When people aren’t getting married and having children, things get very weird as far as caretaking goes (and other things) and no amount of pleading or social engineering can solve this.
Isn’t the institution of marriage itself a form of social engineering? I agree that trying to build new social institutions from whole cloth is a huge lift, but at the same time I don’t think it’s impossible to imagine alternative social arrangements that allow for the care of the elderly.
Its absence and the resultant breakdown is being observed in real-time, it should be no surprise that the degradation of society from its absence takes a long time to be felt and it will take a long time to repair this error.
Not around here; many parents and grandparents are put away into care homes. The tax code even penalizes multiple generations living together as many elderly benefits are conditional on total household income.
The difference between driving your own car vs. having a spouse/friend get groceries for you is precisely the direct involvement of another person, the dependence of relationship there. Yes, the car needs maintenance and roads and fuel/electricity, etc., we're all connected through network of relationships this way, but those relationships are indirect, they're mediated through things.
If I need something now[0], the car is there, fueled and ready, and so are roads and streetlights, and my watch tells me the store is open. I can make decisions myself, react to situations, and there are no other people I need to consider. There is no power relationships, no messy social stuff. My car won't be elsewhere because they had a sudden appointment, or be awkward to operate because my kid had an argument with its kid in the morning, etc.
To be clear: I'm not saying we should seek to distance ourselves from other people, and eschew deep, real relationships. But I am saying that the distance and things intermediating is actually a feature in many cases, and that kind of independence is valuable.
Why? I'm not sure. Two main factor I know are real, are:
- Social stuff is messy and exhausting, you don't want to invoke it every time you need to take trash out or fix a leak, if you can avoid it;
- Doing something yourself is often immediate, while asking for help (including hired help) takes much, much longer, so this kind of independence is worth it for time/focus savings
Just some thought. Again, I mostly agree with the author, and am grateful this article was posted here.
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[0] - Figuratively, I don't actually drive myself.
> - Social stuff is messy and exhausting, you don't want to invoke it every time you need to take trash out or fix a leak, if you can avoid it;
> - Doing something yourself is often immediate, while asking for help (including hired help) takes much, much longer, so this kind of independence is worth it for time/focus savings
This is one of the cases where our impulses to reduce friction may ultimately be harmful, in this case especially for introverts. You solve all the "problems" like the ones you list, and then you find yourself isolated and alone without really meaning it.
I don't think people have the instincts to directly seek all the things they need (proof: if we did, almost everyone would be fit and no one would be fat). We're adapted to live in a particular environment, and features of that environment (especially in the past) would indirectly force us to get some of the things we don't have an instinct to directly seek, even if we didn't really like it at the time (e.g. if you have no option but to walk everywhere, you're going to be a lot fitter than most of us who can drive).
I think it's a lot less exhausting when it's a skill you use often. The problem is that modern society and technology allow us to solve 99% of our problems alone so those social muscles are deeply atrophied for many people.
During covid era, I fixed someone else's toilet because her condo management was not picking up the phone. You assume that there is always someone that would respond and that is not always the case.
I will change the dishwasher that is leaking at the bottom my self and I am capable of figuring if say the dishwasher is fixable at a cost lower than buying a new one or not or is it just the hose that is leaking. If you can't diagnose it, do indeed call the plumber but make sure that you turn off the valve or you would damage to the walls and the floors below. Interdependence will not necessarily replace the ability to diagnose and figure what are necessary actions.
Independence is not infrastructural support, it is *choice*. You may depend on a housekeeper, but I depend on my own body to clean. That housekeeper doesn't get to say "I'm too busy to do my job"; not many times, at least. Because wealth means you get a new housekeeper, while poverty means you get a single aging body.
In the context of a world with AI increasingly being positioned to become a mediator of reality and access, I find the article distasteful and dishonest.
Most other cultures favour interdependence - Asia, rather famously, doesn't have a pension/superannuation program (in general) because their cultures are heavily geared toward elderly living with their children and grandchildren.
As you engage with this blog post, let me ask you this: is that the future you want? Where HN is just an Clawdbook-style playground for agents? Or do you favor a future where AI generates an infinite number of blog posts, but we're expending human resources to read them and engage? If it doesn't matter if there's human effort behind it, what's the end game for online communities?
But that's not going to work very well for journalism. Sharing evidence requires trust. Maybe strangers will find it harder to prove that they are for real, and we'll go back to established brands that supposedly adhere to journalistic standards and do some vetting?
Sadly, I think most people don't care about journalistic standards. They will just share things that they agree with, however flimsy the evidence.
That's already true for certain subjects on Hacker News. People can make up anything like they like about designated villians.
This isn’t true. A business owner completes tasks with the help of employees, but unless he is indebted to a lender, he is still ordinarily thought of as being independent. Independence is a spectrum, and people who require that the world be re-engineered so that they can access it are generally on the lower end of that spectrum.
> The difference between their dependence and mine is not that mine exists. It is that mine is visible. […] A person who drives to the grocery store is considered independent, although the car depends on fuel, roads, mechanics, insurance, and a global manufacturing network. A person who orders groceries because they cannot walk through the store may be considered dependent.
The author is conflating two kinds of dependence. Lots of people rely on food delivery. If a food delivery system breaks down, it could be an existential threat to both parties, the difference is that the able-bodied will tend to have a greater level of optionality in how they respond to this kind of breakdown.
Someone suffering from kidney failure is obviously more dependent on the supply chain than someone who is not suffering from kidney failure. There is a debate to be had about how much this gradation matters if both categories of people are still mortally dependent on a system; am I independent if I can cross the street by myself but don’t know how to grow enough food to feed myself?
