The commodification of connection risks accelerating the inequality in our social lives while debasing the sacred good of human relationships. It's on us to define where markets do and don't belong.
Love this so much. And thank you for bringing me back to grad school with the Sandel reference, it's a great book. I worry a lot about the "degrading" of our highest human ambitions that you mention. Not only does pay-to-play connection foster inequality, but the act of productizing it cheapens it and means I become a consumer of connection and not a co-creator, which requires mutual responsibility and is a messy, complex, process. So it's easier to pay $400 to sweat with people who look like me than to show up regularly for your neighbors who don't, and have complex and contradicting needs. In my professional life everyone is talking about the "transformation economy" right now, and turning personal transformation into a product with courses, retreats, trips, formulas, gurus, etc. cheapens and lessens the result, and we learn that that is what transformation is, not something more complex and ultimately ineffable.
Hospitality can create the conditions for connection, but it cannot force or over-program it. The strongest retreats balance thoughtful facilitation with unstructured time, shared rituals and enough psychological safety for genuine relationships to form
Earlier this year, I was asked to present and facilitate an art-based connection activity at a monthly nonprofit coffee hour hosted by a local coffee roaster. The event is free; I was unpaid. We even offered up free gift cards, and I spent a hundred bucks producing some event collateral.
After my activity was done, this guy came up to me, handed me his metallic bottle opener business card and proceeded to tell me about the 14 networking meetups he had monetized in town. 🙂↔️
Great post, Sam! I see the outlines of a book coming together here! :)
I'm working on bringing to this conversation the lived experience of a society which has been much more resistant--sometime very literally--to market logic: Italy. It's an imperfect comparison but it powerfully underlines everything you're pointing to.
Thanks for this, especially the distinction between a market economy and a market society. I appreciate a focus on the shared need for belonging beyond what a market can provide
Brilliant. I would argue though that the problem is completely and I mean completely transparent to most people and those that can see it are a minority dwarfed by the blind dedication to the religion of money, religion because it goes brutally against attempts at rationality.
What I will add is that bathhouses (a $2b economy in the U.S. and the “smallest” within the total wellness market) really do create spaces for social connection as if acting as a town square. I have been researching this topic and writing on it for over a decade. I kind of think that selling “belonging” is what helped so many skeptics of water + heat + people get over their biases. Plus, some early businesses noticed that a sense of belonging really was a benefit when people / guests/ paying customers came to gather to sweat and steam. I don’t believe a case is being made against those that can’t afford to ‘belong.’ Society still owes all of us a lot more here…including civic backed bathing institutions that are well kept and dare I say, cool? At the very least, it’s a grand idea to have a patron underwrite.
Sam, I have a lot to say here as a founder. Well-written article and will respond in a longer format on here after pondering a bit. We are fundamental agreement here. I checked out Fabrik and it seems like they’re building something good. It’s gated yes, but dichotomous framing of sacred and profane itself dishonors the work that some of us entrepreneurs are out here doing. Big tech is another story.
The long game though is expensive, I founded MapChat Social on the principles you listed above (distributed market), but I have enough financial resources to do so for now. I would be lying if I said it hasn’t come at a significant financial and opportunity cost to build something with
Community building is time-intensive and resource intensive. When you talk about money, it’s just one currency. We use currencies all of the time in our relationships: status, looks, reputation, time, et cetera. There is no such thing as a free relationship or community because they all requirement an investment of some sort even if that’s just showing up and being vulnerable.
To quote Blake: “God appears and God is light To those poor souls who dwell in night, But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day.”
What unsettled me most was the idea that connection could become another luxury divided by income. Once belonging is treated as a product, we risk forgetting that relationships gain their meaning precisely because they are not transactions, but forms of mutual care that cannot be reduced to price.
A wonderful essay. I’m stirred by many concepts about market logic, morality, inequality, sacredness, and so forth. Your writing captured the argument with great clarity.
Here is my add: the nature of money may implicate the formation of the market forces that seek to influence our lives. If the creation of money is always and only debt-based, the market logic will likely “degrade and corrupt” to serve the clock of interest. Money can also take other forms, but the fundamental nature of money is missing from the great political debate our society desperately needs. The result of such a debate might answer necessary questions about public goods and commonwealth. Again, thank you for such a thoughtful examination of your subject.
