Do you really think that people who have the skills to repair the water treatment plant are going to just deal with sewage backing up into their home because they don’t want to do the work?

In their own city’s infrastructure? No, probably not. But that doesn’t quite clear things up, so I’ll throw out some numbers as an example:

• Let’s say, on average, ~100 pumps need repair/maintenance at any given time.
• Only 50 people have the skills to fix those industrial pumps[^1].

Do an average of 50 cities have sewage backing up at any given time? How do you fill that gap?

Also, do you have an example of a society that functions like this today? Maybe I’m just stuck thinking inside a box because the society I’m most familiar with is not like that. If so, an example might be helpful.

[^1]: Obviously only a VERY small fraction of those 50 would be willing to travel to whatever town needs the repair, learn the schematics of their pump model, then swim through their excrement to blindly fix it. But probably easier to just focus on a simpler set of numbers.