4 ms·

tbh I don't think this is very compelling. my coworkers are certainly my competition for raises/promotions, but the company is large and successful enough that

tbh I don't think this is very compelling. my coworkers are certainly my competition for raises/promotions, but the company is large and successful enough that everyone I'm friendly with could get a raise and there would still be money to give me one too. outside of work, the scale just makes this an irrelevant question. sure, maybe there are 10,000 apartment units I would like to live in and 20,000 people who also want them. my five good friends in the area don't really move the needle wrt how much I need to bid to actually get a nice apartment. the incentive is there, but it's too weak to be worth paying attention to.

CalRobert 7y ago
I don't literally mean your specific friends. I suppose what I mean is "peers". My point is very simple - if you have 10,000 people and 1,000 homes, you must compete with those 10,000 people. 10 of them might even be your friends, competing for that same home. If we allowed building 9,000 more homes, you no longer have to compete just to get a roof over your head (though you may still do so to get a _nicer_ home) and you have the ability to tell your boss where to shove it when he asks you at 8:30 AM Monday why you didn't answer his Sunday night email. But we don't allow building more homes, at least in California, where homebuilding has fallen far, far, FAR below population growth. If you aren't on Slack all the time, you'll miss out on promotions to your coworker (who, I concede, may not literally be your pal) who will then outbid you for the house you want. Additionally, where you _are_ allowed to build housing tends to be a long ways from jobs (see: suburban sprawl) so you have the double whammy of work pressure to never really sign off, and a long commute.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I think understand your point, I just feel that the scale mismatch is so large that it doesn't really matter that much in day-to-day socializing. I understand that I'm in competition with n other people to get a specific apartment, but I'm not likely to actually encounter any of these people unless it's in the waiting room at the leasing office. I agree that I'm competing with people like me and my friends for housing, food, etc. I just don't see that as necessarily an impediment to helping, being kind to, and/or befriending strangers. it's an important issue, but orthogonal to what we are discussing here imo. maybe it affects your social interactions differently.

CalRobert 7y ago

I don't literally mean your specific friends. I suppose what I mean is "peers". My point is very simple - if you have 10,000 people and 1,000 homes, you must compete with those 10,000 people. 10 of them might even be your friends, competing for that same home. If we allowed building 9,000 more homes, you no longer have to compete just to get a roof over your head (though you may still do so to get a _nicer_ home) and you have the ability to tell your boss where to shove it when he asks you at 8:30 AM Monday why you didn't answer his Sunday night email. But we don't allow building more homes, at least in California, where homebuilding has fallen far, far, FAR below population growth. If you aren't on Slack all the time, you'll miss out on promotions to your coworker (who, I concede, may not literally be your pal) who will then outbid you for the house you want. Additionally, where you _are_ allowed to build housing tends to be a long ways from jobs (see: suburban sprawl) so you have the double whammy of work pressure to never really sign off, and a long commute.

leetcrew 7y ago
I think understand your point, I just feel that the scale mismatch is so large that it doesn't really matter that much in day-to-day socializing. I understand that I'm in competition with n other people to get a specific apartment, but I'm not likely to actually encounter any of these people unless it's in the waiting room at the leasing office. I agree that I'm competing with people like me and my friends for housing, food, etc. I just don't see that as necessarily an impediment to helping, being kind to, and/or befriending strangers. it's an important issue, but orthogonal to what we are discussing here imo. maybe it affects your social interactions differently.