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> It obliterates a wide range of social settings, though.

What is the most important social setting that markets obliterate?



It is hard to pick one, really. But in the UK we squashed the following in the 1980s:

Friendly societies (a type of customer owned insurer) Building societies (which used to be local, but are now essentially national scale banks) Various types of sports and social clubs (which often put on entertainment but also hosted lots of recreational activities)

There is more, too, but these things got in the way of the financialised, neoliberal world that was under construction. What happened was policies then allowed them to change unrecognisably or just atrophy away to nothing. They all represented ways of being involved in the running of your community. Most are now irrelevant or gone.


They're gone simply because people found little reason to keep them. They've been replaced by social things HN where you and I are having a nice discussion. (Too bad it doesn't involve hefting a pint, sigh.) That wouldn't have happened in the 80's, when I communicated with Zortech in London with a daily fax.


Sure, but most people haven't seen replacements for these things. Most of the discontent I see in politics comes from turning it into a spectator sport, rather than a way of describing the process of communities choosing things through the old organs of social democracy.

But yes, there are new things and they are good. The internet pretty much raised me as a teenager.

RE: pints, think I'd trade a finger for a pint with some good company at the moment. Alas.


The lockdowns would be far, far worse without the internet to connect with others.

I, too, miss hefting a pint with my friends. Sigh.




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