4 ms·

Point == missed Its a tragedy of the commons style problem. The viability has to come from a group effort - as soon as there is a single entity running the sh

Point == missed Its a tragedy of the commons style problem. The viability has to come from a group effort - as soon as there is a single entity running the show the economic incentives will warp or collapse the 3rd place into something different.

hot_gril 2y ago
What single entity did you have in mind? An HOA will spend dues on parks, a regular city will spend taxes on parks. A luxury apartment will have common spaces or even activities. They make these expenditures because enough residents will pay extra for it. And a church will run community events paid for by donations. No "brought to you by Carl's Jr." Tragedy of the commons is when there's no big entity with rules, and everyone does their own thing.
- throwway120385 2y ago
  What often happens in these small community organizations is one or two volunteers join and begin to do a bunch of work to "transform" the organization and expand its reach. They inevitably become "indispensable" to the new organization, which they have wrapped around themselves like a cloak. Then they squeeze it around themselves until everyone leaves and the organization's soul has been sucked out. They move on to other organizations in the same area with a "resume" or "bio." You'll often see these people everywhere in your community, and they may approach you very quickly to get you involved in their organizations. They are in constant need of new volunteers to burn out on their pet projects. They also constantly promote themselves and are always telling you about what they are doing with other organizations both to recruit you and to make sure everyone knows how "indispensable" they are. These people are poisonous to community organizations because they will not abide any consensus-driven process that doesn't lead to agreement with them.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Not sure about the resumé part, but I've seen these authoritarian volunteers. They still don't ruin everything. And I think my local church has enough of them that they cancel each other out :D
    - throwway120385 2y ago
      They don't ruin it every time, but I've seen it happen and have also seen the end result and I'm very leery of specific kinds of people in communities I'm new to because of it.
  - jprete 2y ago
    Are these the techbros of community life? I can see a bunch of parallels.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      The biggest defining factor is they have a lot of spare time to push dumb agendas and don't listen to people who have less time to deal with it. I'm not sure what a techbro is, thought it was just a techie who goes to the gym.
- ant_li0n 2y ago
  A housing development will create parks because they are required to do it. This is not market forces at work.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    There are definitely fancier HOAs with bigger and nicer parks and common spaces than the others, and I don't think it's because they have different city rules.
    - apsurd 2y ago
      HOA style commons solutions means a city becomes thousands of micro, private, exclusive spaces. Perhaps better than everyone sitting in their homes getting amazon deliveries every few hours. but this isn't what people mean when they say public community spaces. We need interconnectedness across income, ideology, generation, education, etc, for stable democracy.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
kelseyfrog 2y ago
It's also a framing problem[1]. If we were creating an encyclopedia of ways third places are killed or aborted, centralization would definitely be a failure mode. I'd add, the belief that projects should be financially self-sufficient and the fiscal individualistic belief that I shouldn't pay for things I don't personally benefit from. There is a sense of fairness, that makes sense in isolation, yet have these downstream effects when applied to public goods like third spaces. "Kids are always on their phones," and "Youth programs and parks should be financially self-sufficient" are downstream contradictions of the primary belief. 1. among infinite ways to analyze it

hot_gril 2y ago

What single entity did you have in mind? An HOA will spend dues on parks, a regular city will spend taxes on parks. A luxury apartment will have common spaces or even activities. They make these expenditures because enough residents will pay extra for it. And a church will run community events paid for by donations. No "brought to you by Carl's Jr." Tragedy of the commons is when there's no big entity with rules, and everyone does their own thing.

throwway120385 2y ago
What often happens in these small community organizations is one or two volunteers join and begin to do a bunch of work to "transform" the organization and expand its reach. They inevitably become "indispensable" to the new organization, which they have wrapped around themselves like a cloak. Then they squeeze it around themselves until everyone leaves and the organization's soul has been sucked out. They move on to other organizations in the same area with a "resume" or "bio." You'll often see these people everywhere in your community, and they may approach you very quickly to get you involved in their organizations. They are in constant need of new volunteers to burn out on their pet projects. They also constantly promote themselves and are always telling you about what they are doing with other organizations both to recruit you and to make sure everyone knows how "indispensable" they are. These people are poisonous to community organizations because they will not abide any consensus-driven process that doesn't lead to agreement with them.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Not sure about the resumé part, but I've seen these authoritarian volunteers. They still don't ruin everything. And I think my local church has enough of them that they cancel each other out :D
  - throwway120385 2y ago
    They don't ruin it every time, but I've seen it happen and have also seen the end result and I'm very leery of specific kinds of people in communities I'm new to because of it.
- jprete 2y ago
  Are these the techbros of community life? I can see a bunch of parallels.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    The biggest defining factor is they have a lot of spare time to push dumb agendas and don't listen to people who have less time to deal with it. I'm not sure what a techbro is, thought it was just a techie who goes to the gym.
ant_li0n 2y ago
A housing development will create parks because they are required to do it. This is not market forces at work.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  There are definitely fancier HOAs with bigger and nicer parks and common spaces than the others, and I don't think it's because they have different city rules.
  - apsurd 2y ago
    HOA style commons solutions means a city becomes thousands of micro, private, exclusive spaces. Perhaps better than everyone sitting in their homes getting amazon deliveries every few hours. but this isn't what people mean when they say public community spaces. We need interconnectedness across income, ideology, generation, education, etc, for stable democracy.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

kelseyfrog 2y ago

It's also a framing problem[1]. If we were creating an encyclopedia of ways third places are killed or aborted, centralization would definitely be a failure mode. I'd add, the belief that projects should be financially self-sufficient and the fiscal individualistic belief that I shouldn't pay for things I don't personally benefit from. There is a sense of fairness, that makes sense in isolation, yet have these downstream effects when applied to public goods like third spaces. "Kids are always on their phones," and "Youth programs and parks should be financially self-sufficient" are downstream contradictions of the primary belief. 1. among infinite ways to analyze it