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The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

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Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#691

Post by Aeolun »

vinnski wrote: post #523
pradn wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The words "friend" (everyone knows how shallow a "Facebook friend" is), "share" ("ride-sharing" instead of calling a taxi), and "community" (is the entire customer base of Facebook really a community?) have been shorn of their sociable, human meanings. It's as if a corporation were mining the good will humans have accreted to those words over millenia. Sometimes there are communities in these spaces - NUMTOTs or smal…

Seems like almost every community nowadays has to have their own Discord server or private Facebook group. Often a deal-breaker for the more privacy-conscious people, unfortunately

> Often a deal-breaker for the more privacy-conscious people, unfortunately

You can’t have conversation in your community without them being public either. Saying anything in discord is just as public as on the middle of a busy shopping street.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#692

Post by parineum »

harimau777 wrote: post #660
parineum wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is a system built by people that recognize that humans are reliably selfish and seeks to align their selfish interests as best as it can with the rest of the populous. No nation has ever achieved equilibrium but we are enjoying the most peaceful times in history during a time after the previous wave of capitalism-alternatives failed miserably or acquiesced. Just about every measure of human flourishing is…

That's simply not true. Democratic Socialism/Social Democracy has been very successful. It's also quite possible that humanity can eventually find a new system that works better than capitalism. After all it took thousands of years for humanity to find capitalism.

The countries you are likely thinking if who say they are those things are still capitalist countries with a touch more of social welfare than other similar countries.

There are other countries who claim to be socialist but are just totalitarian dictatorships (not surprising, in order to control the economy, you have to control the people), are lying or both.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#693

Post by kragen »

stoperaticless wrote: post #587
theossuary wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the issue is pedantic people like you who can't understand that "want" is a simple way of saying that a system is biased towards certain outcomes. Capitalism is not an expression of human nature, it's a single possible pareto equilibrium. To say otherwise ignores huge swaths of humans history, and many modern nations which have achieved equilibrium in different ways.

I understand capitalism as “things can be owned and sold” + “you can profit from investment”. > it's a single possible pareto equilibrium I propose that those other equilibriums’ stability depended on at least one of these: a) small population size&density b) violent totalitarian enforcement c) indoctrination in caste system and/or religion d) no contact with capitalism > Capitalism is not an expression of human natu…

probably a lot of people are using terrible definitions of 'capitalism' such as '“things can be owned and sold” + “you can profit from investment”', which explains why these discussions are full of so much nonsense

wikipedia's current definition says:

Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, self-interest, economic freedom, meritocracy, work ethic, consumer sovereignty, profit motive, entrepreneurship, commodification, voluntary exchange, wage labor and the production of commodities. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.

this is not a perfect definition but it is a much better one

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#694

Post by Aeolun »

bustling-noose wrote: post #62

About 9 years ago I traveled to the US from India for education. Smartphones were still not very common in India cause data was not as cheap as it is today. When I was in the bus commuting everyone’s head was buried in their phones. I thought to myself this is such a sad thing. Look outside talk to each other but the every single person had an iPhone and was doing something on the phone. Fast forward to 2024 and ever…

Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off is someone EMP’ed the northern hemisphere and killed all mobile devices at the same time.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#695

Post by tempodox »

pradn wrote: post #421
weberer wrote: post #21

I've noticed an uptick recently of large brands to start referring to themselves as "The [Brand] Community". The author pointed out Youtube here (who in an Orwellian manner calls their ToS "community guidelines") but I've also seen it with many other multi-million dollar companies such as Reddit, Twitter, etc. Young people today are reaching out for real support structures, but only receiving manipulation from corpor…

The words "friend" (everyone knows how shallow a "Facebook friend" is), "share" ("ride-sharing" instead of calling a taxi), and "community" (is the entire customer base of Facebook really a community?) have been shorn of their sociable, human meanings. It's as if a corporation were mining the good will humans have accreted to those words over millenia. Sometimes there are communities in these spaces - NUMTOTs or smal…

You're confusing facebook's customers with their users. Facebook's customers are companies that want to advertise.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#696

Post by AlexandrB »

