Especially when you consider the US citizenry have direct access to logistics and infrastructure. You can't bomb a city or factory into producing more fuel or bombs or any of the million other things that are required to keep the US economy working well enough to fund any military operations. It would be hell on earth to be in the US, but the US military/ICE/cops/courts don't work if the citizenry aren't being productive and playing along nicely.

Yeah realistically if there was actual mass repression of citizens (i.e. things like "courts" have essentially ceased to be a factor in much of anything), simply going on strike would be a pretty good start. You demonstrate peacefully, and carry arms as a deterrent so they can't crush the demonstrations the way they did in Iran.

3-in-1 oil. PB blaster and liquid wrench are more for breaking apart rusted together bolts and pins and stink too much to want to use in your house. You really don't want any kind of spray can for door hinges because door hinges need less than a single drop of oil to be fully lubricated.

What about graphite powder? Isn't that what you put inside the lock, would it work on the hinge too?

It will probably work and as a bonus won't collect dust, the hard part will be getting it actually inside the hinge which might be a bit messy.

Just use lithium grease.

I use Shell Rotella 15W40, same as goes in the tractors, same as goes in my Range Rover, same as goes in my mum's Fiat.

In the corollary of the hammer/nail thing, when what you have are 205-litre barrels of Rotella, everything that needs oil gets a dose of it.

If you want a clean cheap petroleum oil, chainsaw bar oil will work. Generally I prefer the generic Tractor Supply bar oil because it seems a lot stickier than walmart's version which seems more like hydraulic fluid to me. But either way it is cheap because in a chainsaw 95% of it is just sprayed all over the place anyways.

The last time I bought chainsaw bar oil I think it has added sulfur or something like that. I'm not really sure. It's actually worse to work with than used motor oil. Used motor oil starts out clean & is constantly being filtered in a normal motor.

Might just depend on the brand and luck. Ive always suspected that bar oil was either extra of whatever oil product didn't sell at the time, or an oil product that didn't technically meet spec for another application like hydraulic or transmission or engine oil.

Most concrete cracking you will see in residential construction and private driveways are either because the ground wasn't compacted well enough before the pour, or more often they didn't put a thick enough layer of stone to prevent the ground from moving. Cutting out depth from the base of crushed stone is often the easiest way to cut costs because it means less material brought in and less material to dig out.

Granted private driveways don't need to be absolutely perfect, but if you want it to last for a really long time you need deeper base layers.

Same with any roadway. The base is everything. I visited some European contries and noticed that the roads seemed to have fewer cracks and potholes than many roads in the US. I had assumed it was better maintenance, but the reason I was told is that they spend a lot more on preparing the base than is typical in the US.

Most of Europe sees far fewer freeze-thaw cycles than most of the US does, which are a huge killer of roads.

The color scales aren't equivalent here but you can see the difference:

Europe - pretty much only unpopulated northern Scandinavia + up in the Alps/Pyrenees getting over 64 days, most of the most densely populated areas with lots of infrastructure below 32 days: https://www.atlas.impact2c.eu/en/climate/freeze-thaw-days/?p...

US - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Climatology-of-Freeze-... (Fig 4.2) - Probably more than 50% is over 75 cycles, and large chunks breaking 100 cycles a year (almost all of New England and some other scattered patches, the Rockies/interior West/Western Plains).

Are there places people can legally grafitti there? In a number of small towns there are unofficial grafitti rocks or walls in public view that redirects a lot of peoples mischief and desire to display public art. Nobody is in any actual trouble if they are caught painting it although you will lose your paint.

It might not be a total solution, but it could have a significant impact on grafitti other places.

There's Clarion Alley in the heart of the Mission, which I think is open to graffiti, as everything is plastered with it, most of it looking really nice. You can see it on Street View.

This is why I favor tractors, tooling, and bulk material like steel and copper over sending food aid. Give a hungry man bread and he eats for a day, give a hungry man a tractor and a lathe and he will become a farmer/machinist/well driller.

Gangs can only want so many machine tools and steel plates, if you don't use them they are just in the way. But people who do use them and learn how to do it well become immensely valuable and beneficial to all.

I wish it worked like this. We have decades of examples of aid projects where we provide the means to produce food - machinery, fertilisers, irrigation equipment, water boreholes, processing and refining equipment, etc. Most of them fail. All of these machines and processes require training. Often extensively. Good luck convincing any of the locals to dedicate the next year of their lives to learning how to drive a complex tractor and PTO. They know that the tractor will break down soon and the parts will never arrive to fix it. That is, of course, assuming the tractor isn't stolen by next week. Which it usually is. Even if all the stars aligned and they managed to produce food, that will be stolen too. Either by someone else or by them.

Gangs don't use the farm equipment. They steal it and sell it. They will steal any equipment they can and there is an unlimited appetite for equipment on the black market. Especially in China and Southeast Asia.

I certainly agree that it isn't a cure-all, I just don't see how any other program could ever end the cycle without those things included, and that despite the current prevalence of such ideas and projects it probably still isn't enough. Machine technology is what separates total poverty in the modern era from atleast some semblance of prosperity.

One part of the problem could be sending them super cheap/crappy tools because it seems like a better value per dollar and also the constraints of total funding. Sometimes maybe getting ripped off by foreign suppliers because there is a LOT of really crappy steel out there disguised as tools and engines that are all but useless. But tractors and tools that break down that easily are a complete waste of money and time to people who will barely get to use them before they stop working and they likely are right that it is junk. We have the technology to make a tractor that is robust enough that you wouldn't expect any maintenance for years if not a decade and minimal even at that point. I definitely don't see many decent manual CNC machines and lathes or other machine tools getting sent over in numbers enough.

Of course a lot of this still ultimately comes down to cost which is not an easy issue to deal with.

The Great Lakes Compact prevents water from being pumped out of the Great Lakes water basin.

And as someone in that basin the people here would go to war before they allowed water to be pumped across the country to water arid farmland. Doubly so when the region already has trouble competing in agricultural markets against those arid farms due to their irresponcible farming practises.

The government doesn't even have to buy the land outright, just give them a one time payment to turn part of their land into a bog. Now they own bogland which is less useful, but the reduced value of the property was paid for.

It is a problem but in large part due to incentives. Farms in Michigan that need no irrigation and produce nearly free alfalfa are being shut down or sold to monoculturing corporations. While places with water problems and year round irrigation are growing tons of alfalfa now.