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Comment by gardenfelder | Hacker News Reader

>Since the turn of the millennium, most American families have been invested in the stock market. Whether they came to be investors passively (by taking a job with a 401k) or actively (by buying Gamestop shares on Robinhood), the consequences for individuals can be profound. People who embrace their identity as an investor think differently, vote differently, and have different material interests from those who do not. “Investor” can even reframe an entire worldview: education becomes an investment in human capital, and is evaluated based on increases in future earnings potential; family and friends turn into investments in social capital, essentially call options on benefits to be harvested in the future. The capital metaphor becomes pervasive, like microplastics in our water and blood.

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Sounds fucking dystopian. I don't want such friends who view me as an Investment. I want real friends

Like an investment in familiarity, emotional intimacy, and support? Whether you are spending or investing your time, it is a limited resource that you have allocated. Do you want to allocate it with those who you will never see or share more time or would you like a relationship to form and grow?

Sure, but why the impulse to frame it in economic terms? IMO it's far from the most interesting or insightful framing on the value of human relationships.

I do not mean to imply the economic frame is the only. Choosing the "correct" frame seems a modern folly. Instead, that frame is but one of many valid frames, yet valid it is. By using different frames we access different adjacencies in the concept space and by so doing can gain further insights through alternation.

Agree with everything you said. I've just been in US tech and finance spheres too long for me to find much insight in the framing anymore.

Human beings are at minimum somewhat rational actors and framing it in terms of economics makes it possible to study human behavior.

It's possible to study human behaviour without framing everything in terms of economics. You'll often be more successful that way, in fact.

> Whether you are spending or investing your time, it is a limited resource that you have allocated

that's just, like, your opinion, man

You can subscribe to my beginner friendship tier, practically undistinguishable from a real friendship, for $100 a week! Act now, my friendship supply is very limited!

People are friends because of the value they create, vis a vis any relationship requires investment, and its quality is determined based on the return on that investement. I would question the calling of any relationship that creates negative value a friendship.

Your statement is a specific framing of a friendship from an economical perspective. You may or may not find that perspective useful, but it's inevitably a simplification that focuses on some aspects of a friendship and leaves out others.

The (grand)parent comment is arguing that the things left out are the ones they find important. A friendship can be analyzed through value, but that's not necessarily a good way to build and sustain friendships.

Literal social networks (not the internet thing, just systems of people who interact with each other) are quintessential reputation economies. They can be analyzed, but there's a lot of fundamental differences with monetary economies. Reputation, unlike money, cannot be freely moved around the network: Alice thinking highly of me has no effect on my standing with Bob, unless there's some other link between Alice and Bob. Reputation also isn't nearly as conserved as currency: Asking for and receiving a favor (extracting value) from Bob can often strengthen the relationship, rather than deplete it, depending on the size of the ask and our existing rapport. And that's just some relatively surface level stuff.

You can model relationships in economic terms, but it's a very different type of economy. Given how bad we are at modeling money economies, relationship dynamics are probably a lost cause.

I'm curious how this view works out when trouble comes up. If you have a friend going through a rough time for a few months or years, do you just say I'm not going to get caught up in the sunk cost fallacy and cut ties? Even when I've had friends with difficult times and we spend less time together. I still feel for them and my heart hurts, even if I can't be around them as much to protect myself if they're spiralling.

Similarly what would you do if a friend was dying? Sorry I just don't see the ROI here, don't think I can get much out of your last few months?

What is a real friend but an investment in companionship.

Investment in time, resources, the integrity of ones lower back when some one needs help moving...

I think people are uncomfortable with the consideration that things are transactional. We'd rather pretend they aren't, even though we all know that they are.

My guess is that many people don't consciously acknowledge relationships are transactional. And the word carries different connotations for different folks. My SO would probably be horrified if I said our marriage was 'transactional', and she has a language arts degree.

Would you consider a parental relationship to be transactional? There is a huge potential for the relationship to be negative - a child with special needs / medical bills, a child with views so different from yours it causes a huge rift, etc.

What positive return is guaranteed that makes these relationships beneficial? There are plenty of living beings who yeet their young out to live on their own from the start. Or is every parent either throwing away their time/money/effort on a losing transaction?

Is it a gamble for those who are poor, that their children will take care of them? What does that mean for rich people and their children? For extremely wealthy people, who can buy everything they ever need/want, is it solely a gamble that your child will want to spend time with you?

>What positive return is guaranteed that makes these relationships beneficial?

Why do you believe that guarantees are required? Or even that the return must be positive?

I don't believe it, I also don't treat/consider relationships as transactional. My argument is that if these relationships are transactional, there should be an obvious benefit otherwise most people would consider the potential gain to be too risky and not have these relationships.

People are likely subconsciously or otherwise doing the math. I had to take some calculated risks having kids because of some family history. And when folks get genetic testing, or abstain altogether, they too are weighing possible outcomes.

'Transactional' doesn't have to mean a perfectly balanced exchange or in kind. For some just a bit of acknowledgement is worth millions of dollars and/or years of sacrifice. For others they're never satisfied and forever feel cheated or unhappy with how they see things "balancing out" or failing to.

> My guess is that many people don't consciously acknowledge relationships are transactional.

If two people do not treat their relationship as transactional, then it is not transactional. I don't know how to make this any simpler: at least one counterparty has to, at least, agree to the notion of "transaction" entering into the interaction in the first place, for a transaction to be taking place (and, I think, it could be argued that both counterparties must approach it this way). If they don't, then there is no transaction.

