[fraserharris]

Small organizations exist largely because volunteers will them to exist by donating their time. From our elementary school, it's clear the people who have time to volunteer are the stay-at-home parents. The dominance of two-income households eroded the small organizations, which created a market (distributing the costs over many more people) for large organizations to fill the void with a worse but market-serving product.

[pnathan]

I would concur. It's my observation from 20 years of watching and participating - the volunteers are the retired, the wealthy, the underemployed, and the stay at home parent. "Normal" working people are not volunteering and handling the complexity of doing these things, they are at their work. I can only imagine that prior generations had the working parent participate through the free time freed up by the stay at home parent.

It suggests to me that there is a long running flaw. I believe Bowling Alone pegs the inflection point in the late 50s or early 60s, ('57?) and the substantative issues came about with the generation hitting the workforce in something like 1960. So the kids born in the 1935-1945 era had something in their culture materially different than prior eras that kept on spreading.

[missinglugnut]

I'll add that there are some feedback loops making it worse. When these organizations aren't available kids are more dependent on their parents for something to do, which makes the already strained parents even less likely to take on volunteer work.

And then kids who grew up without mentors are less likely to try to be that for someone else.

Basically the orgs don't have enough volunteers to do important things, and the people don't volunteer because the org isn't important to them.

[pnathan]

Yes, the network effect and cumulative impact is profound.

If I were to make a lightly educated guess - those who were teens in the 40s and 50s saw the world of their parents and their sacrifices, along with the totalitarianism of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and decided to pursue individualism over community. So as they got to an age to participate they opted out, as well as increasing the total social individualism. And here we are.

I don't know exactly what the way out here looks like, but I believe it absolutely means involvement with local organizations. Kiwanis, elks, rotary, religious, etc.

[dh2022]

Interesting take. What is the market-serving product you mentioned?

[fraserharris]

Whatever fills the void for people. ie: instead of bowling leagues, people watch TV or play video games. It's arguably a worse product because it doesn't fulfill the socialization or exercise needs of people, but it does fill the same block of time.

[Ifkaluva]

I guess it’s worse in the sense of providing health benefits, but it’s better in the sense that more people would freely choose it if given the choice.

It’s the same as junk food, people will freely choose it over healthier options.

Basically, products on the free market optimize for what people prefer to buy, and people’s preferences are shaped by evolution to a world in which physical rest and high-calorie foods were scarce. This makes us mismatched to the modern landscape.

[riemannzeta]

This is certainly true in Silicon Valley. It provides an interesting tentative answer to the question that has been posed by some AI optimists about what people are going to do with all their leisure time after the AI is able to do their jobs for them.