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Care Doesn't Scale

stevenscrawls.com

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Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#21

Post by dannyobrien »

tehabe wrote: post #2

This is one reason why we have a state, which collect taxes and can provide those services.

well, except for the fact that, as the article states, it doesn't scale. Or rather, it scales poorly: the quality of care provided by a nation state is going to differ in degree and quality compared to the 1:1 care that humans probably need (and certainly traumatised humans).

I'm not sure this comes as a surprise to anyone except for those who have had no interaction with state-provided social services. I'd also say that a level of care that does not reach to that 1:1 standard is still appreciably better than no care, which may be what one might otherwise receive.

The open question is can we work out better, decentralized ways of providing support that take advantage of the new social technologies that we've developed since the construction of the modern state and its welfare services in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#22

Post by KeplerBoy »

tehabe wrote: post #2

This is one reason why we have a state, which collect taxes and can provide those services.

Care is not something that is magically performed by the state or money. At some point someone has to physically wash and feed the elderly in the retirement homes.

If past governments or cultural environments messed up demographics, states might end up with a significant fraction (Germany already has 22% aged 65+) of the population in need of that care, which requires another significant share of the population to just do that instead of producing actual stuff.

This will either get ugly in one way or another or we will need scalable tech solutions.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#23

Post by nsbshssh »

kome wrote: post #20

I have what I think it's a very good article on the economy of care - making exactly this point and others, but it's in the dungeon of peer review for more than one year. And the reviewers do not even answer my emails.

Can it just be published on arxiv?

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#24

Post by api »

A lot of what makes society and politics so hard comes from the fact that humans have among the most demanding offspring of any living creature. This starts with pregnancy and birth which is a life threatening medical condition with a high mortality rate without modern medicine. We can’t reproduce and raise our children without dedicating gigantic amounts of energy to it, causing an inherent tension between the need to do so and the desires of both individuals and entities like corporations and states that want claim to that labor.

If we laid eggs and our young were viable more quickly our politics would be orders of magnitude simpler. It would basically be the politics of twenty somethings, but for everyone.

On the plus side, it’s probably why we have among the longest life spans of any land mammal. Grandparents helped with child rearing, so societies with longevity probably did a better job raising children.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#25

Post by johanneskanybal »

ersiees wrote: post #7

I think this is also interesting to keep in mind when thinking about the changes to the job market that are possible due to technology (e.g. AI). Most of care will not be automated any time soon. And it is a huge part of the economy.

Yes this was my first thought too.

Nice to see this post on HN.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#26

Post by nsbshssh »

plaidfuji wrote: post #10

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…

Unless one lets go of ego. The human being is perfectly engineered to raise its young. We are automota of reproduction, for millions of years.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#27

Post by Gare »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #22
tehabe wrote: post #2

This is one reason why we have a state, which collect taxes and can provide those services.

Care is not something that is magically performed by the state or money. At some point someone has to physically wash and feed the elderly in the retirement homes. If past governments or cultural environments messed up demographics, states might end up with a significant fraction (Germany already has 22% aged 65+) of the population in need of that care, which requires another significant share of the population to ju…

Or importing even more foreign workers. Which I'm not strictly against, but does come with it's own set of challenges.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#28

Post by fieldcny »

The premise is wrong, you can care for more than one other person at a time.

People have children, in this world we can only care about our spouse or one child?

Hardly.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#29

Post by kang »

> Scale isn’t bad, at least not necessarily. Industrial is perfectly capable of being better than custom. Sometimes the YouTube video is more helpful than the private tutor.

This is not true; consider the argument that there is always a loss of quality in scaling. Industrial maybe better than average custom, but is always worse than best customs. Broadcast lecture is almost always worse than a tutor whose discourse is customised to student's current knowledge. (The word guru (literally, one who leads towards light) is wrongly translated to teacher, for which the word in sanskrit is shikshak.)

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#30

Post by rgrieselhuber »

dqv wrote: post #19
bluetomcat wrote: post #8

This is ultimately a dichotomy between having the family unit or "the state" as the central point of governance. Many totalitarian regimes looked at newborns as "belonging to the state". The result is a unified mass person who dresses, thinks and acts in predictable ways. The more power, personal connection and influence parents have over their children, the more diverse society will become.

What? What does this have to do with orphaned children?

It’s not a reference to orphans.
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