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The room the economy can't see

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Re: The room the economy can't see

#161

Post by doctorpangloss »

ixtli wrote: post #9

Very 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 w…

another POV is that many problems are political, they're not solved by markets or even math. that is, the hard part isn't "optimizing." how to use land is a political problem. the "optimizing" you are talking about is apathy, it's one of many valid, if inferior, political choices.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#162

Post by the_sleaze_ »

This is what religion is for, and what you refer to as THE ECONOMY is simply the hard wired human precondition stand in when you decide there is no God(s).

"The Market" (God) would never have built such a place! The market (God) punishes any behavior that is outside its predilections! We must sacrifice to appease the The Market in order to gain its favor!

Back to the 3rd space for teens. What is the first issue you think of when teens gather in that 3rd space? Behavior, what are they doing, how will it influence them and eachother. This is where the religious moral code and moral guidance comes in. At a church (or w/e) there will be someone there who would at least monitor them. And sure its beset with issues but so is everything at some level.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#163

Post by pjc50 »

roenxi wrote: post #65

I think the premise here is wrong; the market is perfectly capable of coming up with communal spaces. Some of the nicest buildings in a small town can be the churches, for example. The issue is creating a space for a group of teenagers to exist in would be a legal hornets nest that anyone touching it would get stung by. It is a sex scandal waiting to happen, a fight waiting to happen, a drug den waiting to happen and…

> whoever provides it is eventually going to be dragged over the coals by their community

Something deeply wrong here. Both that this level of antisocial behavior is expected, and that liability would be placed on people who were not meaningfully responsible for it but just happen to have their name on the lease.

> regulation

I suspect what people are actually scared of in America is not regulation (from the legislature) but litigation, which is not the same thing even if it can have the same effects.

An example of how to destroy a community through outside litigants pursuing the culture war is what's happened to the Women's Institute, a pretty old organization, in the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/14/womens-insti...

This is litigation itself as a form of antisocial behavior.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#164

Post by pjc50 »

ixtli wrote: post #9

Very 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 w…

Note that this actually exists in a mixed economy: it's a private members association, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverok , which is basically a big D&D club that has achieved a small amount of government funding.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#165

Post by hombre_fatal »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #162

This is what religion is for, and what you refer to as THE ECONOMY is simply the hard wired human precondition stand in when you decide there is no God(s). "The Market" (God) would never have built such a place! The market (God) punishes any behavior that is outside its predilections! We must sacrifice to appease the The Market in order to gain its favor! Back to the 3rd space for teens. What is the first issue you t…

There should be a place for people, especially teens, to gather without a bunch of woo woo baggage. I found church incredibly isolating as a kid because we weren’t there just to be, we were there under this expectation that we were partaking in some superstition.

The article already points out a room that the kids were enjoying without religious crap imposed on them. We need solutions beyond bolting on these things to institutions that come with ulterior motives rather than “come here and just be”.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#166

Post by nicbou »

michaelleland wrote: post #125
nicbou wrote: post #86

In my experience, the key element is slack. For a while, I did not have to worry about money, so I could afford to be generous with my time, and to work on things that are not financially viable. It did a lot of good. I've built so many useful things and helped so many people individually. Now, AI is tightening the screws, so I spend a lot more time worrying about making money.[0] I have to be leaner and meaner, and…

I'm a father of 7 children. I'm the youngest of 5 siblings and my wife is the youngest of 6 siblings. Both of our mothers had college degrees and jobs and chose to stay at home with the children, and neither of our fathers had anything other than middle-class incomes. My wife has also chosen to be a homemaker, and I watch in awe at how much she gets done. She creates a space where the "slack" you mention can happen--…

This is really cool! I am happy for you and your family. I don't mean to pry, but I'd love more details.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#167

Post by Mezzie »

One aspect of the financialization of everything/the 'economics over all' mindset that I don't see often discussed is that if you for whatever reason can't make the 'sound' financial choice, you just...drown.

