161–170 of 382 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need to be forced. They come here willing to do those jobs. After all, they're not slaves.
Exactly. They come willingly but you can't force them to wipe your old age ass once they're here.
> They come here willing to do those jobs.
Someone willing to do a job means you don't need to force them to do it. After all, they aren't slaves.
> There was some pain in that realization. So many of my utopian dreams—what if we could live in a society where everyone can get the food, the housing, the healthcare, the opportunities for growth that they deserve—come from a place of wishing that we could live in a world where people are cared for. I'd like to offer some comfort to the author on this score. Food, housing, healthcare broadly... while these are all…
> The food system is different from homecooked meals This is a good point, and everything I've heard from parents says that it's parents, not children, who identify home-cooked meals with care. Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. In order to feel cared for, all children need is to trust that the person caring for them will make sure they ge…
If we're going to talk about how to "scale care" and how not to, then Buurtzorg has to be mentioned[0][1]. It's a Dutch home-care company that was started by nurses who basically got frustrated that managers got in the way of them doing their job. It operates by having a flat organization working with small teams of highly trained nurses, and trusting them to make the right decisions. The result is a low-cost provide…
Your reply seems focused on size, but this line caught my attention: > trusting them to make the right decisions. I'm wondering if trust isn't the real issue. For example, wouldn't a large high-trust organization be able to provide good care? Or is there something intrinsic to scale (e.g. diffusion of responsibility) that makes "high-trust" and "large organization" incompatible?
This is a pretty big realization and one that resonates strongly with me. As an engineer, parenting can be frustrating, of course for the usual reasons, but also because you realize there’s really no way to “hack” it. I feel like we as a society need to acknowledge that this probably applies to childcare, teaching, health and elder care to a large extent. That no matter how much private sector ingenuity you apply to…
I think some of the healthcare changes during my lifetime have increased efficiency and been fine (maybe even good) for patients. I used to have my vitals taken by the doctor. Now, that’s a nurse. Used to get vaccine shots from the doctor, now a nurse. I feel like docs used to do blood draws, now a nurse. All of that is good, IMO. Doctors may not like the 20 minute blocks, but overall I can get the same care at a low…
I wonder how the best teacher in the world teaching 5 classes of 40 would stack up against 200 people chosen at random from a pool who had already passed that class working 1:1 for 1 hr per day. Probably the ideal case is somewhere in the middle, but the point is that it's allocation of the teacher's time, and not production quality, that's the bottleneck when it comes to scaling teaching.
> But I wonder if part of that smaller focus comes from a deep realization that care doesn’t scale. My experience (and I believe it to be common) is that I'm really, really, really out of spare energy to care about anyone or anything else. Mind you, I'm in my best shape in years and I've explored my limits to find out they're actually way further than I originally thought, but still.
Every.
Single.
Thing.
It is overwhelming. See following comments on the need for slack/margin in capacity. Well, we also need it in emotional demands. Yet every commercially-moderated interaction in our society seems to be optimizing for making us care more about it, because that increases their revenue.
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Which is quite remarkable, because up until less than a century ago when women “entered the workforce” virtually every woman who had ever lived somehow managed to care for her 3+ children. Incidentally, large families do scale sublinearly with respect to the parents. The reason why is that even with merely natural spacing by the time they have a fourth child, the oldest is in a position to provide significant assista…
It is remarkable. I have one child, and it is by far the hardest thing I've ever done - far harder than any job I've had. It doesn't help that both parents are working full time. Maybe parenting has changed recently and we are too hands-on, but I can't imagine having 2, much less 3+ running around. Even if one of us stops working to raise the kids full time, it's way more taxing, physically and mentally, than working…
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. -- Adam Smith Care doesn't scale but self-inte…
Even the college-socialists, at least when they're talking about climate change, realize that the best we can do individually is save a few bags of CO_2 here and there, but if everyone in the world did this then we'd have a fighting chance.
Or consider the charity ads with lines like "if everyone reading this poster donated the cost of a cup of coffee a week ..."
We can care deeply for one person, or perhaps two or four. We can look out for a couple of coworkers. We can cultivate 5 or so deep and meaningful friendships. If everyone did this then we'd have improved the world a lot, at scale.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think some of the healthcare changes during my lifetime have increased efficiency and been fine (maybe even good) for patients. I used to have my vitals taken by the doctor. Now, that’s a nurse. Used to get vaccine shots from the doctor, now a nurse. I feel like docs used to do blood draws, now a nurse. All of that is good, IMO. Doctors may not like the 20 minute blocks, but overall I can get the same care at a low…
I question your teaching comment. Sitting there and receiving a lecture is a rather small part of learning (varies per student). For the rest of it you're going to find that class size is by far the biggest determiner of success. I wonder how the best teacher in the world teaching 5 classes of 40 would stack up against 200 people chosen at random from a pool who had already passed that class working 1:1 for 1 hr per…
I meant to expand that to clarify that other aspects (supporting students as they work to apply the lectured material) would/must be done 1:1 in person, but the core lecture can/should be delivered by those with particular skills in that area and that we could apply extra effort to editing/production value.
My son's calc class is taught via watch the lectures online/at-home and then apply them in class and at-home via exercises. The only difference from what I proposed is that the same teacher pre-recorded the lectures, which seems to a practical solution but not an inherently necessary constraint (and there are likely thousands of calc teachers making average quality such videos).
But absolutely a personalized teacher must be available 1:1 for at least part of the overall process.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. -- Adam Smith Care doesn't scale but self-inte…
That's not true, and only seems true because of highly selective examples. Money can force people to work, out of the necessity of survival. What it buys is reliability. You can force a toilet cleaner to come to work day after day, and the toilets stay clean. But human progress, social progress, economic growth, does not solely come from people grinding through their jobs. It comes from people 'giving it their all',…
Public schools are notoriously uncaring. It's expensive private schools which can afford to have small class sizes, so the teachers can develop personal relationships with the students. "Care" in this context isn't just "doing something for someone's benefit"; it requires a caretaker's undivided attention, which is why it doesn't scale.