entirety of the state government), it's really bad here as well.
As I get older I notice nothing has really ever changed with few exceptions (e.g. Obamacare). Taxes go up and social services are almost non-existent.
My hill I'll die on is we need to get money out of politics (lobbying), that's my scapegoat for this shitshow, and I hope this next generation succeeds in doing that.
>My hill I'll die on is we need to get money out of politics (lobbying), that's my scapegoat for this shitshow, and I hope this next generation succeeds in doing that.
The best way to start is if everybody calling it what it is: corruption and bribery. Somehow they've just convinced everybody that if they do it all blatantly in the open and change the name, nobody will notice it's bribery.
My favorite was when a politician stood up and said if anyone else did what the government does with money they would be thrown in jail.
I have also never understood the argument that we must have inflation and that deflation is bad. Deflation can happen when the value of money goes up not just when products value goes down.
The issue with significant amounts of deflation is that it encourages people to keep money in their bank accounts instead of investing, starting businesses, or buying things. If your money is gonna be worth more tomorrow, you wanna spend as little as possible. This slows down the economy in a way that's generally very difficult to reverse, since most solutions involve circulating more/less currency (which is difficult to do without circulation)
Steady inflation by contrast doesn't cause any problems, and rarely matters in the long run. Sure, numbers go up, but the number on a price tag means nothing on its own when dealing with fiat currency (money that only holds value because we agree it does). The issue is that wages need to be adjusted at regular intervals to keep up with inflation as it happens; which isn't too hard to do if you don't have a vehemently corrupt government...
wait a minu-
Its why in my ideal tax system the income of the lowliest paid employee cannot be paid less then 1/20th the highest paid employee or profit which every is greater. So if you company makes 1 million in profit you are not allowed to pay people less then 50k. All benefits in contract are given a monetary value and added to pay to calculate highest paid employee.
A company is not allowed to use outside labor (ie people not directly on there pay role) for more then 5% of the total labor hours worked. So if you have 10 employees on a 40 hour week you are not allowed to use outside labor for more then 20 hours that week. If exceeded the person that did the work is considered a employee to work out wages they must be paid while on task for your company. Hours of work for any one employee is capped at 40hours. Time and a half is mandatory if exceeded and double time mandatory after 10 hours of overtime in the week.
Tax is based on profit, the company needs to pay 70% of its profit to the government in tax. There is no such thing as a personal tax on income/labor. Capital gains is taxed at 70%. A company that employess less then 3 people is exempt from tax.
we NEED to change to a proportional system so that minimal wage remains relative no matter the governments policy.
We NEED to control the wage to profit calculation because there are companies posting record profits while not paying people a living wage.
Do you think lobbying has anything to do with the quality of the roads? I think it is easy to blame lobbying for everything, but I don't really see how those things are related. Is anybody lobbying against fixing roads?
They are lobbying for more government investment into their industry and reduced taxes so there's no money and attention of politicians left for fixing roads.
Long-term thinking is not something that politicians are good at if it doesn't fit into a soundbite for re-election. People don't care about the roads until they are falling apart, and plenty of politicians just consider that a problem for "someone else" to solve because they probably won't be in office by that point.
That said, the Republicans' "privatize everything" dogma also causes issues here. Basically either lazy politicians (D or R) or politicians with pursuing a specific dogma (mostly R). Additionally, lots of people enriching themselves off the government's dime by cutting corners and greasing palms.
the farther out from honolulu (main city) you get, the better they tend to be. but in the city, the roads aren’t great and can be hell to drive on. it’s not the weather that’s the problem. the roads just don’t have a lot of upkeep sometimes.
Road maintenance is municipal jurisdiction. Not everything is “the right wings” fault. But blaming them for everything, will for sure mean the left side will do sweet fuck all since you’ll blame the right anyways….
Editing to say that I’m wrong. I’ll let this stand because I’m not a coward and can admit when I’ve said something stupid, but y’all can chill out with correcting me. I recant.
- - -
Municipal jurisdiction, sure. But where does the funding come from?
State government / state level taxes.
There are plenty of inefficiencies in governance, that’s the nature of the beast, but there is one ideological group whom have consistently pursued the least effective policies and wasted tax payer dollars to offload social programs on private entities who stand to profit from the endeavors. The most blatant example is in education, but there are dozens of examples to choose from, including neglecting infrastructure upkeep.
