[Ericson2314]

Childcare is always going to be pushing up or near pushing up against Baumol's cost disease constraints.

The only way to make it at all "productive" is cheap dense housing, something that America currently sucks terribly at.

Additionally, the fact that it is a gazillion private providers rather than a simple public service like schools makes it messier.

My prediction is that eventually the housing stuff will be figured out, and also this stuff will be increasingly rolled into the public school system, and both of those will relieve the pressure.

[Ericson2314]

Just be clear, the rise of childcare and restaurants are very clear evidence of the shifting boundary between the private and public spheres. But that shift cannot continue if it just hits more and more commute time constraints. It is like trying to do a faster integrated circuit without shrinking the scale.

Just as we bring the compute to the data, so we bring production closer to the home with mixed things, etc.

And in generally, people don't get what density can offer. For a silly example example, I've bought the clothes I will wear at an event while traveling to that event. Our suburban culture is not keeping up the material possibilities.