Eight beavers in the Czech Republic did some public service.

These eager beavers saved the Czech government $1.2 million

Do we really think that a beaver dam is the same level of safety/long term investment as a $1.2 million dam?

I get that they're trying to be clever or whatever with this headline, but it just comes off as more low-key "government can't work" propaganda.

Do we really think that a beaver dam is the same level of safety/long term investment as a $1.2 million dam?
I mean, the dam is self-repairing.
- So you would be willing to build a home in a flood zone that is protected by nothing but a "dam" built by beavers?
  The structures may share a name, but believe it or not, humans have innovated quite a bit to say the fucking least...
- The dam is also environmentally friendly - beavers have been building dams in the area for 30 million years, the ecosystems are evolved to live with beaver dams.
Safety? In the wild? I mean, a beaver dam doesn't need safety features because a sane person doesn't expect it to be safe to interact with a beaver dam.
Longevity, not sure, but at least it can be replaced by humans if it breaks at a later date.
- Look at the comments in this thread. From a literal engineer... It's fucking dumb

Nice beaver.

Thanks, I just had it stuffed
- Unexpected Naked Gun reference

That image doesn't appear in the linked article. In fact, a simple image search suggests that the image is of a beaver dam in British Columbia and the picture demonstrates the ability of beaver dams to block/filter sediments out of water after a heavy rain. Why do people feel the need to make shit up when the real story is cool enough?

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKRW3j5Tmtf/

It was probably just the first result on the image search of "beaver dam aerial shot."

Gerhard Schwab, beaver manager

Incredible job title. 🙃

Beaver: "Pay up!"

We don't talk about the incident.

How did they do this with no profit motive?

And no teams meetings?!
- without ai assistance‽
They did do it for a profit motive. Through whatever instincts or thought processes the beavers had, they figured that they would benefit from damming the river. The dam creates favorable conditions for hunting, nesting, and storing food. These benefits are a sort of profit. Money is a convenient kind of profit, because you can easily turn it into whatever other kind of thing you want and you can store it for later use - and also it is convenient to talk about in economic terms, since it is uniform and easily quantifiable. But no one (or, few people anyway) want money purely for the sake of having money - they want money because it allows them to have other things. Food, housing, good conditions for mating and raising their young.
Sorry. The beavers were only in it for themselves.
- You almost had it, but the for profit (in the marxist The Capital) is exactly what you said here:
  "But no one (or,** few people anyway**) want money purely for the sake of having money"
  That phrase, that "Want money purely for the sake of having money" is the definitive aspect of capitalism.
  What you implied the beavers did is a Commodity-Money-Commodity model (edit: money=work realized in case of beavers) and it is what commerce does and how humans lived before capitalism (no sarcasm but humans lived quite well without the machinery of capitalism).
  You make it very clear with the phrase "they want money because it allows them to have other things. Food, housing, good conditions for mating and raising their young."
  This is C-M-C model, which defines the proletariat.
  Now, capitalist (which makes capitalism exist) are exactly the opposite.
  They live based on M-C-M model.
  They only purchase a commodity with the intent of turning it into a profit.
  In short, they use money for the sole objectivity of having more money (so that they can use more money to have more more money).
  This is capitalism:
  Turning the monetization the end goal and the winner(???) is the one with the biggest numbers.
- So what you say is that Beavers are filthy little capitalists?
- What is this capi apologista nonsense?
  Sustainence Is not profit.
  Profit is what you skim off the top from others labour for your benefit.
  And capitalists want billions and billions because it gives them power. They are not hoarding wealth for housing.
Clearly these beavers don't know the Rules of Acquisition.
They used Jira
- Really?

Leave it to beavers

gee golly that's a great comment!

Timberborn update looks sweet

Those beavers just stole our jobs!

They took our jobs!
- Der terk er jerbs!

I live in NW Ohio qnd have thought about how beneficial it would be for the state to revert a few hundred acres along the Maumee river back into a wetland. It would reduce loads if the algal blooms that devastae Lake Erie. Some natural wetlands and beavers would mitigate ao much of that, but the farmers around here are completely opposed to any such ideas

I just read the article. Good job beavers, and great story!

But it says nothing about dirty water. Just the image here does. Why was the water dirty, is there any info on that?

The article only says, "to address water issues." Maybe they read that to mean there were issues with the quality of the water.
But "water issues" probably more frequently means that the humans have issues procuring enough water, and so in this case they wanted a dam for a water reservoir.
The picture looks like a lot of silt in the water, a dam slows the water flow down which helps a lot of it drop to the bottom.
Although the clear difference in each side does seem surprising to me, perhaps the dam is fine enough that sand/silt builds up on it and it acts as a filter as well.
Not sure about the specifics in this particular case, but here are common things that contribute to poor river water quality:
Impermeable surfaces in human-built environments, which cause water to flow more quickly and therefore erode river banks (dams and retaining ponds help slow down water flows)
Residential and agricultural fertilizer/manure runoff, increases nutrients in water that cause microbes to grow faster
Tiling agricultural fields, which releases more of the above
Untreated human sewage
Improper dumping of industrial chemicals, or breach of containment due to upstream flooding
Runoff from abandoned mines
- ~~We don't need other people to ask chatgpt for us~~

Beavers: It's what we do. Now clean up that dirty water!

I guess the water could be dirty from sediments without it being unnatural or bad in itself. I have no idea if that's the case here though. In either case beavers are awesome.
- If you think about it, it would make no sense for a beaver to clean water. After they build the dam, it creates a body of water that they swim in. They spend their time on that side of the dam. That would be the "dirty" side. If a beaver dam cleans water, it's purely coincidental.

Beavers are awesome

Humans: Bureaucracy is slow, we have to consult the locals, we have to check the geology of the location, ensure that construction and materials are up-to-standards, we have no money...