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Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

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Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#351

Post by snoot »

vaidhy wrote: post #301
wikibob wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the city or the vast suburbs of the peninsula / South Bay?

I have similar experiences as the top-comment. Moved to US in 2017, bought a house in suburbs of Seattle.. have great relationship with neighbors.. meet new people through kids' school. I went to houston for a short period and met some interesting people through meetup groups. I think some of it is just individual leanings - you need to adjust to be part of a community.

Exactly. I also have some enduring friendships - the longest having now lasted 14 years or so with people I met at meetup groups.

A crucial point that gets brought up on HN time and time again, is that you need to let yourself develop interests that are outside of work, and then you can meet people who share those interests.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#352

Post by tsol »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #255

I need to answer this because I solved this problem as a super introvert. This reply will get buried. Quite honestly, I realized I was boring and my life was boring. I had a boring job with no travel that didn’t involve meeting anyone interesting. I quit my boring career and deliberately filtered for: - has a technical element but not software development - travel, or interact with a lot of people as a result of the…

>Women are emotions. If you are programming rust on embedded systems, that is not sexy. Your friends will be boring. Your life will be boring: you will be boring.

>So I solved it by moving into an externally facing role That mixed programming with customer and other interactions.

What did this do for you? Did you get new friends, hobbies, etc?

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#353

Post by shagie »

kodah wrote: post #166
dangus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, big cities have pretty good quality of life and people who live there do actually have friends and social lives. I grew up in the suburbs, and I've lived in big cities, urban areas in medium sized cities, and exurbs as well. The cities aren't as different as non-urban people think. But also, they're better in a lot of the ways that most people would expect: more things to do, better food, better sh…

> And, oh yeah, cities are where the jobs are. We can and should change this as much as possible.

There are certain job occupations that only work when done at scale.

The ones I can point most directly to are service, retail, and healthcare. These need population densities in order to be efficient.

Unless you are looking at the classic old general store (or in the midwest - you do all your grocery shopping at Kwik Trip - the gas station), it is difficult to have a grocery store outside a city or town of sufficient size. Note that the prices and variety in the smaller stores are more than if you are able to go to a large store in a city.

Likewise, if you want to eat at a restaurant - sure, there are some that are in the "this is a restaurant located a 10 minute drive away from where you can see the window of your neighbor from your window". The norm for this, however, is in a town or city.

And then there's healthcare. Rural hospitals are failing. You don't find dentists on country roads.

These things (and more) 'conspire' to make it so that the services they offer are more efficiently done in a city and the ones in a city can out compete the ones that are located further away from others.

We can then bring up the carbon footprint of living outside a city. If you drive into a city to get goods ( https://ctl.mit.edu/sites/default/files/library/public/Dimit... ) that can be a hefty footprint that is exacerbated by not being able to use public transportation. Another look at it - https://www.treehugger.com/urban-or-rural-which-is-more-ener... :

> But a different picture emerges when you look at per capita consumption rates — cities have the lowest annual energy use per household (85.3 million Btu) and household member (33.7 million Btu) of all four categories. Rural areas consume about 95 million Btu per household each year, followed by towns (102 million) and suburbs (109 million).

And this then leads to that the jobs for the sectors of the economy where you need to physically be present somewhere (and that is a significant portion of them) are more efficient in a city. Coupled with the more efficent use of land and power with the city, this brings down the costs and maximizes the amount that a person makes... if they live in a city (all other things being equal).

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#354

Post by kodah »

shagie wrote: post #353
kodah wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, oh yeah, cities are where the jobs are. We can and should change this as much as possible.

There are certain job occupations that only work when done at scale. The ones I can point most directly to are service, retail, and healthcare. These need population densities in order to be efficient. Unless you are looking at the classic old general store (or in the midwest - you do all your grocery shopping at Kwik Trip - the gas station), it is difficult to have a grocery store outside a city or town of sufficien…

The vaste majority of high paying jobs can be done remotely. I'm referring to lawyers, programmers, accountants, etc...

