One thing to note about the boots quote: It's far more extreme than that. Virtually every product you can buy gets far cheaper when you have more to spend in one go. From toilet paper to housing....
One thing to note about the boots quote: It's far more extreme than that. Virtually every product you can buy gets far cheaper when you have more to spend in one go. From toilet paper to housing.
If you can't spare the $20 for a huge pack of TP, you're paying more per roll for say a $5 pack.
The more you have upfront to buy a house, the exponentially cheaper it is. Not just because of basic math like 'more debt = more interest', but that there's shenanigans like 'you can pay us more to get a lower interest rate' and 'well you need PMI if you don't have 20% down which amounts to a solid 15% increase in monthly payment for 0 impact on your principal'.
Housing in particular rubs me the wrong way. There is 0 reason for variability in mortgages or down payments. You earn X? You can borrow up to Y. Damn near nothing else. Because the property itself is collateral against the loan.
Unfortunately this paradigm is also what enriches the world's wealthiest people far beyond what any single person needs in their lifetime. It's easy to make money if you already have money.
Unfortunately this paradigm is also what enriches the world's wealthiest people far beyond what any single person needs in their lifetime. It's easy to make money if you already have money.
I spend less a month on necessities today in real dollar amounts than I did 15 years ago when I earned less than 1/3 my wage. That's all I needed to know about how systemic our poverty traps are.
I spend less a month on necessities today in real dollar amounts than I did 15 years ago when I earned less than 1/3 my wage. That's all I needed to know about how systemic our poverty traps are.
Cutting boards are supposed to be somewhat soft to protect your knives, though? Plates are hard and non-porous and that's why you don't use them for cutting with your good knives. It's pretty easy...
Cutting boards are supposed to be somewhat soft to protect your knives, though? Plates are hard and non-porous and that's why you don't use them for cutting with your good knives.
I think we could be, but it's a tough sell. We've been marketed to so hard, that even the mere suggestion that we do with less miscellaneous stuff is met with fierce resistance. Imagine, if you...
I think we could be, but it's a tough sell. We've been marketed to so hard, that even the mere suggestion that we do with less miscellaneous stuff is met with fierce resistance.
Imagine, if you will, a country that instead of pushing the nuclear family narrative, instead opted for a commune-focused one. Think private family spaces branching off of a larger common area...A 10,000 sq ft complex instead of ten 2,000 sq ft houses. There could be vast efficiency improvements:
Rather than 10 individual kitchens with duplicate appliances, kitchens could look more like restaurant kitchens, with a single large walk-in refrigerator and freezer for example.
We wouldn't need massive collections of duplicate tools. A single large workspace could be built with more functionality.
A consolidated HVAC system
I really think it is a hard sell, because of how deeply ingrained the individualism is throughout this country. But it would make massive inroads to reducing consumption without terribly sacrificing comfort. It could also provide substantial reduction in the domestic workload because of economies of scale.
It is possible to brainwash people into being socially responsible, though. I think with the right education system you could end up with most people being what amounts to a good roommate.
It is possible to brainwash people into being socially responsible, though. I think with the right education system you could end up with most people being what amounts to a good roommate.
I think I'll try to check that out, but here's my initial thoughts on what you've laid out: The commune decides on these rules for itself (much as HOA's do today), and perhaps has bylaws that...
I think I'll try to check that out, but here's my initial thoughts on what you've laid out:
And for those who do leave the kitchen a mess or break a workspace tool, how do you police their behavior or make them pay up
The commune decides on these rules for itself (much as HOA's do today), and perhaps has bylaws that evict on their own terms if someone is not pulling their share of the communal contract.
I think we don't develop these strong social bonds because we've developed a system where very few people can work in close proximity to where they live, and despite exponentially more productivity, none of that improvement has been channeled towards increasing leisure such that people have enough free time to interact more in their neighborhoods to mitigate that. If we developed these bonds, and re-structured employment to keep it more local, perhaps this need to perpetually migrate in search of employment would subside over a generation or two.
