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Care Doesn't Scale

stevenscrawls.com

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Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#31

Post by worldsayshi »

dannyobrien wrote: post #21
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…

Care doesn't scale, but a lot of activities around care should be scalable. A caregiver can be helped so they can spend as little time as possible on auxiliary tasks like admin or logistics.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#32

Post by Eisenstein »

taylorius wrote: post #16

I think in the future, descendants of today's LLM models and some future version of Tesla's Optimus could create a paradigm shift in how care is given. I'm hopeful that when I get old, and inevitably come to need some help with living, that such a solution will be available.

I would like the option to die painlessly before I end up needing a robot to change my diaper.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#33

Post by zeroCalories »

dannyobrien wrote: post #21
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…

I don't think there is any contradiction here. Government care can work, but it simply cannot benefit from economies of scale. Gonna need to double the income tax to pay for elders that have been abandoned by their children.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#34

Post by worldsayshi »

taylorius wrote: post #16

I think in the future, descendants of today's LLM models and some future version of Tesla's Optimus could create a paradigm shift in how care is given. I'm hopeful that when I get old, and inevitably come to need some help with living, that such a solution will be available.

Let's then hope that the LLM solution is FOSS so that relatives and the one being cared for can be in control of the service and avoid enshittification.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#35

Post by kome »

wazoox wrote: post #18

This has been well-known for ages and is a major subject of feminist studies. Care jobs are mostly feminine, and don't scale, and this dichotomy plays a big role in the overall wage gap.

yep, super important contributions but hardly understood or studied in mainstream economics

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#36

Post by auggierose »

nsbshssh wrote: post #23
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?

But then nobody cares.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#37

Post by api »

kang wrote: post #29

> 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 i…

I don’t think that holds for everything. Industrial 3nm chips are probably better than whatever you would get if people tried to DIY this. Lots of things get better with scale: materials, precision machinery, process efficiency, power generation.

But there’s also plenty of things that don’t work this way. Care is one of the most extreme things that does not.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#38

Post by kubb »

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.

Totalitarian regimes often uphold traditional values like family as a means of control, promoting unity and loyalty to the state-yet they’ll redefine these values whenever it suits their ideology.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#39

Post by dqv »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #30
dqv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s not a reference to orphans.

Then I'm completely lost on how it is relevant to an article that specifically mentions the care of orphans as its central example for how care does not scale.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#40

Post by durumu »

kang wrote: post #29

> 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 i…

I agree the average tutor is better than the average lecturer. But if I watch a YouTube lecture, then I might have access to the best lecturer in the world, or at least a 99%ile lecturer, e.g 3blue1brown. This only works because of the scale -- it wouldn't be possible for millions to get access to tutors this good 1 on 1.
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