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Communities are not fungible

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: Communities are not fungible

#21

Post by energy123 »

FranklinJabar wrote: post #9
testdelacc1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city that consistently builds about 3-4% of the number of homes we need to build each year. We don’t build rail, we don’t electricity transmission infrastructure, all of which increases our cost of living. NIMBYs are doing great, I’d say.

> NIMBYs are doing great, I’d say. NIMBYs, or just typical anglo incompetence? How can you tell the difference? It's easy to blame other people for systemic dysfunction.

You can tell the difference by observing that, intra-city (not inter-city, inter-state, or inter-country, which introduces confounds), the suburban locations with the highest land values build the least. Enclaves like where Marc Andreessen lives, where his family unit has been involved in successful NIMBY activism. That is an outcome that can only be explained by asymmetric government interference due to more effective lobbying from politically active NIMBYs.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#22

Post by kristoff_it »

This the strongest argument against building a community on top of proprietary services, especially if's a startup / VC money is involved. It's guaranteed to enshittify / sell out to a big company, and your community will crumble.

That being said, I am guilty of helping building Zig communities on Discord, but in my defense none (literally none) of the FOSS alternatives was good enough at the time. And I'm also not really happy with plenty of the newer ones.

I'm now working on my own take of what an open source Discord alternative should look like and I plan to move away from Discord by the end of the year. You can find it on codeberg, it's called awebo, I'm intentionally not posting a link since these are super early days.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#23

Post by energy123 »

FranklinJabar wrote: post #13
JuniperMesos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider to be anglo incompetence in dwelling construction that isn't NIMBYism?

Owning land. Whoever came up with this idea needs to be hung and revived a million times, and then tortured to death a million more. Our society has been mutilated as a result. I think you could ascribe this to either NIMBY or YIMBY harebrained thinking. We need a third option that's pro-human. We need public fucking housing.

There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation to allow more private development. I want both. They are complementary.

There's also overlap between YIMBYs are Georgists, they share some skepticism around private land ownership.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#24

Post by gzread »

DocTomoe wrote: post #8
testdelacc1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city that consistently builds about 3-4% of the number of homes we need to build each year. We don’t build rail, we don’t electricity transmission infrastructure, all of which increases our cost of living. NIMBYs are doing great, I’d say.

That would imply that 96-97% of population growth in your city immediately becomes homeless. Obviously, that is not the case.

[dead]

Re: Communities are not fungible

#25

Post by nsvd2 »

kristoff_it wrote: post #22

This the strongest argument against building a community on top of proprietary services, especially if's a startup / VC money is involved. It's guaranteed to enshittify / sell out to a big company, and your community will crumble. That being said, I am guilty of helping building Zig communities on Discord, but in my defense none (literally none) of the FOSS alternatives was good enough at the time. And I'm also not r…

I'm guessing you looked at matrix and decided it wasn't suitable?

Re: Communities are not fungible

#26

Post by nicbou »

Fantastic writing. The stone walls and fabric metaphor was brilliant. It's the sort of storytelling that made Steve Jobs' ideas so compelling (to me).

I see the same value in community, especially as an immigrant helping other immigrants. Someone arriving in a new country is much more likely to be happy and successful if they quickly find a community there. Communities hold so much knowledge that is freely shared but rarely written down. Think immigrants helping each other navigate the unwritten immigration office policies and surfacing knowledge that is invisible to locals, let alone LLMs.

I've been thinking about building an intentional community for years, mostly to surface that knowledge. Currently it's all happening in private groups on a dying Meta property. Previously it happened on a forum that unceremoniously went dark.

But I am afraid that all of this will be in vain, and that the age of small forums is long gone.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#27

Post by nicbou »

kristoff_it wrote: post #22

This the strongest argument against building a community on top of proprietary services, especially if's a startup / VC money is involved. It's guaranteed to enshittify / sell out to a big company, and your community will crumble. That being said, I am guilty of helping building Zig communities on Discord, but in my defense none (literally none) of the FOSS alternatives was good enough at the time. And I'm also not r…

On the other hand, these platforms are free and much easier to work with, especially for non-technical administrators.

As of today, there just doesn't seem to be any good simple forum software. They all seem to need quite a bit of upkeep.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#30

Post by Meneth »

nicbou wrote: post #27
kristoff_it wrote: post #22

This the strongest argument against building a community on top of proprietary services, especially if's a startup / VC money is involved. It's guaranteed to enshittify / sell out to a big company, and your community will crumble. That being said, I am guilty of helping building Zig communities on Discord, but in my defense none (literally none) of the FOSS alternatives was good enough at the time. And I'm also not r…

On the other hand, these platforms are free and much easier to work with, especially for non-technical administrators. As of today, there just doesn't seem to be any good simple forum software. They all seem to need quite a bit of upkeep.

Gratis in terms of dollars, but not free. You pay by letting them take your community hostage.
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