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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

> Because of a few people's low standard of perfection

I'm sure they'd love to pursue perfection if they were paid decent wage and not pressured to be as fast / cheap as possible.

It's easy to talk about perfection while sitting in a air conditioned office and slightly pressing on buttons while looking at a screen and getting paid 4-10 times the minimum wage these guys are getting while busting their asses outside no matter the weather.

> Personally, I drink all my water exclusively from a well. Untouched by human "sanitation" efforts.

Many things can be off with water coming from a well. Pollution, bacterias, &c. I hope you test / treat it often, otherwise it's not much safer than drinking tap water.

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I used to work for road construction, albeit not pothole repair (interstate paving). Because of my lifestyle, money is not an object (grow food, buy bulk, only drink free water, no insurance of any kind). There is this thing in my mind where I want to make sure the world is better for people when I'm dead, in whatever small way I can.

That means bending over to pick trash even if no one is watching. Doing a good job and not waste any employers time, regardless of "wage". Technically I make more than the people that hire me because I know how to spend it more efficiently than them.

We're talking about reputation here: Do we want to be remembered as someone who wants to be paid more? Or who was productive at all times without any complaints?

You're probably getting flack for saying "low standards of perfection" instead of just "low standards"... To me having higher standards and wanting to do (and actually doing) a good job, not just a good enough job, is primarily an attitude problem, not a wage/job pressure problem. Indeed there's a whole cottage industry of grumpy programmers to complain about other highly paid programmers not even suffering under crunch mode who aren't doing good work. Yes, you get what you incentivize on the large scale, but at the individual level you still have choices and opportunities to leave things better than you found them. Activity in scouting or similar when young probably correlates with the attitude.

I see now, "low standards of perfection" is almost an ironic statement since "standard" describes a minimum requirement and perfection can never be achieved, only pursued.

I agree that only wanting to do "good-enough" is an attitude problem. My own motivation comes from the assumption that someone is always watching. The idea is to never put a memory into someones mind of you wasting time and resources. Regardless of your own reputation, it is far more risky for someone to see this attitude and find it acceptable to replicate it. Then the attitude can spread like wildfire (until it hits a group of people with solid principles).

>> I'm sure they'd love to pursue perfection if they were paid decent wage and not pressured to be as fast / cheap as possible.

That and depending where you live, there's next to no money for road work.

At the local county govt I worked at, the first department that would get gutted was the highway department. It can easily cost millions to redo a few miles of road, and you need to fix a bridge that doesn't get used much (but it is becoming a hazard because it's been neglected for so long), magically most of the road budget is already gone for that year. Now add in the unknowns like salt prices, the equipment to do anything, maintenance, and everything else that comes with it.

Things here become "just good enough" because no one wants an increase in taxes to pay for it.

I want to believe that isn't the case for every local govt, but it is for the few smaller ones I've worked with around here.

I felt that I was paid well during my time in road work (entire family still works there). Then again, I don't need useless things like most people in society, so I'm naturally satisfied with any quantity of federal reserve notes that I'm allocated.

I agree with you that it's all being neglected.

We had to steadily taper off the traffic into one lane before night time work began in the summer. I remember specifically one time I was slowing down traffic on the interstate by setting out the warning barrels - someone from out of state passing through was just so angry from having to slow down to 55mph for 10 minutes of their life. Flipped me off, along with the most rotten glare I've ever seen.

I guess nothing else matters except for everyone getting out of THEIR way so THEY can get to THEIR destination. I'm sorry that I'm taking the gas tax we've all been paying in order to renew a 10 mile stretch of the interstate so you can do just that - travel INTER state (bump free).

Peak capitalism

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