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The room the economy can't see

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Re: The room the economy can't see

#51

Post by bluGill »

cousin_it wrote: post #38
clickety_clack wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

> 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. They can live in a shack because that isn't your property and so you can't control what they do on it.

Freedom isn't absolute. They are not allowed to release poison into the air just because of freedom (unless they can keep that entirely to their property - which ends not far above their buildings since airplanes get their own roads above their house)

Re: The room the economy can't see

#52

Post by InsideOutSanta »

clickety_clack wrote: post #16
ixtli wrote: post #9

Very 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…

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…

This leads to another problem: markets externalize many costs, which is why regulation exists. Sure, you could let "the economy" build as much as it wants without any regulation, but at what cost?

Re: The room the economy can't see

#53

Post by infecto »

hiddencost wrote: post #49
infecto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or what if the average consumer wants to live a different life than what you want? I long for the memories of my childhood where I spent it outside for hours on end or when I had the opportunity to use the phone line to use the internet but I am not fully convinced what people what are third spaces. It’s hard to answer and I think partially for better or worse why markets are often a useful tool to o help figure it o…

IDK if you're familiar with Church, but that's the most heavily used third space. And we grant it tax exempt status which it abuses to push bad laws.

Yes I am well aware of churches and their tax exempt status and generally don’t agree with it. So I will ask what’s your punchline to my opinion? My point is I am not convinced this is a pure market problem so much as the average consumer no longer wants it. There are still plenty of third spaces to organize events like game nights though not dedicated and that includes community centers or other private entity community centers like churches or clubs. I think the problem is less the market stripped away the third space and more that for better or worse the demand does not exist.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#54

Post by knollimar »

alephnerd wrote: post #11

How much of this is just due to changing tastes? For example, Minecraft, Roblox, or an Xbox live subscription are the new lobbies for younger generations. Heck, the article mentions Internet cafes but those died out once computer and smartphone penetration reached high double digits. There are fewer of these third spaces because there is less demand for them than before due to changing preferences, as could be seen w…

Even the types of games I believe are shifting to less third spaces. Matchmaking is replacing the MMO beginner town where a lot of the socialization happens.

I'd wager a lot of it is "to protect the kids" (read: remove socialization since platforms don't want to expend the effort to police bsd actors)

Re: The room the economy can't see

#55

Post by cousin_it »

api wrote: post #8

Markets are very good at a lot of important things, but the idea that’s taken hold in many places is market fundamentalism. It’s the idea that the market should run absolutely everything and if the market doesn’t do it, it has no value. It’s like the inverted doppelgänger of Soviet Communist ideology that the state and the party know what is best and if they don’t decide to do it we don’t need it. Fundamentalist thin…

Yeah. There's an even simpler way to formulate it: different types of goods require different mixes of market vs planning. For example, video games can be an almost completely free market. Food too (as long as it's checked for public health concerns). But things like water supply or power supply seem to have their own gravity, which again and again leads to more centralized solutions: see the Wikipedia pages for "natural monopoly" and "public utility". And then there are goods like policing, which should absolutely be centralized.

I don't know by what general rule we can tell which goods require how much planning, except empirically. But it's strange that the consensus that actually exists (more market for some kinds of goods, more planning for other kinds) isn't talked about much, and people just prefer to argue about fundamentalisms in a vacuum, as if all goods behaved the same.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#56

Post by alephnerd »

inigyou wrote: post #50
alephnerd wrote: post #11

How much of this is just due to changing tastes? For example, Minecraft, Roblox, or an Xbox live subscription are the new lobbies for younger generations. Heck, the article mentions Internet cafes but those died out once computer and smartphone penetration reached high double digits. There are fewer of these third spaces because there is less demand for them than before due to changing preferences, as could be seen w…

Playing Minecraft with friends at a lan party in a social room is better than playing it at home.

It might be to you, but then we wouldn't have seen the shifts away from LAN parties.

The reality is for anyone below 35, their primary touchpoint with their friends is via social media, and they view chatting and playing remotely as a similar experience to a LAN party.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#57

Post by derektank »

clickety_clack wrote: post #16
ixtli wrote: post #9

Very 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…

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…

Does Sweden have a problem with local land use restrictions? They have done a lot to liberalize their economy over the last few decades

Re: The room the economy can't see

#58

Post by alephnerd »

knollimar wrote: post #54
alephnerd wrote: post #11

How much of this is just due to changing tastes? For example, Minecraft, Roblox, or an Xbox live subscription are the new lobbies for younger generations. Heck, the article mentions Internet cafes but those died out once computer and smartphone penetration reached high double digits. There are fewer of these third spaces because there is less demand for them than before due to changing preferences, as could be seen w…

Even the types of games I believe are shifting to less third spaces. Matchmaking is replacing the MMO beginner town where a lot of the socialization happens. I'd wager a lot of it is "to protect the kids" (read: remove socialization since platforms don't want to expend the effort to police bsd actors)

This underestimates how friendships are made by younger people even via matchmaking in lobbies depending on the game.

Heck, I have friends who are slightly younger than me who made durable friendships in League via matchmaking.

Re: The room the economy can't see

#59

Post by svnt »

ixtli wrote: post #9

Very 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…

It is mostly written by llm. “narrower” and “I want to put a fence here” hedging, etc. This is very 4.8. Maybe llm that has been somewhat massaged by a human to sound less ai.
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