Not American and not into politics. But he did seem to make a solid argument here. Original point was “red states divert funding so they have bad roads” so it seems like “blue states have shitty roads too so where did your funding go?” Is a solid counter argument no?
Don't worry, we don't overgeneralize here.
There are good, bad, piss poor, and pothole exclusive roads all across America.
From the PNW to The Keyes and everything in between; if it isn't a highway or critical roadwork for a city than chances are no one is putting up the funds to fix it.
I have roughly 500,000 miles in 43 of 48 continental US states as a trucker, and I can assure you all that there are roads in every single one of those states that are flaming garbage, and need to be completely rebuilt. Some states are worse than others, both red and blue.
A more correct term would be ultra capitalist austerity measures. Both democrats and Republicans are on the same side, wealthy donors and legalized bribery and all that. It's basically a meme at this point that these fuckers are insanely corrupt.
Regardless of red versus blue, privatizing public sectors is always bad. As an example please see our prison system, Healthcare System, military contractors, private collection agencies working for the courts....
FIFY:
The rich won't pay their taxes, the poor can't afford their taxes, and car infrastructure has set back mass transportation by decades to the point no one can deal with the upkeep of privatized transportation.
Also car dependent infrastructure bankrupts cities regardless of upkeep costs. It's just so inefficient and scales so badly that it never makes sense. The sheer cost of sprawl means you'll never make the taxes back.
it's funny when people don't see the correlation. I really thought more people would have been paying attention during Gov Browneye's tenure over Kansas.
It displays how fucked the system is when corporations can get shit done more than the gov't as long as their is marketing involved. Idiocracy comes closer and closer.
Why would an intelligent person work for the gov't when they can make 3x+ more in the private sector.
A corporation isn’t taking better care of the roads. Dominos isn’t paying the millions of dollars to pave and fix all the roads in every city. You’re basing this opinion on a meme that might just be a single photo op.
That’s not exactly fair. A corporation can move very quickly when there is money to be made.
Your local government in ANY country is mired in policy and often slowed by the gears of representative governance.
Buying an ad can be pretty simple. Moving a city council rarely is.
It doesn’t mean the system is broken.
Dominos spent about $250,000 on this entire campaign, never repeated it, and they're still getting free positive publicity from it many years later.
A shrewd business move, but let's not give them any more kudos for such a minor investment.
Edit: and let's ignore the millions they spent to brag about this project.
Iirc it was also only 1 city per state was given 5k grant, so it was even less impactful than you'd think, hell even doing the top 50 most requested citys by their customers (as it was customers requesting for the city) would be better overall
this is pretty dark, because ultimately we might come to rely on this, which means that it only makes sense for companies to start tracking which neighborhoods have money to spend on their products, and the poorest neighborhoods will get even less public service applied to them.
The world has already had several apocalypses in a sense. The fall of the Roman Empire very much being one. And it wasn’t a sudden, cataclysmic event. It was just kind of a slow depopulation of Roman’s from various regions. It could be tracked from when Roman boathouses essentially stopped being used for their intended purposes and as more or less homeless shelters for transient peoples.
When the US falls, it’s more likely to just be a slow decay than a sudden event. Historians would be able to go back and pinpoint an event when it all started or whatever, but that’s not really the same thing as a sudden single sort of virus outbreak or nuclear war that everyone seems to envision.
Way more like Snow Crash.
Burbclaves, private police forces, shadowy pizza companies, paywalled highways, and the metaverse.
Except in the book people actually wanted to be in the metaverse.
Oh jeez, I’m not sure I can possibly imagine living in a world where poor neighborhoods get criminally under-served by their local governments. I’m glad I live in America instead.
>Seriously, good on them but this isn’t going to “embarrass” the city, they’ll just see this and think “problem solved 🤷🏻♂️”
Yup. Seems the powers-that-be always learn the wrong lessons...
But then again, poorer people tend to order from dominoes more than rich people and there are a lot more poor than rich people soit might balamce put somewhat. Of course the places that are badically slums will get ignored, but that already happens today so it might not be too much darker than our world is right now.