And regarding nepotism, I don't see how it could get any worse than we have today. IMO the best way to mitigate that is to seize the means of production and operate the workplace democratically.
There are strong financial incentives to economize on space in cities due to high rents, and some people do like to live in small apartments in places like that. It doesn’t seem like the issue is...
There are strong financial incentives to economize on space in cities due to high rents, and some people do like to live in small apartments in places like that. It doesn’t seem like the issue is lack of demand since if more housing is built in such places, people will use it?
So the question is why don’t more people choose to live more efficiently in dense cities, and in part the answer is that room hasn’t been made for them in the most desirable ones, and it’s not necessarily easy to make the less desirable cities more desirable. I think if the jobs move, people will follow, though? Successful, expanding businesses are something most smaller cities would like to have.
Even in dense cities, a communal kitchen might be a tough sell during a pandemic. But in a way, that’s what a take-out restaurant is? Also, some apartment complexes have a shared community center with its own kitchen, but such things tend to be in addition to individual kitchens in each apartment.
Maker spaces are an example of sharing tools, and some communities have tool lending libraries. But, for these things to save space, people have to want to live in smaller apartments and spend the money on the shared spaces instead. And this does happen in cities, with shared facilities like parks, libraries, and museums making up for not having that much space of your own. (And when these things are closed, you’re out of luck.)
It’s living with less, more efficiently, but often doesn’t feel like living with less because people are paying more to do it, versus lower-cost places.
Broadly speaking, we are seeing a trend towards urbanization, but I think it's also being done without a respect to fostering community. I don't think we see broader movement towards community...
Broadly speaking, we are seeing a trend towards urbanization, but I think it's also being done without a respect to fostering community. I don't think we see broader movement towards community consolidation simply do to some of what @tindall mentioned... there's a huge problem of dis-incentives now.
The dense cities currently have the same or higher rents than the rural areas, and often older and lower-quality housing. There's little incentive for landlords improve properties (higher demand means they don't need to improve properties beyond legal requirements to raise profits). Transitioning apartments to a tenant-owned co-operative would foster community, if only so the residents have an incentive to interact beyond small talk in the lobby. And as a community they could decide for themselves a better balance of lower monthly payments and more improvements.
As far as take-out restaurants...yes, they serve that function in the 'provide food' sense. But there's also a huge isolating component to that. It abstracts you farther from needing to interact, becoming an interaction as personal as a retail outlet.
And part of why I mentioned this at all...the urban areas have some spaces like this, but the suburban areas should be consolidated in this manner as well. If not moreso because in consolidating suburbia you have more space to create small residential forests.
The reason I'm thinking about a take-out restaurant as a kitchen is that, physically, that's often most of the space, and it seems like a very efficient use of space, since they are constantly in...
The reason I'm thinking about a take-out restaurant as a kitchen is that, physically, that's often most of the space, and it seems like a very efficient use of space, since they are constantly in use, during busy times anyway. There's also a trend towards online-only restaurants where customers never even go where the kitchen is.
The communal version of this is a group house where people rent rooms and share common areas like the kitchen, and there are people who do that. It tends not to be for families, though.
I don't believe that landlords have no incentives to improve housing quality. Better quality housing tends to rent for more. If an apartment is remodeled to be nicer then they can raise the rent.
It tends to happen between tenants, though, and will result in pricing lower-income renters out of "luxury" apartments. It's also hard to make up for an undesirable neighborhood, though even a small amount of separation helps. If the neighborhood is changing, they will definitely do it, and this is called "gentrification."
It's true, though, that this all happens as people move around and this turnover doesn't encourage community.
It's actually quite difficult to shop for community. If you're looking for a new place, are you going to interview the neighbors to see if you're a good fit? People do that if they're sharing a place, but not neighbors. The closest thing to shopping for community might be looking for a place near friends and relatives, or at least not too far away.
