How bad are things?

> I think this is a fundamental property of capitalism

What precisely is "this"?

> Some of the best selling products in the world, like Coca-Cola, are themselves creating the the problem they purport to solve.

I can't imagine what problem you're referring to. Are you saying Coca-Cola creates thirst?

> This has fueled economic growth while making us generally more vulnerable

How do you measure that? By any measure I'm aware of we are vastly better off than the people of 1915.

Not the person you replied to, but here's my take on your confusions:

> I'm unsure of what "privatizing public spaces for socialization" is supposed to mean, or why it would be bad.

I think they were referring to the movement away from communal spaces and communally owned spaces, especially ones which contribute to socialization/enculturation. Things like parks, libraries, schools, which are for people and of people, but which increasingly are not by people.

> After all, a private property owner may extend nonpossessory or usufructory rights to usage of their land, which would make it perfectly viable for social gatherings without being necessarily more exclusionary than a commons or public ownership.

There's a difference between being a tenant on someone else's charity land and being a member of a community, and although I don't really have the expertise, time, or space to go into it, I imagine it involves a sense of belonging and ownership and community, that sort of thing.

> The promotion of the nuclear family model is an organic result of prosperity, which enables its existence to thrive.

This is true, and we've seen people moving back in with their parents on graduation now that the economy is weaker. This being true doesn't preclude there being a narrative that might eg take ideals like Independence and Self-Determination and turn them into a social impetus to form weaker bonds with extended family. I personally think it has a lot to do with our physical mobility increasing faster than our ability to maintain meaningful connections long-distance, but who knows.

> Same with beauty standards.

This has been problematic for generations and there's a lot of literature out there. I think that waving away the effects of image crafting on the psyche of young and impressionable folks in pursuit of profit is wrong of you, and you should consider re-evaluating this stance.

> I also fail to see how "promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities" is bad.

I mostly agree, except in the sense that people are maybe being sold a bad cure for an ailment they might not have had, spending money they don't have, perpetuating the problems that caused them to want to escape in the first place. Again, just for example.

For the last sentence, here's my interpretation: Markets are flawed because the actors in them are not rational or well-informed (which is often an axiom of whatever model one chooses to use), and because the actions available to them are dictated by those currently on top[1]. I think OP was referring to the way that boiling human interaction down to market interactions - trusting the Market to be a true and somehow just proxy for Everything - is causing problems; that is, trusting markets (alone) to meet human needs is failing.

Hope this helps.

1. For instance, violence or overt threats of violence in pursuit of gain is considered to be taboo in markets (that I know of), since those who have goods or the means to produce them generally want to keep that relative power over those who do not. We see alternative, or extra-market action in eg ecoterrorism, where someone whose needs or desires are not being met, and who have no in-market recourse, resort to destruction in order to reduce profitability of hummers or whatever.

Parks, libraries and schools are largely not communally-owned spaces, but government-owned. Crucial distinction. In fact, some of the best alternatives to the traditional classroom model (i.e. Montessori, Sudbury, democratic, etc.) tend to be privately run schools. As such, private schools are on the positive side here.

Again, this mystical "community" is mostly an illusion. It's either private ownership or government ownership via eminent domain. Commons aren't applicable in most cases.

Bonds with extended family are to be settled on an individual case-by-case basis. Many people rightfully may consider their extended families to be not worth interacting with, and in any event this is all a flimsy normative sentiment.

Beauty standards are determined first societally, then by entrepreneurs. The profit motive is intrinsic to a world of uncertainty (see Frank H. Knight's Risk, Uncertainty and Profit). It is wholly neutral. There is nothing wrong with pursuing profits, even though a lot of people have an anti-capitalist bias and are convinced it's demonic.

I mostly agree, except in the sense that people are maybe being sold a bad cure for an ailment they might not have had, spending money they don't have, perpetuating the problems that caused them to want to escape in the first place.

Clearly these are unresolved issues on part of the consumer.

Markets are flawed because the actors in them are not rational or well-informed (which is often an axiom of whatever model one chooses to use), and because the actions available to them are dictated by those currently on top.

This is the almost cliched refrain of every moral reformer. Market participants are irrational, therefore $SOCIAL_ENGINEERING_POLICY_OF_CHOICE. Of course, there is information asymmetry in anything one does (market or no market), and the classic resolutions are through screening or signaling.

(Also, the definitions of "rational" and "informed" in economics are quite different from their colloquial counterparts. Moreover, assuming universal irrationality by default leads to nihilistic conclusions. At least it should anyway, most people use it as an excuse for their pet reforms by completely ignoring the irrationality in state institutions.)

For instance, violence or overt threats of violence in pursuit of gain is considered to be taboo in markets (that I know of), since those who have goods or the means to produce them generally want to keep that relative power over those who do not.

What the fuck? Violence is taboo in markets because the bourgeoisie capitalists want to exploit the underdogs? Could it possibly be because the initiation of force against voluntary actors is considered immoral by almost everyone? Hopefully you do, as well, but I can't deduce.

