Domino's Pizza unveils U.S. infrastructure project filling potholes
pavingforpizza.com
pavingforpizza.com
"Los Angeles is no longer part of the United States, as the federal government of the United States has ceded most of its power and territory to private organizations and entrepreneurs"
I believe we're more heading into an Idiocracy future where corporations also hold the real power (e.g. "Carl's Jr machine: Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother.")
...also Heavy Weather
Pro tip: you can replace the O-ring that comes with the filter for a durable rubber one used for garden hoses for a real nice fit on the smartwater bottles, and have some extras because the worst is if you lose that seal (or it is damaged) and you are out in the wilderness.
Corporations held the real power in the US from ~1870 - roughly the beginning of the industrial revolution - until the vast Federal expansion of power and taxation of the WW2 build-up and thereafter.
Rockefeller single handedly stabilized the finances of the US Government by pledging his wealth as a support prop to JP Morgan. That premise is laughable today. The Federal + State governments spend the equivalent of a Jeff Bezos fortune every week. Meanwhile the US military is radically larger and more powerful than it was a century ago, as are all the agencies of the State.
If you think corporations are powerful today, the reality is they're hilariously weak compared to what they were a century ago. Further, back then there were very few regulatory restraints on corporations, while the giants were simultaneously drastically larger in comparison to the Federal Government and as a share of GDP. Most of the state governments barely even existed financially.
I've posted this here before, but the first half of this book "The Fourth Revolution" has a really great history of how western governments have grown into behemoths.
https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-Sta...
The 2nd half about moving more towards a Singapore style limited gov - which has proven to be wildly successful there - is less persuasive, even though is fundamentally well motivated. As I believe they benefit from being small by nature not just design. Smaller states > large federated countries, as federalism constantly gets eatten away by centralized growth towards the executive/federal gov, away from state power. Without a concerted push-back and a strong culture, federalism will always result in top heavy administrations, where fewer and fewer people have more and more power over the whole country.
You could say that about any form of government. I think it's human nature to want a single dictator, so the governed seem to eventually give their consent to one.
So no, it's not the same. The corporation in a modern state-capitalist context doesn't have to provide value to the public to gain power and wealth, merely influence the right people in politics. That's way different than private industry, and potentially far more destructive and wasteful of resources (see: "private" prisons which depend completely on government for survival and have little of the benefits of market functions like competition and growth via customer value).
Not to mention special interest groups, unions, influential individuals, etc also have significant pull in the government as well. It's not just corporations. There have been plenty of economic intervention by the government, politicians have hardly been monopolized only by (pseudo private) corporate interests.
I’ve heard good things about Seveneves, but I’m a little hesitant to pick it up given that it’s huge and there are thousands of other books to read.
I adore Zodiac as well but am in a decided minority in that regard.
We're in the same camp, friend. Zodiac was my favourite novel of his.
I sometimes don't mind his "explain every little detail of the physics of how things work" style of writing, but when that's the majority of what you're reading over several pages of being introduced to new characters, it's a bit much.
Rather than lobbying to increase gas taxes and funnel more cash into various government bureaucracies, Domino's is trying to address the problem directly, by getting the money directly to the local agencies that actually fix the roads.
I hope others follow suit.
Public funding has always made sense for road repair because (generally) everyone benefits, and roads are expensive, so everyone pays.
To be clear- direct action is laudable, and it's a neat project, but big picture, we need many orders of magnitude more money on the problem than Domino's can ever provide.
I don't really understand this logic. Roads are cheap. Really cheap. (Yes, even if StrongTowns claims otherwise, roads are still really cheap). It's expensive to look at as a standalone figure, as everything is. But per taxpayer, roads are cheaper than military, cheaper than public education, cheaper than governance, and many more.
I can't speak to all municipalities, but I know on my own taxes, roads are even cheaper than public transit and cheaper than municipal garbage and recycling services.
If every citizen pitched in approximately one Netflix subscription worth of extra taxes, road repair would mostly be a solved problem. Yes, that's a lot of money, but it's not really a lot of money, as part of the context of the government budget.
Or to put it another way, Roads are so cheap that Domino's Pizza can afford to fix roads as a fun publicity stunt.
Update: "Public good" is a technical term, see, inter alia, https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/ap-micr...
Once a road is built, it is difficult to exclude people, although toll roads can exclude nonpayers.
Taking the definition to the extreme makes it no longer useful. Yes, technically you could make a road exclusionary and rivalrous. But their nature tends nonexclusionary and nonrivalrous. "Public good" is really an observation about whether something is more suited to private or public ownership, rather than some kind of strict legal term.
Well, I did not notice that because one has to click to reveal that self-contradictory statement. In any case, that is a point against Khan Academy.
"Public good" is not the same as "these days mostly financed by politicians shoveling money to labor unions and a few firms".
Everywhere you look there are excludable roads. Everywhere you see traffic congestion, you see rivalry.
Roads are not public goods, even if you feel like governments ought to own them.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/gas-taxes...
The interest shipping companies would have, therefore, would be the same as literally any company which has fleet vehicles: Damage to the fleet caused by the road conditions.
Hell, even the existence of this post on HN is basically some confirmation that hail corporate bullshit slips past this crowd.
Don't buy the PR wank folks, this is just an ad masquerading as some noble effort.
