We own land with farms on the land and people need food...
But somehow the road doesn't get built?

Google rural infrastructure and you will see the problems.

It's not just about building roads, they need to be maintained. Every year that maintenance is put off it "feels" like that is money saved. Until it can't be put off any longer.

"Why do they need a new bridge? There's a perfectly good bridge!" until the bridge fails and milk supplies stop.

I used to vacation in a little town just outside Antibes in the south of france. One year we were told to not bother trying to get to Monaco because the main road in was impassible. For a few days they had no garbage collection, the restaurants, stores and hotels had staffing issues. Because the wealthy people who lived in the tax haven of Monaco didn't see why they should pay for people outside of Monaco to get into Monaco ... as if house elves magically did all the stuff they didn't want to do. The Whales had decided how the community pot was going to be spent and it certainly wasn't going to be spent on the poors.

An example of the tyranny of the masses. It wasn't private industry and individuals that solved that situation, by the way. It was the french government helping out their neighbours with the help of the french military.

As I said, where I live is between rural and urban.

One side of our highway is a different community where the community and leaders decided they were going to freeze taxes.

It's very much winter here right now, guess which side gets snow plowing? Ours, the side that pays taxes.

They said "we don't need to pay taxes for that, it's government waste and over-reach".

Except every year their kids can't get to school, their elderly don't get the meals on wheels, emergency services struggle to get into the community. Volunteers don't clear the roads.

Each different council is elected based on them going to get this fixed and each one realizes the numbers just don't add up but they can't raise taxes because they won't get elected next time around.

Is that a fault of government or putting the money allocation to a vote?

Our trans-canada highway between BC and Alberta vanished one day due to a rock slide. Suddenly people were all "why do we only have one route!? Why are millions of people now cut off by road!?" You know why. People didn't want to pay the millions of dollars which are now costing us billions.

My point is people in groups don't always do the right thing, they even vote against their own long term best interests if it can prevent someone else getting ahead.

In Canada we have healthcare free at the point of delivery. Down south of the border, a friend had a miscarriage and they were financially ruined. Partly because she was rushed to the "wrong hospital" (it was close enough to save her life but not 'in network') - all because the USA decided they didn't want to personally pay so someone else gets healthcare. USA has the most expensive healthcare with only fair to middling health outcomes. Canada has better outcomes and it costs us less.

How is the Hive republic fundamentally different than the government you are used to? How does Hive not solve a problem that legacy government does?

The reason we have representational democracy in the west is to limit the power of the majority. Sometimes they even do the right thing even if doing the right thing isn't popular.

Given the option, the majority will vote in favour of what seems better for the majority and against what will benefit the minority.

Don't believe me? Google first nations and reservations.

If we give everyone a vote on everything that puts the minority at a disadvantage.

On Hive we have whales who have a much bigger influence, so it becomes even more skewed.

In traditional government situations, even if something is not profitable or popular (like connecting rural communities to postal infrastructure, telecoms, that are not profitable but necessary), they have to do things anyway because people need them. These things are limited by the vote, so anything extremely unpopular can be prevented by voting out the people doing the thing.

In no way am I saying "it won't work" or even how things are with government is the best/better, I am saying Hive can't work without some guard rails to prevent the tyranny of the masses.

How can we have decisions and funding made that is necessary but unpopular?

Does that make sense?

I would say we could elect a leadership, but that would be back to having a government :)