It seems like there is a bigger issue, though. Many people, especially the more ambitious folks who go to college, will look for jobs in places far from their hometown. I don't remember seriously considering living near my parents, and they didn't expect me to do that either. (Though they probably thought I would move back after a while.) Partly it's because my home town didn't have much in the way of jobs, but partly it's cultural: going to where the jobs are is what you do if you want to be successful.
It doesn't help that many people don't get along that well with their parents and relatives (to say the least), which is another incentive to move.
We do have more adult children living in their parents' houses these days, because it makes sense financially. Still, there are often complaints, and the cultural norm is that you get your own place.
And I think that's the crux of the issue. The need to migrate away from home (lack of jobs as described) is in part due to this disregard for local economies in the name of efficiency. Before...
Many people, especially the more ambitious folks who go to college, will look for jobs in places far from their hometown.
And I think that's the crux of the issue. The need to migrate away from home (lack of jobs as described) is in part due to this disregard for local economies in the name of efficiency.
Before motors, self-sustaining local economies were the only option, because animal-towed wagons only get you so far and can only carry so many goods. And while this is certainly not where we would want to return to if we can avoid it, there is something to be said for trying to rebuild a local-first economy.
I'd be curious to know how much of our carbon output is due to the desire to ship goods around as fast as possible....because it's 'more efficient' to have a JIT inventory from a cost perspective, but it's probably far more carbon efficient to have giant distributed warehouses where the goods are replenished at a slow-but-steady pace and enough inventory is kept to handle demand fluctuations.
Nostalgia for the old days is in a way nostalgia for a time when transportation and shipping costs were much higher, so local businesses had an advantage. A carbon tax might shift things back that...
Nostalgia for the old days is in a way nostalgia for a time when transportation and shipping costs were much higher, so local businesses had an advantage. A carbon tax might shift things back that way a little where it makes sense. It would probably affect air freight the most. But it's unlikely to make up for economies of scale from railroads, container ships, and shipping containers. They are the lowest cost options already, so they'd have even more of an advantage.
I don't know when it would be more efficient to keep more inventory. I would guess it depends on the product, and a carbon tax would result in more inventory being kept if it were more efficient to do it that way, and otherwise it wouldn't.
From a business point of view, they spend money to buy inventory and get the money back when they sell, so more time in inventory means more time that the money is locked up, not to mention that it's taking up space that another product that does sell could use. Also anything not ultimately sold is pure waste, and the older it gets, the less likely it is someone will want it. (So it goes on sale, to stop taking up space.)
One way to avoid waste is to reduce variety and be careful to only stock popular items, which is what Costco and Apple do. Giant distributed warehouses are what we have, outside the inner city, due to the big box stores.
Also, Amazon is building more. Variety is Amazon's competitive advantage but if they had to cut costs they'd probably reduce variety somewhat and emphasize popular items more so that local warehouses are more likely to be used. They did some of this at the beginning of the pandemic when they got slammed.
I don't see putting the squeeze on companies via a carbon tax improving the situation for small business. They make their money by catering to idiosyncratic needs and catering to people with more expensive tastes. Also, lot of small businesses ship everywhere and as shipping costs go up they are kind of stuck. (I am thinking of Adafruit in particular; I would buy more from them if they were on the west coast instead of in New York. They have some local distributors but their inventory is kind of spotty.)
FWIW I was referring more to pre-industrialized good old days. I think a problem of modern economics is that the efficiency of making profit trumps all other concerns. There's something to be said...
FWIW I was referring more to pre-industrialized good old days.
I think a problem of modern economics is that the efficiency of making profit trumps all other concerns.
There's something to be said for stability too. Sure, it's more costly to have giant stockpiles spread across the nation. But JIT supply chains are fragile, as COVID lockdowns showed in numerous ways. Ideally these stockpiles are not just in a giant warehouse, but also distributed across people's homes via a few months supply of food in the basement. This is going to be more and more important as we start seeing more crop failures and lower yields in the next 30 years, in part due to unstable weather conditions.