And I feel this is actually aligned with the "invisible" independence vs. "visible" one, because asking someone for help is invoking social mechanisms, with all their complexity and messiness, and basically giving up autonomy on the task.
We don't live in a utopia where we can behave with impunity - humans need to regulate, cooperate, and manage resources
So there are many levels and many are more independent than others. There is a huge cost difference between one who is less interdependent and one who is very interdependent.
And efficient functional systems.
I collaborate with systems all day now.
A good design is an accessible design, but those with the means to pay for good design are increasingly being funneled into buying more bespoke products that prioritize materials and aesthetics over functionality. When the damn thing doesn't really work as expected, it's a waste. You don't even need to cram it full of quickly obsoleted gadgetry to pull this off. It doesn't really matter if it's durable and looks amazing when it's useless. Whatever gets you to buy another one anyway.
The only people happy with this situation are those who sell us overpriced junk. They're laughing all the way to the bank.
If we want more accessibility, we need to be making better designed products with mass appeal. We're well into a postmodern world where cost can be adjusted for any price point without sacrificing the design. Their trick is to introduce deliberate subtle flaws into products to keep you buying. It needs to stop. We need standards.
If you want to dilute the term, maybe it says more about some consumer beliefs than the actual problem.
I'm saying that accessible design is caught in this crossfire, not that we can't make things more accessible until we fix "enshittification".
Much of accessible design actually does overlap with what's demanded in higher-end products. We lost some of that during previous eras of enshittification back when it used to be more expensive to make such designs. Now it all costs the same. I'm saying it's now a marketing problem, not an enshittification problem.
The idea, a business owner must be "independent" refers to them being financially independent regarding their income streams relative to "dependent" employees.
That doesn't necessarily hold true in all cases, it's an over-generalization to begin with. But it also is independent from your "lower end of the spectrum": you can be disabled and own a business. And demands of disabled people aren't worth less?
So, (in)dependence is context-dependent. Hence your spectrum. But the author's point is, it's not the same as (it's independent from) autonomy.
Shaping society based on vaguely defined/understood concepts leads to undesirable outcomes.
You’re making an implicit argument about the nature of worth. I am using a simplified model based on economic value; if the author has a certain lifestyle that she believes she is entitled to live, and she cannot provide this lifestyle for herself, then the obligation to provide it will necessarily fall on other people. Disability advocacy groups obscure this detail constantly; they want to purchase their dignity using other people’s money.
I think there is a strong case to be made that a just society would be organized around these sorts of principles, but where disability advocates have failed is in wanting to put these obligations on others while resenting the idea that the disabled should even have to show gratitude for the gift they are being given (because this would, in their minds, diminish their dignity). Social justice in the 2010s was built around this idea that marginalized minority groups could treat the majority of the population as workhorses simply because it was considered to be the right thing to do. The model fell apart when people realized they could game the system by claiming marginal status, and also led to a trend of people traditionally tasked with serving as workhorses checking out of the workforce altogether.
This concept is a myth - the "self made" isn't any such thing
If the skill is quick to learn, does it make sense to pre-learn it (and maintain the skill!), or just have the resources on hand to learn it if necessary?
I think this is presupposing that your skills are fixed and if anything happens you're stuck with always being dependent on others even if it's a really bad deal for you. That's not the case for most of these
Other considerations:
- Sometimes you need a solution NOW. Household infra tends to break down on Saturdays and Sundays a lot for some reason.
- Sometimes it's not even about efficiency. Like, we got ourselves an allotment garden recently. Per your $100/hr vs. $30/hr math, I could and should just hire a bunch of contractors to clean it up and set it up for us. But for me, this defeats the point of getting that garden in the first place.
- Some work is too small for a contractor with necessary skills to come, unless you let them bill you for 10x the work. I had to learn how to patch holes in ceiling myself, because the price for getting the 4m x 5cm hole fixed was the same as for renovating the whole ceiling.
EDIT:
Also what 'lotsofpulp said - sometimes you want the outcome to have a very particular shape or quality level, and to guarantee it, you'd need to micromanage the contractor so badly, that in many cases it's easier to do it yourself.
Unless you have a spouse or partner at home who can be there, but then you're losing whatever they could have been earning if they were working instead.
Also, if you do not bother to learn at all, you have no way to verify that the work is actually done correctly. People will absolutely take advantage of your ignorance.
Doing it yourself can be rewarding and potentially much quicker. Why not do it yourself if you're able ( and assuming its not one of those things a pro could do in 1/10th the time).
I like to do things myself or learn how to when I cannot sufficiently predict the quality of the service I will get or if the damage can be too great.
This ordering requires defining the scope, and the narrower the scope, the easier it is to compare people. If you only look at "maintain the rented city apartment" and "live in rural house" in isolation, it's pretty easy to rank people by independence. But if you say that _either_ of those counts as "independence", the things get much harder to qualify. But either way, there will be people who can't do anything, people who can do everything, and a large mass of "uncomparable" people in the middle.
This sounds like you're dependent on your one employer for work. That might be the most important thing to become independent of!
well you don't call a plumber to unclog a sink, you'd call a "handyman" or someone like that. You call a plumber when you need a new feed off of a buried gas line. I think you have to factor in the expertise needed which will drive cost per unit time.
https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2026/01/china-elder-care-p...
Is that avoidable? Learning it yourself doesn't scale to more complex things. I can't go through medical school just to verify that my doctor's recommendations are good