Rural areas are failing because we continue to extract wealth out of them. You actually get right up against talking about it in your wall of text but then just abruptly lose the thought.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#355

Post by dangus »

midhhhthrow wrote: post #211
dangus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, big cities have pretty good quality of life and people who live there do actually have friends and social lives. I grew up in the suburbs, and I've lived in big cities, urban areas in medium sized cities, and exurbs as well. The cities aren't as different as non-urban people think. But also, they're better in a lot of the ways that most people would expect: more things to do, better food, better sh…

Cities have much lower standard of living because no one can afford shelter. There’s too much traffic which means you can’t go anywhere except walking range. So there may actually be equal or less to do in the city simply because your range is so short. And crime is huge problem too, now more than ever

I'll just wear myself out if I keep letting myself respond to feelings-based comments like yours with facts, like how NYC is below the national average in crime safety [1] and well below national average on obesity. [2]

I shouldn't exert myself pointing out that the average cost of a vehicle is about $5000 per year [3], which costs a lot more than the unlimited miles you can travel with a $75/month bus/train pass in Chicago. [4]

It would probably blow the minds of car-dwellers to find out that it only takes 20 minutes to walk a mile. [5]

[1] https://realestate.usnews.com/places/new-york/new-york-city/...

[2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/obesity.pa...

[3] https://www.move.org/average-cost-owning-a-car/

[4] https://www.transitchicago.com/fares/

[5] https://www.nike.com/a/how-long-does-it-take-to-walk-a-mile

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#356

Post by dangus »

_ktx2 wrote: post #278
1270018080 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

In short, equity. In longer form, a lot of people don't have the chance to leave their towns and that is in part due to opportunity, another way of looking at it is that extracting people out of their communities and consolidating them in cities isn't very equitable. Historically we've relied on colleges to give people a ticket out of where they come from. In the long term that does real damage to those communities.…

I think you misunderstand. Their families are already in cities. (And "cities" includes suburban areas)

This isn't 1800's America where most families are on rural subsistence farms.

People can choose to stay wherever they want, but the networks that make up the economy have to physically exist. Factories, warehouses, etc...look at a satellite view of the Chicago River from Goose Island down to Midway airport. It's a bunch of physical industrial infrastructure: warehouses, factories, railyards, etc. Do you propose these all instead spread out and get located in random middle-of-nowhere places where there are no employees, shops, restaurants, schools, etc?

Even data centers need to be near population centers. Why put us-east-1 near Roanoke and Lynchburg, VA instead of Roy, New Mexico?

We can't all just become remote knowledge worker hermits. Heck, we all saw how terrible remote learning is for children with the pandemic. [1]

[1] https://apnews.com/article/online-school-covid-learning-loss...

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#357

Post by dangus »

dumpsterlid wrote: post #175
dangus wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions. This article says that the trend has started since 2013. In what way has American individualism changed since then? I would say it hasn't. How could American culture shift that much in less than 10 years in this specific span? I don't buy that explanation without more thorough study. American individualism has existed far l…

"I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions." Definitely, especially because the article seems to avoid the elephant in the room. The US is amidst full on class warfare, the transfer of wealth from the poor and middleclass to the wealthy has been staggering, we never recovered from the 2008 crash, only rich people did. The rich are grinding us to pieces and honestly…

I was thinking about this as well.

In short, spending time alone could also have to do with being beat down by work. Long hours, lower pay, worse benefits. Statistically, America's lower class is getting poorer.

I have to think it's easier to get together with friends and family more when you have more free time and disposable income.

But even this speculation is a jump to conclusions. I am very wary of articles like this that are quick to assign cause.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#359

Post by bergenty »

watwut wrote: post #324
bergenty wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these suggestions are optional. The biggest part of community is it is a forced coexistence. Anything optional takes willpower and most people just will not do consistently.

Optional community is strictly superior to forced one. Cause you can get away if it becomes abusive.

For a small proportion of abused people. It usually works very well for 95%+ of the people in it. It’s definitely not worth throwing it in the trash for those kinds of numbers.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#360

Post by bergenty »

watwut wrote: post #316
zarzavat wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it more meaningful if your labour is instead spent as a minute cog in a vast and faceless corporation? At least you can wear the clothes you wash. Don’t get me wrong, washing machines are great, probably one of the greatest inventions ever. We now can lead meaningful and consequential lives, but newly potent sources of inconsequentiality have arisen.

It gives you better control over your life. Cause that wife was utterly and absolutely dependent on husband. There was nothing she could do to improve her life if there were issues. And if he was gone (say due to being sick, dead, in prison) she was utterly absolutely effed. If be beat her up, she was helpless. If he was emotionally manipulative she was helpless. If the marriage just sucked, both were trapped. If he…

Still seems like a superior system for the overwhelming majority of people as compared to something that works for no one.
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