We need a way for improving things where, when a community improves its own space, the gains don't immediately get privatized.
Other public infrastructure issues could be lack of cheap, affordable internet access, clean water, and health care.
Go down to Figure 53 of this: http://www.nzchildren.co.nz which shows only 1/3 of the poorest 20% attain a high enough level of education to even enter university, while 3/4 of the richest 20% do (the relation is fairly linear for the rest).
Financing the education of children with poor parents helps, it just doesn't equalise on average. Of course it does help a few outlier children a lot.
In NZ we add extra subsidies to schools with poor parents through a system of deciles - but it doesn't offset the difference that much.
I think the idea with funding education more equitably is to remove existing barriers that are created by policy, not about creating totally equal outcomes.
I think that's the trap: you can't work yourself to the bone then have energy to work more to be active in your community, volunteer, run for office, pester politicians with letters, etc. Those are the kind of activities that I think could avoid the decay and perhaps even lead to some improvement.
I think it's a mistake to view "donating money" as meaningful response to many current social problems. Many of them are caused or propped up by people with more money than you could ever dream of having. Thinking that mere donations can win is like thinking a group insurgents could win in a stand-up direct fight against the US Army. The insurgents have different advantages than the US Army, and if they're smart, they'll use them rather than futilely attempting to reach parity with the US Army's strengths.
There's definitely some minimum amount of donations that will be required to really change things, but at a certain point I think the returns diminish.
I think it's a mistake to view "donating" as
meaningful response to many current social problems.
A guy on minimum wage can ladle out soup at a soup kitchen every bit as well as I can.
But can he convince my elected representatives that I care about soup kitchens? Or make soup kitchen users into my personal friends? Not so much.
Keeping people busy with real or artificial work is extremely common in dictatorships.
Not sure if this counts but this image of a soldier mopping in the rain comes to mind.
They all disliked unemployed people and often forced them into work or in the military, loathed artists and writers that were able to work independently. They glorified "work for work's sake".
Created work artificially through gargantuan public works, bureaucracy and... war - the ultimate instrument to keep people busy and give them a common purpose.
I disagree. That only makes sense if you assume you (and everyone like you) are politically powerless and the rot and decay are inevitable.
There's also another option: redirect that excess effort you're expediting to hoard for the failure into fixing the system before it fails. Your personal efforts to fix it might fail, but some other group that heeded the same call might succeed, and that's all it takes.
Hoarding wealth might seem like a safer bet, but it's just as prone to failure. The kind of wealth you could accumulate through hard work might not be enough to give you the security you want, and to get more you have to take big risks anyway.