I agree that we should reduce variety as well. I can't really think of a consistent way to do so short of banning branding or planning the economy. Not doing those things will result in re-fragmenting things that don't really need fragmented.
Even things like cars don't benefit much from factory-level fragmentation. If we just all finally admitted that Toyota won the car game....would anybody really care after say 20 years?
If you go back to preindustrial times, even basic clothes and lighting were extremely expensive. Back then you had to think about efficiency all the time, mend everything, conserve candles, and so...
If you go back to preindustrial times, even basic clothes and lighting were extremely expensive. Back then you had to think about efficiency all the time, mend everything, conserve candles, and so on. (And this is still somewhat true of poor people today, who may need to track their expenses to the penny.)
The reason most people in previous eras had to think about efficiency all the time is that the technologies they had were so very inefficient.
So I would put it differently: despite inequality, as a whole, the country is pretty rich, thanks to very efficient systems. That means increasing efficiency further matters somewhat less and sometimes efficiency can be partially sacrificed in favor of other concerns that should matter more, including things like resilience and disaster preparation, and fixing or at least mitigating inequality. Proposals like UBI wouldn't be possible if we didn't have modern technology. A carbon tax wouldn't work unless there are good substitutes to turn to.
It would be nice to do these things instead of having the resources go into luxury living. One thing I think we've learned during the pandemic is that large parts of the economy aren't really essential.
College dorms were kind of what I had in mind as the model. Nicer college dorms followed design patterns like that, where there would be 4-5 bedrooms connected with a communal den, bathroom, and...
College dorms were kind of what I had in mind as the model. Nicer college dorms followed design patterns like that, where there would be 4-5 bedrooms connected with a communal den, bathroom, and small kitchenette (microwave and small fridge) paired with a larger kitchen and community spaces on the same floor. It's like an apartment complex, but laid out in a way that fosters interaction beyond small talk in the lobby.
If that were extended, you could have a similar pattern applied for whole families... 1 family unit like in one of those dens, possibly connected to 2-3 others via an expanded den, cascading as appropriate.
I feel it would be an interesting design challenge, and the payoff would be to foster interaction in a way to help overcome the isolation so many of us accidentally fell into.
Cohousing can resemble this. Generally units have their own cooking/bathing facilities, but there are larger community kitchens for group events. Depending on the facility/community, these may be...
Cohousing can resemble this. Generally units have their own cooking/bathing facilities, but there are larger community kitchens for group events. Depending on the facility/community, these may be frequent, even daily, occurrences.
There is a scifi story that I read many many years ago, that I'm always reminded of when I encounter things like this article. The Midas Plague tells the story of a couple in a world where...
There is a scifi story that I read many many years ago, that I'm always reminded of when I encounter things like this article. The Midas Plague tells the story of a couple in a world where consumerism has been taken to a hyperbolic extreme.
I think of this story often, frequently whenever I see advertisements on TV or news articles about how everyone is rushing out to buy the latest _____. I look around my house and think "but do any of them really need that?". I buy things that are purely for my own pleasure or entertainment but at the end of the day, I would rather try and enjoy something I already have or create something new from stuff I already own. It's satisfying, I usually learn something, it's cheaper, and it doesn't contribute to the amount of stuff in the world.
One thing to note about the boots quote: It's far more extreme than that. Virtually every product you can buy gets far cheaper when you have more to spend in one go. From toilet paper to housing.
If you can't spare the $20 for a huge pack of TP, you're paying more per roll for say a $5 pack.
The more you have upfront to buy a house, the exponentially cheaper it is. Not just because of basic math like 'more debt = more interest', but that there's shenanigans like 'you can pay us more to get a lower interest rate' and 'well you need PMI if you don't have 20% down which amounts to a solid 15% increase in monthly payment for 0 impact on your principal'.
Housing in particular rubs me the wrong way. There is 0 reason for variability in mortgages or down payments. You earn X? You can borrow up to Y. Damn near nothing else. Because the property itself is collateral against the loan.