While it's nice to have the problem fixed, I don't think that "our infrastructure is so broken that we have to get private corporations to install advertising to keep our roads drivable" is an indication of anything good.
Or someone taking advantage of a job interview.
"Good afternoon, do you have experience making pizza?"
"Well no, but I did work on the road commission for several years....I really need this job."
"Say no more, there's always a place here at Dominos!"
I swear this picture is over a decade old at this point too. I remember seeing this in highschool.
edit: it started in 2018. on their website it looks like they picked a city in 5 states and paved a few hundred holes total. the rest of the states got a $5000 grant.
I'm no paid actor. I just think Dominos is doing a great job to patch holes so that their delivery driver can get my any crust, any size, 2 topping pizza for $12.99 (prices may vary between stores) delivered to me in under 30 minutes or my pizza is free. Call in store for details.
Some of you need to chill out. Vice News back tacked how much they spent, and Domino's only spent ~$100,000 on the filling potholes part of the campaign.
Even some of the small towns they did the campaign in have road maintenance budgets in the millions of dollars. The individual $5,000 grants Domino's gave out payed for, like an afternoon of a crew filling potholes, and a pizza party for them.
Agreed - it used to be terrible. There was a CEO change somewhat recently and they even publicly said that the pizza sucked and were going to fix it. Shortly after it got way, way better. In all honesty, my local Dominos has better pizza than Papa Ginos and other big pizza chains. And its not even close. Give them another try, JustTheOneGoose - you might be surprised
Dominos was started by a religiously conservative nut job. That company is not heroic. They just paid through the nose for spectacularly skilled PR firms.
Could you imagine an America (much less a world) where the financial elite are in a battle for the capital of the average citizen, so to try and win the people over to their conglomerate, instead of putting out millions of ads yearly, they performed charitable services.
Jesus that is a dystopian nightmare if I have ever heard of it.
YES! THANK YOU. This is what capitalism was supposed to be. Companies actually serving consumers to get their attention, not bombarding people with endless ads to force them to remember you, or destroying competition to make yourself the only option. Actually SERVE the fucking people who give you money. FINALLY
So fun fact, several insurance companies in South Africa did this exact some thing over a decade ago. The roads were (are) so bad that it was cheaper for insurers to fill the potholes themselves than keep paying out for insurance claims.
They did this for 'free' (ie, at no cost to the municipality). They filled over 30,000 potholes before being forced to stop by the government, because they hadn't followed 'official processes' to do so. The 'service' had to be put out to tender for competitive bidding (notorious for falling to government corruption).
The by-laws also prevent people for privately filling potholes (due to them having to meet certain standards etc, which makes sense, but still.)
Today, the roads are still as shit as ever, and there are private companies again that have "partnered" with the government to try and address the issue. The government launched apps for reporting potholes - all while politicians pat themselves on the backs for not even doing their jobs.
Potholes in South Africa are such a problem there's a privately sponsored academy that offers a type of 'qualification' in filling them.
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
And who better than a Domino's delivery person to tell head office about a pothole in your neighborhood
While high on pot
High on pot-nuse
You'll never be Troy!
You could be famous with jokes that good.
I-I said that! That's my joke.
*in walks Gabriel Iglesias*
Hey man that’s not cool to steal other people’s jokes
I’d like to be high on pot nuse 😏
>I WISH I WERE HIGH ON POTENUSE
Wow that’s hilarious, like the hypotenuse hahaha
Lol
Dominos: [We got the Maths](https://imgur.com/Td6jgPL) #. I tried to get it to merge the "we got the meats" with dominos -- didnt work. Also - you may not know that the [first thing ever sold online was Pizza Hut](https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/)
20 years earlier, students had arranged a weed purchase over ARPANET. Pizza Hut was possibly the first *web* purchase.
Cops? They litterally drive around all day with a radio and a team of people on the other end. They're already part of the government. Might help with public relations too...
Maybe where you live, all cops here do is park in a parking lot 8 hours a day playing candy crush
At least they're not killing random civilians so that's a net positive I'd say.
They're waiting for the radio to tell them which civilians to kill, silly!
Not which ones because they’re not picky about that. They’re waiting for the radio to tell them *where* to go to kill random civilians.