You seem to regard the idea of transactions as something fundamental to all human behavior, like a law of physics. This is not the case.

Perhaps what you propose is possible, especially if the definition of transactional is strictly monetary. Yet everyone gives and receives in relationships; even if what is exchanged is only emotional, time, or otherwise intangible.

We all do some calculating, often subconsciously, about whether to continue to interact with someone else. And we have various thresholds or red lines which could lead to ending or at least significantly reducing future contact.

Sure, but the definition of "transactional" must be expanded to such a degree for the statement "human relationships are transactional" to be true, that the word ceases to have any real linguistic function. You might as well say "human relationships are defined by how people relate to one another."

And indeed, this is usually how such discussions about this topic proceed, with someone opening with the narrow definition of "transaction" - not necessarily monetary, of course, but at least two well-defined sets of things that two people intend to trade (and where a withholding from one party would result in a cancellation of the deal) - and then as you point out more and more human behaviors that don't work like this, they retreat to the point where, for example, a parent taking their child out for ice cream is a "transaction" because the child wanted ice cream and the parent wanted to do something nice for their child.

If that's your working definition of "transaction" then fine for you, but you can't then make some argument that it's neoliberal economics that best reflect human nature and fulfill human needs because of its insistence that all economic activity be mediated by a free market (i.e. a forum supposedly for the free and open proposal and settlement of transactions). The "transaction" of one, is not the "transaction" of the other: neoliberalism and indeed capitalism itself would not work even by their own internal logic if they assumed the same notion of "transaction" as that required of the statement "all human relationships are transactional."

Fair point, and in hindsight my comment failed to frame things as precisely as I'd hoped. I'll agree that transactional can become overly broad, to the point of losing its meaning. Though I do think the lense of economics can offer a unique way of evaluating about relationships. And not in a strictly financial sense. Which isn't to say it's the only way, or even the most important.

No, we don't all know that they are, because they aren't that.

Transactions are the signals for building trust, but they aren't the only components in the relationship. Shared history, shared vocabulary, commitments built on that that trust... These are not just transactions.

It's like saying that "we hate to admit it, but all the company really is is the emails and Slack messages the employees send to each other."

It's not that simple.

How's it an investment if there's no liquidity? You can't sell your friendship on the market.

And don't reply with a link to that japanese guy who sells his time to hang out.

Industrial society and its consequences

Just move the fucking bricks mate.

There is no reliable evidence that this is actually happening on a widespread basis, or that it is being driven by shareholder capitalism. In general it's a good thing for people to own shares in multiple companies as this gives an incentive to act in ways such as voting that are good for the overall health of the economy.

But it's what is happening in societies, that are not even capitalistic. Some people are making "friends" only to gain some material (or equivalent) benefits, parents can view their children as an investment too, even the coupling of nobles in dynasties where politically motivated in the past.

Basically the logical conclusion of neoliberal thought: nothing is worth doing unless profitable, anything not profitable is by definition not worth doing, pretty much replacing what earlier iterations of human civilization called "god" with "the market" as the arbiter of right and wrong and the main organizing force in society.

Basically profitable is akin to something that has value but extractable. If value cannot be extracted then it'll be ignored.

I think this is a total misunderstanding of how value is created in relationships. The value created can be greater than the sum of its parts.

That’s their point - what can’t be easily quantified and extracted in the short term is ignored - environment, relationships etc can’t be directly deposited in one’s bank account and thus are ignored in the world view that’s being criticized here.

What if the thing in question is something that a majority of humans would agree is worth doing, but there is no way to extract profit? Which is to say, that the loop of capital goods -> apply labor -> extract value from labor -> accumulate more capital goods, does not map well to solving the problem / doing the work, etc?

You will end up in the Tragedy of the Commons situation. Everyone wants good schools; no one wants to pay for it. Everyone wants good roads; no one wants to fund it. Everyone wants to stop climate change; no one wants to change.

More or less, but the solution to the tragedy of the commons is quite simple: collective action which ensures that the burden of providing for the desired resource / behavior / service, is apportioned fairly. Then, in exchange for the collective demands, each individual's needs are met.

The reason we can't do that anymore is that it requires something like an equitable distribution of political power. Our current system is so top-heavy in terms of who determines policy and political direction, that even simple problems with easily-mitigated failure modes are beyond us.

I mean this in a neutral way - this is basically just Marx's critique or capitalism. The part about small time investors identifying with their own perception of being a real investor is the petit bourgeois dynamic that Marx spoke of, in the era of Robinhood and 401ks. I'm confident the author knows this (and perhaps even takes it from there), and decided to leave it out, probably for a good reason.

The article is interesting insofar as it explores the possibility that increased retail access to equity investments biases a population towards deregulation. But to be honest paragraphs like this one just seem like a distraction and a base appeal to emotion. Investors aren't just biased by their investments; they are bad people, incapable of loving or being loved. I don't think capitalist societies have a monopoly on people who reduce their relationships with others to a series of transactions.

It's unclear what specific policy changes are being advocated by the author. Even if we decide we want to go back to the 1980s (do we? was life that good back then?) how specifically do we do it? Is it just by banning the marketing of securities to retail investors?

Incidentally retail participation in public equity markets has traditionally been much lower in Europe and this is something that lawmakers are actively trying to remedy there: https://finance.ec.europa.eu/capital-markets-union-and-finan...

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