The room the economy can't see
wilsoniumite.com
The room the economy can't see
1–10 of 296 posts
Re: The room the economy can't see
#2It's long but it really expands the point of this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4SmgrAmdUQ
Re: The room the economy can't see
#3Volunteering is a great way to see lots of these rooms!
Re: The room the economy can't see
#4> You cannot sell “a place for lonely teenagers to feel less lonely.” The value is real, but it spills out sideways
The economic notion of value is wealth-weighted. This is very, uhh, unique -- other notions of value are generally not. Whenever the economic notion of value is saying that (obviously good thing) is worthless or that (obviously evil thing) is supremely valuable, it is worth remembering this and asking "valuable for whom?"
Re: The room the economy can't see
#5It is clear that having that room exist is a priority for some people. The market doesn't have a will of its own or compels people to be efficient and produce returns (which, by the way, this room surely produces down the line).
The market is the cumulative wants and needs of the people matched against the cumulative offerings of the same people. Nothing more and nothing less. This room is clearly a need and a want for people and the market only prices it in a way that best reflects its cost when compared against all the other wants and needs and offerings.
I bet you can get people to pay it out of their pocket and not depend on the whims of a public organism.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#6That's the kind of space I've been missing in my youth. I love that Swedish kids have got it available to them.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#7Everything, literally everything is being turned into a hellscape by the ever increasing demands of financialization - driven especially by the unique American decision to base their entire pension system on the stock and asset markets.
The sheer amount of money flowing into pension contributions needs some way to escape (i.e. to be invested), and that means that everything not "profitable" - like most third spaces are - gets priced out of existence. That park in the middle of the city? What a prime real estate location (see e.g. Berlin Tempelhofer Feld). That kindergarten in the next housing block? Creates noise, everyone complains, yeet it in favor of yet another overpriced restaurant that generates much more in terms of rent for the building owner, who is in more and more cases some huge ass REIT backed by pension funds. That youth center? Tear it down, it's all used only by migrants (yes, I've seen that take way too often for my liking), and replace it with yet another soulless office building in a city that already has too much of it.
It would be one thing if this issue were only limited to the US. They voted for it, they should suffer from their choices. But unfortunately, there is so much money in the system it spills over to Europe, and now US backed investment funds are buying up healthcare and real estate here as well.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#8Markets are very good at a lot of important things, but the idea that’s taken hold in many places is market fundamentalism. It’s the idea that the market should run absolutely everything and if the market doesn’t do it, it has no value.
It’s like the inverted doppelgänger of Soviet Communist ideology that the state and the party know what is best and if they don’t decide to do it we don’t need it.
Fundamentalist thinking in general seems like a huge cognitive antipattern, especially when dealing with any kind of living organic system like human society. Organic systems are complex overlays of multiple systems doing different jobs. Imagine “liver fundamentalism,” the idea that kidneys should be eliminated because the liver is the ideal way to purify blood. It’s like that.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#9Very good and well-written. I wish we would also acknowledge that the market, by disincentivizing spend on stuff like this, is performing well. It is optimizing. The reason it matters to acknowledge this up front is so that we can, as the article says, get to the rule below all this which is that the market is default. This is a clear and thorough example of how the profit motive does not lead to the life any of us want to live and so these markets should be contained within a superstructure that has motives other than profit.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#10Volunteering is a great way to see lots of these rooms!
It is, but that doesn't help that room getting funded.