solving the loneliness epidemic should be a huge priority for most nation states, just a huge psychological and economic cost that we are silently bearing

Farcaster-native research: https://paragraph.xyz/@matthewb | prev. Juicebox, Nouns, RAW DAO | casting about coffee, hi-fi, and other rabbit holes

it’s a bit like asking how to solve for encouraging people to have kids… we shouldn’t really have to incentivize this behaviour, it’s natural.

so then the flip side is asking what is currently deterring this behaviour, and on the surface you might say social media algos, remote work, low wages and therefore lower discretionary spending.

but somehow those answers feel very incomplete, like we’re staring down a larger more insidious problem. why aren’t we friendly with our neighbours anymore? how do we fix something so fundamental as relating to one another?

scattered thoughts:
- atheism promotes individuality and not community (religion is good at creating local community)
- we overindex on global issues and underindex on local issues
- we’ve financially incentivised everything (every action is a transaction)
- we’re made to believe that unity is uniformity, not harmony
- society is optimised for competition, not collaboration