What most don't understand is that the economy IS us caring for each other. When you go to a restaurant when you are hungry, or a store to get what you need, or a hospital when you get sick, you are getting care. Virtually most people are taking care of other people. And yes it doesn't scale because it takes all of us to care for each other.
Care Doesn't Scale
71–80 of 382 posts
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#72This is a pretty big realization and one that resonates strongly with me. As an engineer, parenting can be frustrating, of course for the usual reasons, but also because you realize there’s really no way to “hack” it. I feel like we as a society need to acknowledge that this probably applies to childcare, teaching, health and elder care to a large extent. That no matter how much private sector ingenuity you apply to…
I think some of the healthcare changes during my lifetime have increased efficiency and been fine (maybe even good) for patients. I used to have my vitals taken by the doctor. Now, that’s a nurse. Used to get vaccine shots from the doctor, now a nurse. I feel like docs used to do blood draws, now a nurse. All of that is good, IMO. Doctors may not like the 20 minute blocks, but overall I can get the same care at a low…
> Used to get vaccine shots from the doctor, now a nurse. I feel like docs used to do blood draws, now a nurse.
Weren't these always done by nurses? The doctor would do the determination of what you get, but nurse being the one executing these is something that was here for decades.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#73Care does scale and the human race is evidence of that. It is centralisation that doesn't scale well.
but centralization is in many ways the thing that is needed to scale all sorts of other things.
No. Centralization isn't needed to scale, it's just needed to exploit scale. Exploitation has become so commonplace it's replaced everything as the primary "desirable metric". I'm writing this comment on a platform founded on the idea of exploitation being a desirable metric.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#74I 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.
Exoskeletons should be able to help old people balance etc.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#75> But I wonder if part of that smaller focus comes from a deep realization that care doesn’t scale. My experience (and I believe it to be common) is that I'm really, really, really out of spare energy to care about anyone or anything else. Mind you, I'm in my best shape in years and I've explored my limits to find out they're actually way further than I originally thought, but still.
There was a story on HN a while ago that I can't seem to remember the title of. It was something along the lines of "The optimal amount of slack in an organization is not zero", or something like that. The argument was that, since it's impossible to plan for every eventuality, you need a certain amount of slack capacity in order to retain some flexibility. And that by always using 100% capacity, we end up dysfunction…
I can't help you with the title, but with another paragraph from that story, should you want to find it.
Paraphrasing from memory:
> When you are in a major Chinese city you may street sweepers sitting on the side walk chitchatting. The first thing you may think of it as waste that could be eliminated. But it also acts as a buffer.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#76> There was some pain in that realization. So many of my utopian dreams—what if we could live in a society where everyone can get the food, the housing, the healthcare, the opportunities for growth that they deserve—come from a place of wishing that we could live in a world where people are cared for. I'd like to offer some comfort to the author on this score. Food, housing, healthcare broadly... while these are all…
Although it’s theoretically possible and theoretically economical for individual care ‘to happen’, it doesn’t in practice for the housing economy. If anything it’s decreasing year by year on average.
Especially when you look at construction quality, the average quality of say new built condos in any major city has gone way way down since the 90s.
Of course on average condo designs have on average gotten fancier with quirkier architecture, and building codes have gotten more complex, so maybe it’s not due to builders caring way less, but the end result is shoddy work either way.
Edit: And the average home buyer has no method of separating out all these confounding factors, so it boils down to a single congealed mess.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#77This 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.
You are assuming all family influence is good. There are lots of abusive families and poor parents, though.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#78What most don't understand is that the economy IS us caring for each other. When you go to a restaurant when you are hungry, or a store to get what you need, or a hospital when you get sick, you are getting care. Virtually most people are taking care of other people. And yes it doesn't scale because it takes all of us to care for each other.
> What most don't understand is that the economy IS us caring for each other.
But when those businesses we seek care from scale, the system is no longer closed.
A portion of the care I give or receive is siphoned off and sent to shareholders or a wealth business owner. When caring happens through capitalism, a portion of our care is depleted with every transaction.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
but can you argue with them for an indeterminate period of time in earnest dialogue until the idea goes CLICK inside your head? You cannot, and so the value is much lessened because that critical access isn’t present.
You can’t do that for the average lecturer either… assuming it’s a normal college lecture room with hundreds of students.
Nonetheless the 99th percentile lecturer is still better than the 50th percentile tutor in most cases.
Re: Care Doesn't Scale
#80Care does scale and the human race is evidence of that. It is centralisation that doesn't scale well.
but centralization is in many ways the thing that is needed to scale all sorts of other things.
yeah centralization is a proxy for trust and stability, it adds some friction on the edge to give you that benefit
i also think that ultimately no single system is best and that regular renegotiation about the amount of central vs decentral is key (something we should help people be better at)