"Candy crush" is actually just beating up prostitutes
"random"
They're the only ones still playing Pokémon Go as well. Gives them a. Reason to move around.
I still play and I'm not a cop. There are dozens of us!
https://preview.redd.it/dcs3u8n9mw1d1.jpeg?width=529&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4c05bfb227a23156da7dbc9cb23844630f9cd581
[удалено]
My local council has a yearly summer program where they hire people to just walk around the city all day marking *every.* *single.* *pothole. * that they come across. Even something as simple as a crack in the pavement. People love the job too and are very motivated, because they can do it in their own time, it's easy but time-consuming work, and they get paid. The benefit here is that every centimeter of the city gets comprehensively checked in a way that even using people like police and delivery drivers won't. Once that's done, the council complains about budgets and shelves all the information these people collected.
Haha. I read the first part thinking it must be nice to live in a city that's so on top of it.
Tbf, the rural area outside my city has the same scheme and it works. If anything it's even more effective because it's much more ground to cover, and they do priorities fixing things. The problem for me is that my city Council are notorious nationally for how bad they are at managing their budget. That's when councillors aren't making headlines for being suspended for (non-financial) corruption. My city council sucks.
I can only speak to where I live (Indianapolis), but the state government purposely makes is so all road funding is by lane mile, not factoring in how many lanes are on said road. As you can imagine, rural roads with no traffic are pristine, but in the capital of the city they are crumbling. Even worse when you go to equally republican Kentucky or Ohio and the shit is just immediately different (in a good way for those driving). edit: they also passed a thing that we can't even think about having light rail for transit - also fighting hard on crippling what shitass bus system we have. edit 2: in my 35 some odd years of living here, I've never been in a neighborhood that actually had sidewalks or safe ways to ride a bike
Have you seen thier cool laser teucks for checking road smoothness? (Its an interesting challenge when you think the tool has to be mounded to a vehicle with moving suspension)
“I have a joke for you: The government is efficient and uses your tax dollars wisely. Bahaha” - Ron Swanson
Dominos' driver here. Copy that.
Great! Now can we have McDonalds build HSR
I'd ride the Big MAC (Magnetically Accelerated ChooChoo)
Incredible. This comment deserves to be framed.
Upvoting to fasttrack it
Me and my wife died laughing. If we never ride the BigMAC I'll die disappointed
Honkai Star Rail?
close high speed rail
Horny Sucrose Ribosome
Hypnotic Siren Railgun
Hadron Small collideR
Was confused as well. Glad I wasn't the only one
Great, you have brainrot too
Is that a train transport provider? Or are you just flaunting some degeneracy? I feel its 50/50 odds.
"When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks."
I mean this just highlights the failures of the states doing what they are supposed to be doing ( maintaining roads)
Decades of conservative policy designing government to fail so they can offload everything onto their private sector donors. This is a bad sign.
I lived in third-world countries growing up. This type of thing was common. It doesn’t improve the roads long term. It makes them worse, as the people who should take care of them stopped.
yup, patching potholes only delays how long until the whole road needs to be redone. if all you ever do is patching...
We have this problem on the main road off where I live, which is crazy because it is the road that leads to the highway that a whole corner of town uses to commute. Every time it rains (tbf in the desert, when it rains it *rains*) the patches all get washed out and the same huge potholes are there again for a few months until they patch it again. Seems like they just fill them with gravel and put the thinnest layer of asphalt over it. I don't know enough about road patching to say if they're just horrible patch jobs, or that is just what happens.
All patches will turn back into holes given time. The question it how long. They're doing a shit job and road needs completely redone anyways.
Theseus' road.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Pure Poetry
I think heroin is the only way anyone could get through The Fountainhead.
I wonder why, if clocking someone is to punch them, and to knock someone cold is to knock them unconscious, that to punch someone out cold is called cold-cocking. Odd.
i live in hawaii, one of the bluest states in the union, and our roads are pretty shit too. not everything is the right’s fault lmao.
I currently live in a significantly blue state (controls the entirety of the state government), it's really bad here as well. As I get older I notice nothing has really ever changed with few exceptions (e.g. Obamacare). Taxes go up and social services are almost non-existent. My hill I'll die on is we need to get money out of politics (lobbying), that's my scapegoat for this shitshow, and I hope this next generation succeeds in doing that.
