Re:Startups Born of Flint’s Water Crisis
by pizzazzaro on Thursday June 20, 2019 @08:52AM
(#20232348)
On the one hand, this makes sense - nobody is coming to save us, and we have to do it ourselves. Whats the best mechanism for this? Business isnt a wrong answer.
But lets be honest here - these businesses havent finished the job. We can celebrate "capitalist innovation" starting to attempt to address a problem functioning government would have had fixed a decade ago.
We need to make a choice - either quit pretending that government can only work when it is in someone's pocket, or we can become a third world country. We need to understand it as an active choice.
Re:Startups Born of Flint’s Water Crisis
by ElonsMosque on Thursday June 20, 2019 @05:54AM
(#20231299)
What's even more maddening is that the population of flint Michigan is majority Black. Hard to spin that race hasn't got anything to do with the lack of effort in fixing the issue.
Re:Startups Born of Flint’s Water Crisis
by dtwest on Thursday June 20, 2019 @08:14AM
(#20232058)
This problem is widespread throughout the Rust Belt/Midwest and very costly to fix. Because many of the repairs fall on local governments, poorer neighborhoods struggle with this. So you can point to the water in a poor black neighborhood in Michigan and say it is proof of racism. But why are you ignoring the poor white neighborhood in Appalachian Pennsylvania that has the exact same problem?
To paint this as racism is either dishonesty or ignorance.
Many of the neighborhoods with this problem have been areas of severe deindustrialization. When a city like Flint shrinks because the main factory shuts down, they no longer have the tax revenue to support their own infrastructure, let alone build new infrastructure. They are stuck in a slow decay, and would need Federal assistance to get out.
Re:Startups Born of Flint’s Water Crisis
by mindslight on Thursday June 20, 2019 @11:45AM
(#20234046)
The opposition of "spin" isn't to counter-spin, but rather to not spin. While the racism-denial narrative is hard to justify (as you state), that does not mean that the racism-encouraging narrative is worthwhile (as you imply).
But lets be honest here - these businesses havent finished the job. We can celebrate "capitalist innovation" starting to attempt to address a problem functioning government would have had fixed a decade ago.
We need to make a choice - either quit pretending that government can only work when it is in someone's pocket, or we can become a third world country. We need to understand it as an active choice.
To paint this as racism is either dishonesty or ignorance.
Many of the neighborhoods with this problem have been areas of severe deindustrialization. When a city like Flint shrinks because the main factory shuts down, they no longer have the tax revenue to support their own infrastructure, let alone build new infrastructure. They are stuck in a slow decay, and would need Federal assistance to get out.