Providing a service that is not sustainable will have more negative long term effects than digging holes. Digging holes is just a means of transferring cash to the hole diggers, creating a service that people start to use will create negative externalities once removed (people take jobs further from where they live because the cost of transport is lower, or all alternative transport services like taxis go out of business). If the externalities are greater than the short term benefit then the overall economic benefit will be negative.

I see a price war that results in a loss of transport competitors as being long term negative. This doesn’t exist with hole digging.