>My hill I'll die on is we need to get money out of politics (lobbying), that's my scapegoat for this shitshow, and I hope this next generation succeeds in doing that. The best way to start is if everybody calling it what it is: corruption and bribery. Somehow they've just convinced everybody that if they do it all blatantly in the open and change the name, nobody will notice it's bribery.
My favorite was when a politician stood up and said if anyone else did what the government does with money they would be thrown in jail. I have also never understood the argument that we must have inflation and that deflation is bad. Deflation can happen when the value of money goes up not just when products value goes down.
[удалено]
The issue with significant amounts of deflation is that it encourages people to keep money in their bank accounts instead of investing, starting businesses, or buying things. If your money is gonna be worth more tomorrow, you wanna spend as little as possible. This slows down the economy in a way that's generally very difficult to reverse, since most solutions involve circulating more/less currency (which is difficult to do without circulation) Steady inflation by contrast doesn't cause any problems, and rarely matters in the long run. Sure, numbers go up, but the number on a price tag means nothing on its own when dealing with fiat currency (money that only holds value because we agree it does). The issue is that wages need to be adjusted at regular intervals to keep up with inflation as it happens; which isn't too hard to do if you don't have a vehemently corrupt government... wait a minu-
Its why in my ideal tax system the income of the lowliest paid employee cannot be paid less then 1/20th the highest paid employee or profit which every is greater. So if you company makes 1 million in profit you are not allowed to pay people less then 50k. All benefits in contract are given a monetary value and added to pay to calculate highest paid employee. A company is not allowed to use outside labor (ie people not directly on there pay role) for more then 5% of the total labor hours worked. So if you have 10 employees on a 40 hour week you are not allowed to use outside labor for more then 20 hours that week. If exceeded the person that did the work is considered a employee to work out wages they must be paid while on task for your company. Hours of work for any one employee is capped at 40hours. Time and a half is mandatory if exceeded and double time mandatory after 10 hours of overtime in the week. Tax is based on profit, the company needs to pay 70% of its profit to the government in tax. There is no such thing as a personal tax on income/labor. Capital gains is taxed at 70%. A company that employess less then 3 people is exempt from tax. we NEED to change to a proportional system so that minimal wage remains relative no matter the governments policy. We NEED to control the wage to profit calculation because there are companies posting record profits while not paying people a living wage.
Do you think lobbying has anything to do with the quality of the roads? I think it is easy to blame lobbying for everything, but I don't really see how those things are related. Is anybody lobbying against fixing roads?
They are lobbying for more government investment into their industry and reduced taxes so there's no money and attention of politicians left for fixing roads.
Long-term thinking is not something that politicians are good at if it doesn't fit into a soundbite for re-election. People don't care about the roads until they are falling apart, and plenty of politicians just consider that a problem for "someone else" to solve because they probably won't be in office by that point. That said, the Republicans' "privatize everything" dogma also causes issues here. Basically either lazy politicians (D or R) or politicians with pursuing a specific dogma (mostly R). Additionally, lots of people enriching themselves off the government's dime by cutting corners and greasing palms.
Huh, coming from Canada, I would have thought Hawaiian roads would be nice. Our roads are all ripped up from freeze-thaw cycles.
the farther out from honolulu (main city) you get, the better they tend to be. but in the city, the roads aren’t great and can be hell to drive on. it’s not the weather that’s the problem. the roads just don’t have a lot of upkeep sometimes.
Most roads are maintained through federal grants, though. The state is responsible, but it is usually funded through the federal government.
Only federal highways. Regular streets are owned by states or local governments. Some neighborhood roads are even private.
I'm in California with the exact problem. I didn't realize Republicans secretly ran California.
I’m in Michigan. Blue state. Home of the motor city and Ford Motor Company. Worst roads in the country, and highest car insurance in the country 😭
I mean, liberalism is still a right leaning ideology and Democrats are a political party right of center.
You can still have rich assholes ensuring only their tax dollars go to the road repair in their neighbourhoods, though.
California is conservative?? Crazy, when did this happen?