I am slightly more optimistic that this pitch does not mean that social connection is just another market good but that investors should invest in enterprises that foster social connection as much as enterprises that invest in things that used to be blatantly science fiction which I read about in my Not Boring Weekly Dose of Optimism every week.
I spread out the latest season of "Severance" over such a long time that I do not claim to be an expert in the Kier mythology but it is clearly an important point that this is fundamentally what holds the company together. We still have no idea what the company does in terms of any product or how it interacts with any market.
Love the spirit that is in you. This part here really sings.
"Fortunately, we have agency and we have time. We are not passive recipients of a market economy being imposed on us; we are active members of a Great Economy that we can steward and sustain. And we are not running out of time, for the time-scale of this membership has always been measured in generations, not quarters or fiscal years. So, we have a choice: Participate in a generational project of membership that coheres and endures, or succumb to a craze of consumption that disintegrates and destroys."
I had Gemini help write this poem for me today with that very same sentiment in mind. It was a response to someone being defeatist about the current state of things who shared Mary Oliver's poem "On Empire." We need more people who believe that our individual actions matter.
The Path We Leave
But let it also be said, when they speak of us,
that there were those who refused the machinery.
Who looked at the river and saw only the river,
not a vein to be drained or a force to be sold.
Let it be known that some of us learned to bear
the heavy, quiet weight of our own insecurity,
and found it was only the weight of being alive.
When the culture demanded we build higher walls
and hoard our fear like gold, we chose the harder work.
We chose to step outside and stand in the weather.
It is true that the heart in those days was often small,
but we practiced stretching ours until they ached,
until they were wide enough to hold the neighbor,
the stranger, the tired dog, the bruised earth.
We did not expect the world to turn in a day.
We understood that the hands pressing the acorn into the soil
are rarely the hands that rest in the shade of the oak.
But we dug into the dirt anyway, kneeling in the dark,
trusting that the roots would remember how to hold,
trusting that if we softened just one piece of the ground,
you, in your distant tomorrow, might finally walk upon it
and know that you were loved before you even arrived.
I kid you not. These are real words from a recent pitch competition: "Loneliness market is projected to be $500B by end of 2026."
Love this so much. And thank you for bringing me back to grad school with the Sandel reference, it's a great book. I worry a lot about the "degrading" of our highest human ambitions that you mention. Not only does pay-to-play connection foster inequality, but the act of productizing it cheapens it and means I become a consumer of connection and not a co-creator, which requires mutual responsibility and is a messy, complex, process. So it's easier to pay $400 to sweat with people who look like me than to show up regularly for your neighbors who don't, and have complex and contradicting needs. In my professional life everyone is talking about the "transformation economy" right now, and turning personal transformation into a product with courses, retreats, trips, formulas, gurus, etc. cheapens and lessens the result, and we learn that that is what transformation is, not something more complex and ultimately ineffable.
Hospitality can create the conditions for connection, but it cannot force or over-program it. The strongest retreats balance thoughtful facilitation with unstructured time, shared rituals and enough psychological safety for genuine relationships to form
Earlier this year, I was asked to present and facilitate an art-based connection activity at a monthly nonprofit coffee hour hosted by a local coffee roaster. The event is free; I was unpaid. We even offered up free gift cards, and I spent a hundred bucks producing some event collateral.
After my activity was done, this guy came up to me, handed me his metallic bottle opener business card and proceeded to tell me about the 14 networking meetups he had monetized in town. 🙂↔️
Great post, Sam! I see the outlines of a book coming together here! :)
I'm working on bringing to this conversation the lived experience of a society which has been much more resistant--sometime very literally--to market logic: Italy. It's an imperfect comparison but it powerfully underlines everything you're pointing to.
Thanks for this, especially the distinction between a market economy and a market society. I appreciate a focus on the shared need for belonging beyond what a market can provide
Brilliant. I would argue though that the problem is completely and I mean completely transparent to most people and those that can see it are a minority dwarfed by the blind dedication to the religion of money, religion because it goes brutally against attempts at rationality.
What I will add is that bathhouses (a $2b economy in the U.S. and the “smallest” within the total wellness market) really do create spaces for social connection as if acting as a town square. I have been researching this topic and writing on it for over a decade. I kind of think that selling “belonging” is what helped so many skeptics of water + heat + people get over their biases. Plus, some early businesses noticed that a sense of belonging really was a benefit when people / guests/ paying customers came to gather to sweat and steam. I don’t believe a case is being made against those that can’t afford to ‘belong.’ Society still owes all of us a lot more here…including civic backed bathing institutions that are well kept and dare I say, cool? At the very least, it’s a grand idea to have a patron underwrite.
