Definitions: I've seen solitude as a voluntary, mind-clearing beneficial state ... and loneliness as a soul-sucking problem. So ironic with so many of us around nowadays. "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
Story I retell: I remember a colleague/friend telling me about a conversation he had during family medicine training with an elder black man in a Pt. Arthur, TX neighborhood. He knew what was wrong with the world ... air conditioners and televisions ... because nobody sits out on their front porches anymore.
Paved the way for me to later read Putnam's "Bowling Alone."
Hmm. I can agree with this as "a factor", but I wouldn't call it "THE factor"...
As a test, it is free and trivial to text some friends to come over and hang out. No Baumol factor there. But we don't. Why? Not perfectly clear, but I think the substitution value of so many personalized media options is a big factor. I can stay home and watch exactly what I want, instead of coordinating with a group.
Also being "loosely connected" to many people and everything happening in the world when I am on my phone or laptop, versus being narrowly (but closely) connected to just a small group when we are in person.
I started seeing this in return visits to college as an alum. In the 1990s there was not much to do in our rooms, so doors were generally open and people gathered in the common areas. But as the rooms got high-speed bandwidth, twenty years later I would visit and see most people retreating to their rooms in the evening. They just had so much more available to them in their personal space.
"But if we want our rising living standards to include friendships and shared experiences—and not just a nation of couch potatoes scrolling on their phones for 10 hours a day—then we’ll need to choose our social future."
It seems as though our technological oligarchs have already made that choice. And as if to underscore that point, the solitude-inducing services they provide also have strong addictive qualities. Things that make you go, "hmmmm...."
Psyched to see a post about Baumol's Cost Disease! It has been one of my favorite general purpose concepts for several years now.
I do think it explains quite a bit about the current state of affairs, as this post notes; even if not quite everything.
As for the proposed remedy, I do wonder where you think the line is between an effective version of counter-Baumol subsidization, and running into cost disease socialism problems?
We can (further) subsidize healthcare, childcare, etc. But without an increased supply of doctors, childcare workers, etc, it will just drive up prices roughly commensurately, right?
I think there's a fallacy here, though, that solitude is bad.
If you look at all countries and rank them from richest to poorest, the poorest countries have a lot more extended family with them. They have people with them all the time, bigger friend groups, big everything, but they report much higher levels of loneliness than Scandinavia or the United States does today.
As countries get richer, they spend less time with extended family and friends. It's a revealed preference, and I think it's because humans are annoying in anything but small doses.
This feels like one of those things you can’t unsee. Fascinating. What would potential downsides be to making more third spaces eligible for tax exempt donations? Genuine question if there’s unforeseen drawbacks.
Our increasingly "meh" response as a society to the rampant erasure of culture through isolation is seemingly more and more baked into the business model, which is pretty scary. They see we are putting up less and less of a fight, that our growing complacence dovetails quite snugly with the ever-increasing insatiability of boards of directors for larger and larger profit margins.
Definitions: I've seen solitude as a voluntary, mind-clearing beneficial state ... and loneliness as a soul-sucking problem. So ironic with so many of us around nowadays. "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
Story I retell: I remember a colleague/friend telling me about a conversation he had during family medicine training with an elder black man in a Pt. Arthur, TX neighborhood. He knew what was wrong with the world ... air conditioners and televisions ... because nobody sits out on their front porches anymore.
Paved the way for me to later read Putnam's "Bowling Alone."
Hmm. I can agree with this as "a factor", but I wouldn't call it "THE factor"...
As a test, it is free and trivial to text some friends to come over and hang out. No Baumol factor there. But we don't. Why? Not perfectly clear, but I think the substitution value of so many personalized media options is a big factor. I can stay home and watch exactly what I want, instead of coordinating with a group.
Also being "loosely connected" to many people and everything happening in the world when I am on my phone or laptop, versus being narrowly (but closely) connected to just a small group when we are in person.
I started seeing this in return visits to college as an alum. In the 1990s there was not much to do in our rooms, so doors were generally open and people gathered in the common areas. But as the rooms got high-speed bandwidth, twenty years later I would visit and see most people retreating to their rooms in the evening. They just had so much more available to them in their personal space.
"But if we want our rising living standards to include friendships and shared experiences—and not just a nation of couch potatoes scrolling on their phones for 10 hours a day—then we’ll need to choose our social future."
It seems as though our technological oligarchs have already made that choice. And as if to underscore that point, the solitude-inducing services they provide also have strong addictive qualities. Things that make you go, "hmmmm...."
Psyched to see a post about Baumol's Cost Disease! It has been one of my favorite general purpose concepts for several years now.
I do think it explains quite a bit about the current state of affairs, as this post notes; even if not quite everything.
As for the proposed remedy, I do wonder where you think the line is between an effective version of counter-Baumol subsidization, and running into cost disease socialism problems?
We can (further) subsidize healthcare, childcare, etc. But without an increased supply of doctors, childcare workers, etc, it will just drive up prices roughly commensurately, right?
I think there's a fallacy here, though, that solitude is bad.
If you look at all countries and rank them from richest to poorest, the poorest countries have a lot more extended family with them. They have people with them all the time, bigger friend groups, big everything, but they report much higher levels of loneliness than Scandinavia or the United States does today.
As countries get richer, they spend less time with extended family and friends. It's a revealed preference, and I think it's because humans are annoying in anything but small doses.
This feels like one of those things you can’t unsee. Fascinating. What would potential downsides be to making more third spaces eligible for tax exempt donations? Genuine question if there’s unforeseen drawbacks.
Our increasingly "meh" response as a society to the rampant erasure of culture through isolation is seemingly more and more baked into the business model, which is pretty scary. They see we are putting up less and less of a fight, that our growing complacence dovetails quite snugly with the ever-increasing insatiability of boards of directors for larger and larger profit margins.