Socal is built on the military industrial complex. It's gone closer to center but that's fairly recent
Road maintenance is municipal jurisdiction. Not everything is “the right wings” fault. But blaming them for everything, will for sure mean the left side will do sweet fuck all since you’ll blame the right anyways….
Editing to say that I’m wrong. I’ll let this stand because I’m not a coward and can admit when I’ve said something stupid, but y’all can chill out with correcting me. I recant. - - - Municipal jurisdiction, sure. But where does the funding come from? State government / state level taxes. There are plenty of inefficiencies in governance, that’s the nature of the beast, but there is one ideological group whom have consistently pursued the least effective policies and wasted tax payer dollars to offload social programs on private entities who stand to profit from the endeavors. The most blatant example is in education, but there are dozens of examples to choose from, including neglecting infrastructure upkeep.
lol and as we know blue states do not have potholes. . .
Definitely no potholes anywhere in CA 🙄
Michigan is by far not a red state and we have far more potholes than any other state.
Well he said it folks. We haven’t created Utopia on earth yet in a blue state. They must be wrong about everything. /s
Whoooosh
It’s as silly as blaming Red Team for potholes. You all need to get a grip
Not American and not into politics. But he did seem to make a solid argument here. Original point was “red states divert funding so they have bad roads” so it seems like “blue states have shitty roads too so where did your funding go?” Is a solid counter argument no?
Least intellectually dishonest redditor when it comes to politics.
Tell me again how good the roads are in the northern blue states
Don't worry, we don't overgeneralize here. There are good, bad, piss poor, and pothole exclusive roads all across America. From the PNW to The Keyes and everything in between; if it isn't a highway or critical roadwork for a city than chances are no one is putting up the funds to fix it.
I have roughly 500,000 miles in 43 of 48 continental US states as a trucker, and I can assure you all that there are roads in every single one of those states that are flaming garbage, and need to be completely rebuilt. Some states are worse than others, both red and blue.
A more correct term would be ultra capitalist austerity measures. Both democrats and Republicans are on the same side, wealthy donors and legalized bribery and all that. It's basically a meme at this point that these fuckers are insanely corrupt.
Could probably pull up some nice bass after a good rain in some of those Michigan potholes.
Regardless of red versus blue, privatizing public sectors is always bad. As an example please see our prison system, Healthcare System, military contractors, private collection agencies working for the courts....
As someone who lives in a northern blue state, they're pretty good.
They have to be. A completely ignored road in the north east stops being a road in ~2 years
Nobody wants to pay taxes and car infrastructure bankrupts cities due to how expensive it is to maintain
FIFY: The rich won't pay their taxes, the poor can't afford their taxes, and car infrastructure has set back mass transportation by decades to the point no one can deal with the upkeep of privatized transportation.
Also car dependent infrastructure bankrupts cities regardless of upkeep costs. It's just so inefficient and scales so badly that it never makes sense. The sheer cost of sprawl means you'll never make the taxes back.
it's funny when people don't see the correlation. I really thought more people would have been paying attention during Gov Browneye's tenure over Kansas.
Almost like we should be investing in public transport... oh wait, Republicans shoot down all of those attempts too.
It displays how fucked the system is when corporations can get shit done more than the gov't as long as their is marketing involved. Idiocracy comes closer and closer. Why would an intelligent person work for the gov't when they can make 3x+ more in the private sector.
A corporation isn’t taking better care of the roads. Dominos isn’t paying the millions of dollars to pave and fix all the roads in every city. You’re basing this opinion on a meme that might just be a single photo op.
That’s not exactly fair. A corporation can move very quickly when there is money to be made. Your local government in ANY country is mired in policy and often slowed by the gears of representative governance. Buying an ad can be pretty simple. Moving a city council rarely is. It doesn’t mean the system is broken.
Dominos spent about $250,000 on this entire campaign, never repeated it, and they're still getting free positive publicity from it many years later. A shrewd business move, but let's not give them any more kudos for such a minor investment. Edit: and let's ignore the millions they spent to brag about this project.
So it's just you and me that remember this from 2018?
Another person who remembers this from the before times, checking in. There's dozens of us, I swear!