The article talks about picking up another shift instead of visiting grandma, but for some people, they can't pick up another shift. If most people pick up the extra shift, that becomes expected and locks out the people who can't and, in a society where all that matters is your income, you become homeless and die.

I'm actively preparing to end up homeless in 5-15 years because of this.

I have a full time job, but I also have MS. The ordinary financial advice for someone in my situation is to get another job/a side hustle/etc. to dig myself out of the hole, but that's not possible. It's also not possible for me to dedicate my 'outside of work time' to career progression (e.g. creating a portfolio since I can't use my work on the job since it's all proprietary) because I don't have 'outside of work time'. All of my outside of work time is either spent recovering from work or handling my health issues.

So I'm slowly drowning, and I know that there will come a time when I won't be able to make it. I can't work over 40 hours a week, so my society thinks I have no value and deserve to die.

I'm just hoping to hold on until I'm old enough to be ugly, because being a visually impaired homeless woman is just asking for constant assaults. Maybe that won't be true if I can make it to 50 or 55 with a roof over my head.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#168

Post by sublinear »

alephnerd wrote: post #40
sublinear wrote: post #39

I'm fully prepared to be downvoted into oblivion and called naive or worse, but in the USA we have non-profit organizations. You might have heard of things like the YMCA, BGCA, etc.

Additionally, most municipalities run community centers and libraries which provide programming. The issue is there is declining interest in participating in these kinds of activities. It's a societal cultural shift, and those are not things that can be shifted by policy as can be seen with various failed attempts at social engineering in Singapore and China.

Yeah the highest participation areas have significant poverty and lean conservative.

My point is that it isn't an unreasonable solution and it achieves everything outlined in the blog. The only catch is that it's incompatible with their politics. :)

Re: The room the economy can't see

#169

Post by eszed »

infecto wrote: post #48
multjoy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people generally want is time, and then if you have time you obviously need to spend it somewhere. If not work or home, then literally a third space. >t’s hard to answer and I think partially for better or worse why markets are often a useful tool to o help figure it out The point of the article is that the markets are blind to this sort of social good.

I am not convinced any other entity can do “social good” on average better than some form of a market. The simpler explanation here is that board games are still a niche hobby and not a lot of folks play them to require a third space. And these third spaces generally still exist but they require some organization. The point of my comment is I don’t agree with the article. Back to what I said. Kids don’t even play out…

> Kids don’t even play outside anymore and I don’t think it’s because the market took away third spaces

I agree with this, but I think it reinforces GP's point that what's missing is time: slack in the day. I grew up playing outside with all the neighborhood kids, and the critical enabler was that there were always adults around during the after-school hours. Not actively hanging out with us, or even closely supervising, but around. Some of them (mine, but only for a few years), were stay-at-home mothers, but by no means all. One family had a dad who got home early from work. Another kid we couldn't play at their house certain days, but we could others, because their parents had variable schedules.

There were also more kids around, because families back then had more kids than they do nowadays. I think that's also (not entirely, but to a significant degree) a consequence of adults having less time - across their life-cycles, and in their days - that isn't devoted to work.

No ones' parents did gig-work, or worked two jobs. Most parents were 9-5, or maybe 8-4 (or I don't know: I was a kid, and not paying attention to things like that), but no one went to "after school care", because there were always adults around after school got out.

Hell, I think the need for third-places (for kids) mentioned in the article is a down-stream effect of the increased time pressures on adults' lives - as is the disappearance of third-places for adults.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#170

Post by pixl97 »

inigyou wrote: post #155
pixl97 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which is the central thesis here No, not exactly. We're dealing with a historical confluence of long term changes in humanity. Before 1900 or so and some people had a lot of kids survive and others had a lot of kids die. The population rate increased very slowly, and not from a lack of trying. Then around the time I stated people figured out germs were real, chlorine in water was good, and washing ones hands was a s…

[flagged]

>There is no meaning of life

Don't half ass it, brace the full absurdity of the universe.

The only purpose why we are here is to take entropy from an ordered state to one of maximum disorder.

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