The article doesn't mention of "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam, which explored pretty much the same idea, a.k.a. the value of the 'room', (which for Putnam was 'social capital'), and its rapid decline. Bowling Alone was published in 2000, looking back to 1950, and noted the massive, synchronous decline of civic participation in pretty much everything non-work-related across American society. Every kind of gentle, recurrent, voluntary activity you can imagine was on a pretty steep decline even before the smartphone or widespread adoption of the Internet
The room the economy can't see
201–210 of 296 posts
Re: The room the economy can't see
#202Here is where we’ve found those rooms: 1. In scouts gatherings at churches or campgrounds (zero religious connotation - just use of unused space during the week). 2. In play dates with other families. 3. In sports clubs that have regular practice. 4. In local libraries which are a fantastic resource, especially for caregivers of young kids. 5 In local elementary schools where playgrounds are open and older kids can r…
Unfortunately were I live...
The sports clubs were bought out by private equity and charge large fees. The local park is rented to the same private sports teams 7 days a week. The local elementary closed it's playground. (been open for 40 years, installed gates 5 years ago) Only scouts at the church remains, and it has become oddly focussed on getting fairly rich kids into college.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#203Volunteering is a great way to see lots of these rooms!
The article spends a good deal of time making the point that these rooms are getting more scarce since people can't afford to volunteer their time .
People below or near the poverty line can occasionally be found volunteering.
I think it speaks more about what people value, how they value their time. How many people can’t afford an hour a week? An hour a month? There is almost always some unhealthy activity that takes up at least an hour of your time a month, why not substitute?
Re: The room the economy can't see
#204Very 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…
We had youth clubs where I live when I grew up, but it never crossed my mind to go to them unfortunately I thought they’d be hostile places.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#205Volunteering is a great way to see lots of these rooms!
It is, but that doesn't help that room getting funded.
Volunteers fund lots of stuff! Throw them a buck or two, tell your friends, plenty of great things are community funded! If we can’t get a handout from on high it’s impossible? Have some passion!
(and, realpolitik style, if you get an excited community together with some funds, it’s usually easier to get that handout to top it off!)
Re: The room the economy can't see
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the planning restrictions don't just come from nowhere. People pay for them (with their lobbying time, lost rent and so on) because they want them. There's a market for "no poors in the neighborhood", an unpleasant market, but a market nonetheless. Add to that the fact that there's plenty of cheap housing in places with no jobs. So, what should we do? Should we fight against the "no poors in the neighborhood" m…
> There's a market for "no poors in the neighborhood", an unpleasant market, but a market nonetheless. I place freedom as a higher value than the market. Thus while I recognize that market exists, I don't allow anyone to serve it. Your ability to keep poor people away ends at your property line. They can walk on the sidewalks in front of your house because roads (a sidewalk is just another road) are not your property…
I mean, this is a very good philosophy to have.
The trouble is, the people who are most vocal about "no poors allowed" emphatically do not subscribe to it, and the people who are most likely to have power over these things do not subscribe to it (there is some, but not perfect, overlap between these groups).
And it's kinda tricky to go over their heads and get rules put in place at the next level above them (ie, the level that sets the rules they have to follow) that can effectively prevent this sort of thing.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternative view is that rooms like these would be a lot more feasible if market pricing of real estate was not being artificially driven up by planning restrictions. Historically, communities were able to afford their own versions of this in their own localities, but this isn’t possible anymore because of property prices. There was a community hall where I grew up that was funded like this along with a local spor…
Well, the planning restrictions don't just come from nowhere. People pay for them (with their lobbying time, lost rent and so on) because they want them. There's a market for "no poors in the neighborhood", an unpleasant market, but a market nonetheless. Add to that the fact that there's plenty of cheap housing in places with no jobs. So, what should we do? Should we fight against the "no poors in the neighborhood" m…
segregating poor people into their own area is a sure way to make them stay poor. i believe there is evidence that the best way to help people out of poverty is to let them live in mixed areas where they have a chance to associate with people who are better off than them. i believe the primary reason is that even if you work hard to improve your life, as long as everyone around you remains poor then you are limited or are self limiting in how much you can actually achieve.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parts of it seem not to be, but the bulk of it is. Here is a particularly clear example of opus-4.8-speak. > Now, I want to be careful here, because this is the part where it would be very easy to start waving my arms around. Every single one of these has many causes. Suburbs and cars. Television, and then phones. A long list of things that have nothing to do with me at all. I am not going to claim I have found the o…
Watching trust in online content of any kind disintegrate in realtime due to AI in a forum that on balance breathlessly touts AI is surreal.
You're conflating different things here. You would have to look very hard on HN to find someone who "breathlessly touts" the idea of publishing AI-generated blogposts under your own name.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#209It almost gets it.
These positive externalities are supposed to be paid from the owners of capital, primarily via tax. This is how it very successfully worked for quite some time. However, most western societies have decided in the last few decades to believe two things -
1) The government and elected representatives (and thus, voters) cannot be trusted with the allocation of capital spent on social welfare
and contradictorily,
2) The government and elected representatives can be trusted with the allocation of capital when it comes to the market and the owners of capital
Both of those things cannot be true at the same time.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your heart is in the right place, but I want to push back a bit. Zoning is a red herring, sure, but landlords and airbnb are a red herring too. The truth is worse. The natural bloc for restricting housing construction and increasing home values is all homeowners! Everyone with a mortgage, too! Maybe the fight is still winnable, but we need to see clearly what we're up against.
Everyone who owns a home is incentivized to keep the property value up, but not all of them actually feel and respond to that incentive. In the same way that a pig farm owner is incentivised to keep the beautiful clean nature, but makes more money farming smelly pigs instead.
People regularly have conflicting incentives.