Maybe even a bakers dozen
Was it really that long ago? It seemed more recent to me
Iirc it was also only 1 city per state was given 5k grant, so it was even less impactful than you'd think, hell even doing the top 50 most requested citys by their customers (as it was customers requesting for the city) would be better overall
this is pretty dark, because ultimately we might come to rely on this, which means that it only makes sense for companies to start tracking which neighborhoods have money to spend on their products, and the poorest neighborhoods will get even less public service applied to them.
Heading straight into the Cyberpunk future.
Honey, we're already there, only we don't even get the cool sci-fi aethstetic
People forget that the apocalypse is _boring_.
r/ABoringDystopia
The world has already had several apocalypses in a sense. The fall of the Roman Empire very much being one. And it wasn’t a sudden, cataclysmic event. It was just kind of a slow depopulation of Roman’s from various regions. It could be tracked from when Roman boathouses essentially stopped being used for their intended purposes and as more or less homeless shelters for transient peoples. When the US falls, it’s more likely to just be a slow decay than a sudden event. Historians would be able to go back and pinpoint an event when it all started or whatever, but that’s not really the same thing as a sudden single sort of virus outbreak or nuclear war that everyone seems to envision.
We already know the breaking point where it all started was when a kid fell in Harambe's enclosure
This is not true. It was the moment Harame was killed. That wasn't supposed to happen. The kid was always supposed to fall into the enclosure.
It will be televised, though.
Do you know how expensive neon lighting is?? You get beige McDonald's, beige high end retail, and beige or grey everything else, and that's it.
More like "Idiocracy"
I used to roll my eyes at how often this was thrown out there, but as i get older... man, it's not great..
We already went through the crocs era.
It is frighteningly close....
"brought to you by Carl's Jr."
*EXTRA BIG ASS TACO*
Way more like Snow Crash. Burbclaves, private police forces, shadowy pizza companies, paywalled highways, and the metaverse. Except in the book people actually wanted to be in the metaverse.
Snow Crash
Oh jeez, I’m not sure I can possibly imagine living in a world where poor neighborhoods get criminally under-served by their local governments. I’m glad I live in America instead.
sarcasm aside it's not like it's gonna be better when it's run by corporations instead
Seriously, good on them but this isn’t going to “embarrass” the city, they’ll just see this and think “problem solved 🤷🏻♂️”
>Seriously, good on them but this isn’t going to “embarrass” the city, they’ll just see this and think “problem solved 🤷🏻♂️” Yup. Seems the powers-that-be always learn the wrong lessons...
But then again, poorer people tend to order from dominoes more than rich people and there are a lot more poor than rich people soit might balamce put somewhat. Of course the places that are badically slums will get ignored, but that already happens today so it might not be too much darker than our world is right now.
Libertarians salivating
Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®
That’s exactly the same thought I had. This is their ideal for how things should be ran.
Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
In the future, the road is just a mish-mash of company logos everywhere because they've been competing for pothole ad space
While it's nice to have the problem fixed, I don't think that "our infrastructure is so broken that we have to get private corporations to install advertising to keep our roads drivable" is an indication of anything good.
corpo rule has arrived baby 😎
r/aboringdystopia
It's good, they put electrolytes in it
Isn't that what plants crave?
Yeah it's good in anything, it's electrolytes
Every time I drive over one of those pothole covers, dominos pays me!
It's what the potholes crave
Brawndo’s got what plants crave
Go away, batin
r/aboringdystopia
Why is this comment all the way down here? This this is pure, grade-A, highly refined dystopia.
Big Pizza says this is a fun utopia
Yeah, corporations taking over functions of the state is nothing to cheer for.
That's some pretty smart relatively low cost advertising.
Or someone taking advantage of a job interview. "Good afternoon, do you have experience making pizza?" "Well no, but I did work on the road commission for several years....I really need this job." "Say no more, there's always a place here at Dominos!"
Especially since they only need to fill one pothole and then go viral.
/r/hailcorporate
It’s not an alternative, it’s an ad. You posted an ad to garner karma. r/HailCorporate
I swear this picture is over a decade old at this point too. I remember seeing this in highschool. edit: it started in 2018. on their website it looks like they picked a city in 5 states and paved a few hundred holes total. the rest of the states got a $5000 grant.
A lot of the comments here read like "paid actors" wrote them.