Unfortunately this paradigm is also what enriches the world's wealthiest people far beyond what any single person needs in their lifetime. It's easy to make money if you already have money.
I spend less a month on necessities today in real dollar amounts than I did 15 years ago when I earned less than 1/3 my wage. That's all I needed to know about how systemic our poverty traps are.
Cutting boards are supposed to be somewhat soft to protect your knives, though? Plates are hard and non-porous and that's why you don't use them for cutting with your good knives.
It's pretty easy to make your own.
Thick, wood block (1 in minimum) for veg. Properly cared for (cleaned and oiled), will last a lifetime. Something like this: https://www.etsy.com/listing/866247018/end-grain-teak-butcher-block-extra-thick
We've had good luck with a thick plastic board (at least a 1/2 in) and rubber feet, only using for meat.
I think that alone is worth 2 just to avoid cross-contamination issues.
I think we could be, but it's a tough sell. We've been marketed to so hard, that even the mere suggestion that we do with less miscellaneous stuff is met with fierce resistance.
Imagine, if you will, a country that instead of pushing the nuclear family narrative, instead opted for a commune-focused one. Think private family spaces branching off of a larger common area...A 10,000 sq ft complex instead of ten 2,000 sq ft houses. There could be vast efficiency improvements:
I really think it is a hard sell, because of how deeply ingrained the individualism is throughout this country. But it would make massive inroads to reducing consumption without terribly sacrificing comfort. It could also provide substantial reduction in the domestic workload because of economies of scale.
It is possible to brainwash people into being socially responsible, though. I think with the right education system you could end up with most people being what amounts to a good roommate.
It seems like as the world gets more atheist, there's a power vacuum that is getting filled.
I think I'll try to check that out, but here's my initial thoughts on what you've laid out:
The commune decides on these rules for itself (much as HOA's do today), and perhaps has bylaws that evict on their own terms if someone is not pulling their share of the communal contract.
I think we don't develop these strong social bonds because we've developed a system where very few people can work in close proximity to where they live, and despite exponentially more productivity, none of that improvement has been channeled towards increasing leisure such that people have enough free time to interact more in their neighborhoods to mitigate that. If we developed these bonds, and re-structured employment to keep it more local, perhaps this need to perpetually migrate in search of employment would subside over a generation or two.
And regarding nepotism, I don't see how it could get any worse than we have today. IMO the best way to mitigate that is to seize the means of production and operate the workplace democratically.
There are strong financial incentives to economize on space in cities due to high rents, and some people do like to live in small apartments in places like that. It doesn’t seem like the issue is lack of demand since if more housing is built in such places, people will use it?
So the question is why don’t more people choose to live more efficiently in dense cities, and in part the answer is that room hasn’t been made for them in the most desirable ones, and it’s not necessarily easy to make the less desirable cities more desirable. I think if the jobs move, people will follow, though? Successful, expanding businesses are something most smaller cities would like to have.
Even in dense cities, a communal kitchen might be a tough sell during a pandemic. But in a way, that’s what a take-out restaurant is? Also, some apartment complexes have a shared community center with its own kitchen, but such things tend to be in addition to individual kitchens in each apartment.
Maker spaces are an example of sharing tools, and some communities have tool lending libraries. But, for these things to save space, people have to want to live in smaller apartments and spend the money on the shared spaces instead. And this does happen in cities, with shared facilities like parks, libraries, and museums making up for not having that much space of your own. (And when these things are closed, you’re out of luck.)
It’s living with less, more efficiently, but often doesn’t feel like living with less because people are paying more to do it, versus lower-cost places.
Broadly speaking, we are seeing a trend towards urbanization, but I think it's also being done without a respect to fostering community. I don't think we see broader movement towards community consolidation simply do to some of what @tindall mentioned... there's a huge problem of dis-incentives now.