EDIT: The anti-capitalist and socialist crankery seems to be inherent from examining your post history.

Answering your edit: don't people have to come to this conclusion on their own, rather than be "convinced"? Doesn't someone have to pass through some period of anhedonia, and the realization that "things" aren't going to make them happier, before they can start to see the structure that will help?

If so, and if your desire is to help normal people, I guess your choices are to a) find a strategy that sells anhedonia against the formidable marketing budget of pretty much everyone, everywhere in this culture, or b) capture them on the other side and offer them the structure they need to build a life after anhedonia.

75% of these Robert Pirsig quotes [1] seem relevant, in some way.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124

I don't mean any offense when I say this, but I kind of resent this type of perspective.

I can't say for sure but I suspect if we knew each other, I would fall into the "non-addict friend with problems" type category.

You do correctly point out that a lot of people worry whether they will be judged for revealing a problem. This has happened to me and my family quite severely. Long-term, deeply close friends have abandoned me; extended family scatters like roaches when the lights turn on; goodly people of the working class like pastors or coworkers just brush you off with annoying platitudes.

Human beings seem pretty hard-wired to pass judgement on other people due to their associates and circumstances. We absolutely are a "blame the victim" species through and through. If we can't even stop ourselves from blaming the victim in matters of rape or child abuse, how can we expect people to see others' problems clearly?

So, yeah, for people who aspire to some of the fruits of their working class labor, and who feel great pressure from "blame the victim" thinking, they sure as shit are paranoid about not coming off as though they "have problems" -- and it's pretty disingenuous for you or me or anyone else to judge them for this and roll our eyes while we say they should be more zen and stop "wanting things" or "clinging to their pride" or whatever.

The other big thing though is that people really, truly can be victims of circumstance. People can have depression, for example, not because they are genetically predisposed to have depressive reactions to mostly-normal circumstances, but because they have normal, sane, healthy reactions to insane circumstances. Reacting to something by being depressed about it can be, and often is, totally healthy because it represents your body's correctly calibrated response to a circumstance that cannot be "lived with" and must be purged out of your life for survival.

I bring this up because I feel like a lot of people give extremely little thought to the problems other people have. We rationalize and look for one or two ways that it might "be their fault" (i.e. blame the victim) and if we can't find those, then we revert to Plan B which is to rationalize one or two ways that they could "get better but they won't" (e.g. they aren't currently seeing a counselor; they aren't currently on anti-depressants; they aren't currently in a support group; they refuse to have a less materialistic outlook on life; etc. etc.).

Our brains are wired to find or invent short-circuits out of actually empathizing with suffering people. Just like we want our shit to be flushed down the toilet bowl and to Just Stop Being Our Problem, we think along similar lines about the problems that others tell us, even close friends and loved ones.

What I can say for sure is that letting go of ego and pride has almost nothing to do with it; having humility has almost nothing to do with it; "reject desire and attachment" sounds nice on a poster, but that's just so thoroughly not human that I don't even know where to begin, let alone that it too has almost nothing to do with anyone's extrinsic circumstances.

I guess what I am saying is that a lot of people who have problems already are well aware that there is no "thing" that's going to make them happy. They aren't searching for that. And yet, being embedded in the life circumstances they are in causes real, visceral pain, and they have no choice but to try to find a way to not be in pain. There is no amount of perspective shifting that's going to just poof make a painful circumstance into a pain-free one.

And, to be quite blunt, for a lot of people, money absolutely would solve a huge number of their circumstantial problems. I don't want to make this comment any longer than it already is, so I'll just provide a link to a past comment that I made. It was on a thread discussing the semi-recent self-aggrandizing post from DHH about his magical foresight to know that wealth was never going to "truly" make him happy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10628129 >

Money is just one dimension of all this, sure. But I bring it up because one of the first things we all rush to bash is someone's "materialism" in the face of their problems. I have to believe this is some kind of Hansonian signalling dealie that's secretly about taking stuff from others, because it really is the case that money can solve a lot of problems in life. And instead of indoctrinating people with feel-good mantras about being less materialistic, we ought to be teaching them when and how to strategically employ their materialism when it is for their own benefit and when to avoid letting it become excessive. Heuristics that are too sweepingly general, like "never be materialistic" frankly do more harm than good and probably lead people to worse living circumstances that feedback into the pressure to look like you're not having a problem and just magnify the whole thing.

We can probably make similar claims about love and relationships, health and beauty, intelligence, credential, and status within organizational or social hierarchies. All of these things, like money, have a slippery slope aspect to them: you can really fuck yourself over by caring about them too much, but you can also fuck yourself over by believing some zen bullshit mantra about how you can "transcend" them and they don't matter at all. Like most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle, and it's exceedingly hard to get it right, and it's different for every person, and no one has any magic answer for how it's going to work out for you or me or any other given person.