I really valued all that you wrote. Thank You!
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall-Kimmerer also offers an antidote to commodification which she calls the Gift Economy. Great essay!
Sam, I have a lot to say here as a founder. Well-written article and will respond in a longer format on here after pondering a bit. We are fundamental agreement here. I checked out Fabrik and it seems like they’re building something good. It’s gated yes, but dichotomous framing of sacred and profane itself dishonors the work that some of us entrepreneurs are out here doing. Big tech is another story.
The long game though is expensive, I founded MapChat Social on the principles you listed above (distributed market), but I have enough financial resources to do so for now. I would be lying if I said it hasn’t come at a significant financial and opportunity cost to build something with
Community building is time-intensive and resource intensive. When you talk about money, it’s just one currency. We use currencies all of the time in our relationships: status, looks, reputation, time, et cetera. There is no such thing as a free relationship or community because they all requirement an investment of some sort even if that’s just showing up and being vulnerable.
To quote Blake: “God appears and God is light To those poor souls who dwell in night, But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day.”
-Benji
What unsettled me most was the idea that connection could become another luxury divided by income. Once belonging is treated as a product, we risk forgetting that relationships gain their meaning precisely because they are not transactions, but forms of mutual care that cannot be reduced to price.
A wonderful essay. I’m stirred by many concepts about market logic, morality, inequality, sacredness, and so forth. Your writing captured the argument with great clarity.
Here is my add: the nature of money may implicate the formation of the market forces that seek to influence our lives. If the creation of money is always and only debt-based, the market logic will likely “degrade and corrupt” to serve the clock of interest. Money can also take other forms, but the fundamental nature of money is missing from the great political debate our society desperately needs. The result of such a debate might answer necessary questions about public goods and commonwealth. Again, thank you for such a thoughtful examination of your subject.
I am slightly more optimistic that this pitch does not mean that social connection is just another market good but that investors should invest in enterprises that foster social connection as much as enterprises that invest in things that used to be blatantly science fiction which I read about in my Not Boring Weekly Dose of Optimism every week.
I spread out the latest season of "Severance" over such a long time that I do not claim to be an expert in the Kier mythology but it is clearly an important point that this is fundamentally what holds the company together. We still have no idea what the company does in terms of any product or how it interacts with any market.
The fear of deep loving relationships that Lumon doesn't control should go without saying.
Love the spirit that is in you. This part here really sings.
"Fortunately, we have agency and we have time. We are not passive recipients of a market economy being imposed on us; we are active members of a Great Economy that we can steward and sustain. And we are not running out of time, for the time-scale of this membership has always been measured in generations, not quarters or fiscal years. So, we have a choice: Participate in a generational project of membership that coheres and endures, or succumb to a craze of consumption that disintegrates and destroys."
I had Gemini help write this poem for me today with that very same sentiment in mind. It was a response to someone being defeatist about the current state of things who shared Mary Oliver's poem "On Empire." We need more people who believe that our individual actions matter.
The Path We Leave
But let it also be said, when they speak of us,
that there were those who refused the machinery.
Who looked at the river and saw only the river,
not a vein to be drained or a force to be sold.
Let it be known that some of us learned to bear
the heavy, quiet weight of our own insecurity,
and found it was only the weight of being alive.
When the culture demanded we build higher walls
and hoard our fear like gold, we chose the harder work.
We chose to step outside and stand in the weather.
It is true that the heart in those days was often small,
but we practiced stretching ours until they ached,
until they were wide enough to hold the neighbor,
the stranger, the tired dog, the bruised earth.
We did not expect the world to turn in a day.
We understood that the hands pressing the acorn into the soil
are rarely the hands that rest in the shade of the oak.
But we dug into the dirt anyway, kneeling in the dark,
trusting that the roots would remember how to hold,
trusting that if we softened just one piece of the ground,
you, in your distant tomorrow, might finally walk upon it
and know that you were loved before you even arrived.
I don't like this at all, because I predict in 3 years this post will not read as remotely satirical.
ok 3 minutes not 3 years