The dense cities currently have the same or higher rents than the rural areas, and often older and lower-quality housing. There's little incentive for landlords improve properties (higher demand means they don't need to improve properties beyond legal requirements to raise profits). Transitioning apartments to a tenant-owned co-operative would foster community, if only so the residents have an incentive to interact beyond small talk in the lobby. And as a community they could decide for themselves a better balance of lower monthly payments and more improvements.
As far as take-out restaurants...yes, they serve that function in the 'provide food' sense. But there's also a huge isolating component to that. It abstracts you farther from needing to interact, becoming an interaction as personal as a retail outlet.
And part of why I mentioned this at all...the urban areas have some spaces like this, but the suburban areas should be consolidated in this manner as well. If not moreso because in consolidating suburbia you have more space to create small residential forests.
The reason I'm thinking about a take-out restaurant as a kitchen is that, physically, that's often most of the space, and it seems like a very efficient use of space, since they are constantly in use, during busy times anyway. There's also a trend towards online-only restaurants where customers never even go where the kitchen is.
The communal version of this is a group house where people rent rooms and share common areas like the kitchen, and there are people who do that. It tends not to be for families, though.
I don't believe that landlords have no incentives to improve housing quality. Better quality housing tends to rent for more. If an apartment is remodeled to be nicer then they can raise the rent.
It tends to happen between tenants, though, and will result in pricing lower-income renters out of "luxury" apartments. It's also hard to make up for an undesirable neighborhood, though even a small amount of separation helps. If the neighborhood is changing, they will definitely do it, and this is called "gentrification."
It's true, though, that this all happens as people move around and this turnover doesn't encourage community.
It's actually quite difficult to shop for community. If you're looking for a new place, are you going to interview the neighbors to see if you're a good fit? People do that if they're sharing a place, but not neighbors. The closest thing to shopping for community might be looking for a place near friends and relatives, or at least not too far away.
It seems like there is a bigger issue, though. Many people, especially the more ambitious folks who go to college, will look for jobs in places far from their hometown. I don't remember seriously considering living near my parents, and they didn't expect me to do that either. (Though they probably thought I would move back after a while.) Partly it's because my home town didn't have much in the way of jobs, but partly it's cultural: going to where the jobs are is what you do if you want to be successful.
It doesn't help that many people don't get along that well with their parents and relatives (to say the least), which is another incentive to move.
We do have more adult children living in their parents' houses these days, because it makes sense financially. Still, there are often complaints, and the cultural norm is that you get your own place.
And I think that's the crux of the issue. The need to migrate away from home (lack of jobs as described) is in part due to this disregard for local economies in the name of efficiency.
Before motors, self-sustaining local economies were the only option, because animal-towed wagons only get you so far and can only carry so many goods. And while this is certainly not where we would want to return to if we can avoid it, there is something to be said for trying to rebuild a local-first economy.
I'd be curious to know how much of our carbon output is due to the desire to ship goods around as fast as possible....because it's 'more efficient' to have a JIT inventory from a cost perspective, but it's probably far more carbon efficient to have giant distributed warehouses where the goods are replenished at a slow-but-steady pace and enough inventory is kept to handle demand fluctuations.
Nostalgia for the old days is in a way nostalgia for a time when transportation and shipping costs were much higher, so local businesses had an advantage. A carbon tax might shift things back that way a little where it makes sense. It would probably affect air freight the most. But it's unlikely to make up for economies of scale from railroads, container ships, and shipping containers. They are the lowest cost options already, so they'd have even more of an advantage.
I don't know when it would be more efficient to keep more inventory. I would guess it depends on the product, and a carbon tax would result in more inventory being kept if it were more efficient to do it that way, and otherwise it wouldn't.
From a business point of view, they spend money to buy inventory and get the money back when they sell, so more time in inventory means more time that the money is locked up, not to mention that it's taking up space that another product that does sell could use. Also anything not ultimately sold is pure waste, and the older it gets, the less likely it is someone will want it. (So it goes on sale, to stop taking up space.)
