Some of this feels like a kind of criticism that’s inevitably going to apply to a project like REACH, whether it succeeds or not. Like, there’s basically no way to avoid it being very expensive. There may be a path to “not cash-strapped”, but it seems like basically any such path is going to go via “cash-strapped store front”, because it’s going to be much easier to get money after it’s seen to be successful.
(Perhaps it would be nice if we could raise money for these things without someone like Sarah needing to fund their initial success, and then maybe we could avoid them being both cash-strapped and highly public. But if so, that’s more a criticism of the community than of REACH.)
That doesn’t make your criticisms false, but if I’m right, this seems like a property of them that’s important to note and engage with.
Separately, I’m not convinced that the signaling properties of clothes exchanges are what you say. I have no evidence here, just intuition.
Some of this feels like a kind of criticism that’s inevitably going to apply to a project like REACH, whether it succeeds or not. Like, there’s basically no way to avoid it being very expensive. There may be a path to “not cash-strapped”, but it seems like basically any such path is going to go via “cash-strapped store front”, because it’s going to be much easier to get money after it’s seen to be successful.
(Perhaps it would be nice if we could raise money for these things without someone like Sarah needing to fund their initial success, and then maybe we could avoid them being both cash-strapped and highly public. But if so, that’s more a criticism of the community than of REACH.)
That doesn’t make your criticisms false, but if I’m right, this seems like a property of them that’s important to note and engage with.
Separately, I’m not convinced that the signaling properties of clothes exchanges are what you say. I have no evidence here, just intuition.