As a parent, I've always wished that something like that would exist in the united states. I live in a nice town in the northeast but kids hang out at a local dunkin donuts or gas station or cvs. We have some of the highest property tax rates in the country and families move here specifically for the school system so there are a lot of young kids and there are a few playgrounds for younger kids but for 10-18 year olds there really is not much.
The room the economy can't see
61–70 of 296 posts
Re: The room the economy can't see
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was very well written, thank you. Looking forward to the follow-ups.
They already are out! They're linked at the end of the post, but here's a link to the next one: https://wilsoniumite.com/2026/06/19/make-work-and-sub-subsis...
Ah, thank you! I kind of assumed it would be coming soon as this post was dated as “today”, and it seemed illogical for the next post to already be out. :)
Re: The room the economy can't see
#63Maybe what can happen is that the people who benefit from it donate back into the organization of this room when they have the means decades later?
It's similar to how the economy benefits from paying workers a decent wage.
Due to many different reasons (including fear of revolutions), western countries decided it was preferable to pay workers a minimum wage. To the elite's surprise, it had an additional benefit to them. It turns out that workers spent the extra money on maybe eating meat once a week or buying an extra pair of pants. Later they even had a name for it: "Disposable income". Yes, the factory owner had to pay more wages, but they also increased the potential customer base.
I think these rooms have a similar benefit to society that is hard to measure directly. There are many stories of "third places" that leads to lower crime levels, lower unemployment etc.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#64We shouldn’t expect markets to solve all problems. That’s why there are public institutions and government regulations, to take care of the issues that the markets can’t. That the room only exists due to public grants isn’t a flaw, it’s what a functioning society should be doing. What the economy should do is provide the financing for such programs through taxes.
The author’s argument is that it is sort of flawed to fund it through a grant (top down decision making) rather than funding a UBI and allowing people to create third spaces as needed (emergent, bottom up decision making). I think he’s right that the former is liable to be missing a lot of local knowledge in the Hayekian sense, though I’m not sure a UBI would necessarily result in more third spaces per se.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#65I think the premise here is wrong; the market is perfectly capable of coming up with communal spaces. Some of the nicest buildings in a small town can be the churches, for example.
The issue is creating a space for a group of teenagers to exist in would be a legal hornets nest that anyone touching it would get stung by. It is a sex scandal waiting to happen, a fight waiting to happen, a drug den waiting to happen and all sorts of other problems.
Ie, the issue probably isn't the market, it is that in practice there is probably going to be a soft ban on this sort of space because whoever provides it is eventually going to be dragged over the coals by their community. People sorely underestimate what regulation does to someone who isn't making a commercial return - it is all hard downsides with no possibility of upside except some social reinforcement. So they stop.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#66Very 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.
you are so wrong. this is not ai.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#67Earlier 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…
Does Sweden have a problem with local land use restrictions? They have done a lot to liberalize their economy over the last few decades
Municipalities have far-reaching power in deciding what gets built where. Getting things built can take quite a long time.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think there's no zero friendship making power, but matchmaking is certainly less.
I have online friends from matchmaking, but it's certainly much harder. I'm not underestimating it, but my language might have been too strong.
Consider the average young person's discord group.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#69Earlier 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…
You're simplifying to the point of nonsense. Freedom you say? How about the freedom to have a say in government of the place you're living in? That seems a pretty fundamental freedom. When the rich folks of a town vote for planning restrictions and the vote goes through, that's an expression of freedom.
Sure, we both don't like it. We both agree it has bad consequences. But what I'm trying to say is that there's a real want backed by serious money. One way or another, it will create a market (maybe a shadow market). Rich folks will always want "no poors in the neighborhood" and will keep trying to find ways to spend money to ensure it. They'll never give up.
That's why I'm trying to think of solutions that don't require arm-wrestling one market vs another. For example, if we somehow created jobs elsewhere so that poor people wouldn't have to fight rich people for city air, then maybe that could work too.
Re: The room the economy can't see
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
you are so wrong. this is not ai.
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 one secret root of loneliness, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does. We cannot cleanly untangle these. That is just honestly true.