Nextgrid wrote: post #648
vishnugupta wrote: post #101

One big change I've noticed between growing up in a small town and now where I'm in my mid 40s in a big metro city in India is increased "transactional" nature of interactions of my daily life. Back then we had a deeper ties with all those who served us by which I mean vegetable vendor, carpenter, doctor, knife sharpener, cloth shop, grocer, baker and so on. Whenever we interacted with them it would be a small chit-c…

Everyone is under more pressure thanks to cost of living and Western society being a property-indexed Ponzi scheme which requires endless growth just to keep up. Back when rent/home ownership was affordable and everyone had more "slack" it's easy to add humanity to transactions - you can spare the small opportunity cost even though you'd make more money short-term ignoring humanity and focusing purely on transactiona…

It's hard to know which direction causality goes here. More personal interactions are often more expensive because they can't be systematized and specialized like an assembly line. So what came first: service providers pulling away from offering more personal service or consumers always opting for the cheapest, most optimized option?

One could also argue that this race to the bottom has been a great boon to companies and "the managerial class" that are charged with optimizing this stuff and has been responsible for some of the rising wealth inequality.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#697

Post by selimthegrim »

Dalewyn wrote: post #678
somerandomqaguy wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To use your example, the slave owner's right to pursuit of happiness ends where the slaves' rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness begin. A would-be slave owner cannot and should not violate another man's (a would-be slave's) right to liberty and pursuit of happiness Except you've chosen to violate the owners right to happiness by attempting to place limitations on the rights that were so called inalienable. Wha…

Two rights colliding is essentially an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The two can not (should not) violate each other, thus one's rights end where another's begins. Governments are also tasked with guaranteeing those rights, and those who violate another's rights are deprived of their rights as mandated by laws. For example, a murderer (violator of another's right to life) is imprisoned (deprived of h…

You do realize the original quote from Locke was “life, liberty and pursuit of property”?

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#698

Post by AlexandrB »

mtsr wrote: post #671
habosa wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those of us who worked for tech companies trying to make “Uber for X” really accelerated this. Having an app for everything makes life a series of impersonal transactions.

During the early days of the “sharing economy” trend, there was actually plenty focus on connecting people. But at some point you need money to pay people working on these things. So you look at something that doesn’t replace the core social connection, but augments the experience. Like selling additional services such as insurance. But it’s not easy to cover costs, especially in western countries where employees are…

> During the early days of the “sharing economy” trend, there was actually plenty focus on connecting people.

You're describing the initial couchsurfing concept and the old couchsurfing.com. Everything after that has been about monetizing the shit out of these interactions.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#699

Post by somenameforme »

theossuary wrote: post #561
parineum wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism isn't a person, it doesn't want things. The problem with people that talk about capitalism the way you do is that they mistake human nature for the system that was built around it so when they try to change the system, the people are maladapted and transgress against it by default then it fails miserably.

No, the issue is pedantic people like you who can't understand that "want" is a simple way of saying that a system is biased towards certain outcomes. Capitalism is not an expression of human nature, it's a single possible pareto equilibrium. To say otherwise ignores huge swaths of humans history, and many modern nations which have achieved equilibrium in different ways.

I think capitalism is fundamentally different than other systems because of one important nuance. In capitalism you can buy a plot of land and go start a communist society, or a socialist one, or whatever you want. So long as your little society can feed itself, you can do whatever you want. Well even if it can't feed itself, it can still do whatever it wants - but it probably won't be particularly long lived. But in socialist or communist societies you can't just go start up your own little capitalist society.

Re: The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community

#700

Post by verall »

somenameforme wrote: post #682
Nextgrid wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is under more pressure thanks to cost of living and Western society being a property-indexed Ponzi scheme which requires endless growth just to keep up. Back when rent/home ownership was affordable and everyone had more "slack" it's easy to add humanity to transactions - you can spare the small opportunity cost even though you'd make more money short-term ignoring humanity and focusing purely on transactiona…

It's mildly interesting to consider that one of the main arguments against an economically deflationary society is that people would have a motivation to hoard money which might deter things like investment or lending, yet in an inflationary society few seem concerned about the fact that we create a system that motivates trying to hoard 'things', including land. It also motivates trying to rent things to people inste…

It's not inflation, it's bad tax policy.
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