One way to avoid waste is to reduce variety and be careful to only stock popular items, which is what Costco and Apple do. Giant distributed warehouses are what we have, outside the inner city, due to the big box stores.
Also, Amazon is building more. Variety is Amazon's competitive advantage but if they had to cut costs they'd probably reduce variety somewhat and emphasize popular items more so that local warehouses are more likely to be used. They did some of this at the beginning of the pandemic when they got slammed.
I don't see putting the squeeze on companies via a carbon tax improving the situation for small business. They make their money by catering to idiosyncratic needs and catering to people with more expensive tastes. Also, lot of small businesses ship everywhere and as shipping costs go up they are kind of stuck. (I am thinking of Adafruit in particular; I would buy more from them if they were on the west coast instead of in New York. They have some local distributors but their inventory is kind of spotty.)
FWIW I was referring more to pre-industrialized good old days.
I think a problem of modern economics is that the efficiency of making profit trumps all other concerns.
There's something to be said for stability too. Sure, it's more costly to have giant stockpiles spread across the nation. But JIT supply chains are fragile, as COVID lockdowns showed in numerous ways. Ideally these stockpiles are not just in a giant warehouse, but also distributed across people's homes via a few months supply of food in the basement. This is going to be more and more important as we start seeing more crop failures and lower yields in the next 30 years, in part due to unstable weather conditions.
I agree that we should reduce variety as well. I can't really think of a consistent way to do so short of banning branding or planning the economy. Not doing those things will result in re-fragmenting things that don't really need fragmented.
Even things like cars don't benefit much from factory-level fragmentation. If we just all finally admitted that Toyota won the car game....would anybody really care after say 20 years?
If you go back to preindustrial times, even basic clothes and lighting were extremely expensive. Back then you had to think about efficiency all the time, mend everything, conserve candles, and so on. (And this is still somewhat true of poor people today, who may need to track their expenses to the penny.)
The reason most people in previous eras had to think about efficiency all the time is that the technologies they had were so very inefficient.
So I would put it differently: despite inequality, as a whole, the country is pretty rich, thanks to very efficient systems. That means increasing efficiency further matters somewhat less and sometimes efficiency can be partially sacrificed in favor of other concerns that should matter more, including things like resilience and disaster preparation, and fixing or at least mitigating inequality. Proposals like UBI wouldn't be possible if we didn't have modern technology. A carbon tax wouldn't work unless there are good substitutes to turn to.
It would be nice to do these things instead of having the resources go into luxury living. One thing I think we've learned during the pandemic is that large parts of the economy aren't really essential.
College dorms were kind of what I had in mind as the model. Nicer college dorms followed design patterns like that, where there would be 4-5 bedrooms connected with a communal den, bathroom, and small kitchenette (microwave and small fridge) paired with a larger kitchen and community spaces on the same floor. It's like an apartment complex, but laid out in a way that fosters interaction beyond small talk in the lobby.
If that were extended, you could have a similar pattern applied for whole families... 1 family unit like in one of those dens, possibly connected to 2-3 others via an expanded den, cascading as appropriate.
I feel it would be an interesting design challenge, and the payoff would be to foster interaction in a way to help overcome the isolation so many of us accidentally fell into.
Cohousing can resemble this. Generally units have their own cooking/bathing facilities, but there are larger community kitchens for group events. Depending on the facility/community, these may be frequent, even daily, occurrences.
There is a scifi story that I read many many years ago, that I'm always reminded of when I encounter things like this article. The Midas Plague tells the story of a couple in a world where consumerism has been taken to a hyperbolic extreme.
I think of this story often, frequently whenever I see advertisements on TV or news articles about how everyone is rushing out to buy the latest _____. I look around my house and think "but do any of them really need that?". I buy things that are purely for my own pleasure or entertainment but at the end of the day, I would rather try and enjoy something I already have or create something new from stuff I already own. It's satisfying, I usually learn something, it's cheaper, and it doesn't contribute to the amount of stuff in the world.