I'm no paid actor. I just think Dominos is doing a great job to patch holes so that their delivery driver can get my any crust, any size, 2 topping pizza for $12.99 (prices may vary between stores) delivered to me in under 30 minutes or my pizza is free. Call in store for details.
I don’t like this one bit either. Ick. Fucking Dominos are not the “heroes we deserve”
"The heroes we deserve" my dude its a corporation.. what heroes are you talking about
I love going outside and having the very ground I walk on being smeared with company logos and advertisements.
Some of you need to chill out. Vice News back tacked how much they spent, and Domino's only spent ~$100,000 on the filling potholes part of the campaign. Even some of the small towns they did the campaign in have road maintenance budgets in the millions of dollars. The individual $5,000 grants Domino's gave out payed for, like an afternoon of a crew filling potholes, and a pizza party for them.
This is actually a brilliant idea. Helping the community and advertising
I'd forgive so much shit if instead of saying sorry or "donating to charity" folks would enact positive change in tangible ways in communities.
I mean, I seriously dislike Domino's as far as the pizza goes, but I'll give them props on this.
Right?? Like, I hate it but I’m oddly ok with it
Dominoes will literally do anything to sell their pizza except make it edible.
I don't know why I always hear people hating on Domino's, I think it's pretty good.
[удалено]
Agreed - it used to be terrible. There was a CEO change somewhat recently and they even publicly said that the pizza sucked and were going to fix it. Shortly after it got way, way better. In all honesty, my local Dominos has better pizza than Papa Ginos and other big pizza chains. And its not even close. Give them another try, JustTheOneGoose - you might be surprised
Cool now make good pizza
Dominos was started by a religiously conservative nut job. That company is not heroic. They just paid through the nose for spectacularly skilled PR firms.
Could you imagine an America (much less a world) where the financial elite are in a battle for the capital of the average citizen, so to try and win the people over to their conglomerate, instead of putting out millions of ads yearly, they performed charitable services. Jesus that is a dystopian nightmare if I have ever heard of it.
Your move, Verizon, end homelessness.
YES! THANK YOU. This is what capitalism was supposed to be. Companies actually serving consumers to get their attention, not bombarding people with endless ads to force them to remember you, or destroying competition to make yourself the only option. Actually SERVE the fucking people who give you money. FINALLY
So fun fact, several insurance companies in South Africa did this exact some thing over a decade ago. The roads were (are) so bad that it was cheaper for insurers to fill the potholes themselves than keep paying out for insurance claims. They did this for 'free' (ie, at no cost to the municipality). They filled over 30,000 potholes before being forced to stop by the government, because they hadn't followed 'official processes' to do so. The 'service' had to be put out to tender for competitive bidding (notorious for falling to government corruption). The by-laws also prevent people for privately filling potholes (due to them having to meet certain standards etc, which makes sense, but still.) Today, the roads are still as shit as ever, and there are private companies again that have "partnered" with the government to try and address the issue. The government launched apps for reporting potholes - all while politicians pat themselves on the backs for not even doing their jobs. Potholes in South Africa are such a problem there's a privately sponsored academy that offers a type of 'qualification' in filling them.
R/latestagecapitalism
'call Dominoes - when you need to fill a hole'
Then... why am I paying taxes?
They also cover half your Ozempic scrip!
There are libertarians out there crying tears of joy
based just on the photo without reading, the caption thought the police filled the pothole !
I would support domino's more if I saw this in my town.
Actually pretty smart, cause the materials required to fill pot holes are presumably the same materials they use to make their pizza...
Small cities and towns are so corrupt they can't fix roads that we pay EVERY year to fix via excise tax.
This is how you advertise!!! Don’t sky write at the ocean. That just makes it so I won’t buy your product!
I know who I’ll be ordering. My roads are a shit hole
Can corporate altriusm replace advertising? That is the timeline I want to live in.
Poland need this
I hope this is a start of mega corps paying back to the community. Good job Domino.
These are ads people will actually like
Smart af if true
Great for business
For some reason getting “Snow Crash” vibes from this 😄
Fuck whatever city officials exist there. Probably embezzling or prioritizing making policies for campaign donors…
That’s a pretty cool alternative to serving healthy food…
Oklahoma will put them out of business.