This makes it sound as if there aren’t hard choices to be made and that budgets aren’t tight. Would you rather have smooth roads, clean water, or low taxes?
Road maintenance is expensive, and tends to get deferred because of lack of funds or more important priorities. This means that road maintenance gets even more expensive. People then like to criticize the city for not fixing things when it would have been cheaper.
We like the narrative that government is wasteful and stupid and has all the money it needs to maintain everything in the city. Sometimes it is lazy and stupid, but mostly (especially at the city level) it is not.
When there isn’t money to do work, the government doesn’t do work—even if there’s work to do. Until we allow enslavement of government workers, this will continue.
I make no accusations of stupidity or incompetence. My belief is more along the lines of the citizens have unrealistic expectations, e.g. how many miles of road their muni can actually afford to run & maintain for the taxes citizens are willing to pay.
You hit the nail on the head. I worked for a poor local government. The highway department was always the first on the chopping block, not because their issues weren't important, but because they were the only department with a significant amount of money.
The leadership here is another issue entirely, but every county in this area all had issues with money and the first thing that the board members asked was what roads could wait until next year.
The highway dept wanted to fix the roads so that they wouldn't need maintenance every few years, but they couldn't afford to do it to more than one road. So even though it is much worse band-aiding the roads that need work, it's better than not being able to do any work with them.
Then the cycle continues the next year.
This would be what I tell myself is a noble goal while working on this project.
>Is the primary objective sales?
Yes, but indirectly. Primary goal here is likely brand awareness and keeping the brand in the public consciousness for awhile.
They want people who notice that that one nasty pothole on their way to work is fixed thinking "Huh, I wonder if Domino's paid for that to be fixed."
This is email address harvesting for marketing pushes. It's also corporate PR.
Not only does the comment depict a complete lack of understanding of infrastructure in the US and the upkeep challenges, but it helps to magnify Domino's marketing by providing an effectively useless contribution to the discussion.
No, not really - it's more an indicator of how a lot of people in the US (myself included) have no idea how our tax dollars are spent, if they are spent wisely and if we're even paying the right amount in the first place.
Its our own damn fault, really. We let government slide on a lot of this stuff because we can't be arsed to demand accountability. If we do, then the first loudmouthed activist, polemicist or even vaguely interesting squirrel that wanders by captures our attention instead. Sometimes even the vicissitudes of daily life are too much of a distraction.
I don't know that I'd consider this ad wankery or noble effort - at least someone is trying something.
However, I'll deduct points for it being advertising. That stuff can burn in Hell.
I'm not buying this marketing as good at all. This kind of marketing shouldn't even work, because we should be a first-rate nation that actually maintains the infrastructure.
Buy some kind of "Pothole Cold Patch" compound at your local home improvement store and dump it in the hole. In this way you can fix the holes on your local street/commute route without waiting for the city.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-03-03/junk-food...
Considering the amount of free press they received, the relatively minuscule cost of fixing 50 potholes was a very efficient use of their marketing spend. On top of that, stuff like that builds brand awareness and brand loyalty, driving repeat customers.
They could spend their entire 'paving' budget here in Michigan where they're headquartered and it would be barely noticeable.
The main issue, at least in Montreal, appears to be low grade asphalt. The reduced quality is due to addition of used engine oil to the mix, instead of fresh bitumen. Which makes asphalt slightly cheaper and needs to be replaced more often. I’d say it’s a win for the asphalt (monopoly) company.
ohio didn't seem to have the same issues that we did, at any rate.
If they spend the budget trying to convince the product managers at the big three that American consumers want vehicles that float over potholed dirt roads at any speed the result will probably be noticeable. It'll take 20yr for the up-travel and fat sidewalls to filter down to the average delivery driver though.
> The mission of Strong Towns is to support a model of development that allows America's cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient. For the United States to be a prosperous country, it must have strong cities, towns and neighborhoods. Enduring prosperity for our communities cannot be artificially created from the outside but must be built from within, incrementally over time.
Apparently they've tried them in the past: https://www.adweek.com/creativity/dominos-wants-roll-out-gyr...
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/f9/25/8cf9256a7ae56d1186cc...
https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-story-of-sun-microsystems...
- Pothole so deep, it would swallow a bicycle, skateboard, motorcycle or Ferrari near Military Way, Palo Alto, CA 94306 https://goo.gl/maps/rJjpmYL9Nnk
Another: Unnamed Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306 https://goo.gl/maps/MQ5sCZ5p6Vz
Worse, there are several left-turn prox sensors permanently false positive such that if you miss the timing, you’ll be stuck waiting for the Godot ghostrider. And in CA, it’s illegal to run a malfunctioning red traffic signal, because cities need fund$ from “guilty, next” traffic kangaroo court.
I worked for one of those poorer counties, and money was 100% the issue every department had every single year.
The highway dept's budget shrank before it would even get approved by the board. One of the first things the Finance Dept would ask is what roads absolutely cannot wait until next year.
If they spent a lot of money to make one road good for 10+ years, then they wouldn't be able to do anything to the roads that were actually a hazard for drivers.
So they would only get enough money to band-aide some roads. Now the situation is that it's better to band-aid a road for a year or maybe two than it is to not have any money to do anything to the road.
(We have a lot of bad roads, have cold winters usually and deal with farmers / truck drivers that can't read the weight limits on the roads)