How Shall We Build The Roads?
January 17, 2020
By NZB3
Government contracts for roading are, in my opinion, really just fronts for funnelling our stolen tax money to various favoured firms. That’s bad enough.“Two road workers’ efforts to kill time on the job have sparked a fierce debate online after video of their antics was shared to Facebook.
“The clip, filmed near Waihī, shows two road workers engaged in a game of flipping the road cones through the air to try and land them on the base.”- Video showing road workers’ down time sparks fierce debate; NZ Herald
To justify the missing money there needs to be a cover story that seems reasonable enough that we will put up with it. Otherwise, we’ve got an embarrassing mystery like the Tokelau Laundry Service involving the Prime Minister’s Dad.
Thus, the firm that wins a tender for public contracts during any given political regime needs to make it look as if they’re doing something. They would need to fix roads that are not broken or, better yet, maintain them in such as way that they’ll need to be repaired again (and soon.) A large staff of “workers” needs to be on the books but not because they’re required to work; They are required so that the ratio of vehicles and equipment and materials used to justify the public money being spent is such that it will convince the victims.
To know this were true in any given case, which I do not, would require the sort of investigation that would bring the whole scheme down. And they can’t have that. So, this is all Anarchist Lens a priori reasoning on my part. But how else could it be?
“The truth is that roading in New Zealand was started off with private persons creating them…Communities formed Roads Boards and did the job very well until the State increasingly forced these bodies to morph into organs of the state with political baggage. Some resisted but all were eventually snuffed out.”- 1955: Who Will Build the Roads?; AHNZ
The constant hold-ups of roadworks and the time-wasting of public works employees is not a thing itself. It’s not an action, it’s a reaction. It is the shadow cast by our lack of boundaries as a society. We are served up whatever we are willing to put up with. Where there is some excuse, some exploit, some misdirection that can extract money then there will always be those willing to find it and perfect it and use it.
—
Image ref. NZ Herald
Like Comment Share
