It looks to me as if, of the four “root causes of social relationships becoming more of a lemon market” listed in the OP, only one is actually anything to do with lemon-market-ness as such.
The dynamic in a lemon market is that you have some initial fraction of lemons but it hardly matters what that is because the fraction of lemons quickly increases until there’s nothing else, because buyers can’t tell what they’re getting. It’s that last feature that makes the lemon market, not the initial fraction of lemons. And I think three of the four proposed “root causes” are about the initial fraction of lemons, not the difficulty of telling lemons from peaches.
urbanization: this one does seem to fit: it means that the people you’re interacting with are much less likely to be ones you already know about, so you can’t tell lemons from peaches.
drugs: this one is all about there being more lemons, because some people are addicts who just want to steal your stuff.
MLM schemes: again, this is “more lemons” rather than “less-discernible lemons”.
screens: this is about raising the threshold below which any given potential interaction/relationship becomes a lemon (i.e., worse than the available alternative), so again it’s “more lemons” not “less-discernible lemons”.
Note that I’m not saying that “drugs”, “MLM”, and “screens” aren’t causes of increased social isolation, only that if they are the way they’re doing it isn’t quite by making social interactions more of a lemon market. (I think “screens” plausibly is a cause of increased social isolation. I’m not sure I buy that “drugs” and “MLM” are large enough effects to make much difference, but I could be convinced.)
I like the “possible solutions” part of the article better than the section that tries to fit everything into the “lemon market” category, because it engages in more detail with the actual processes involved by actual considering possible scenarios in which acquaintances or friendships begin. When I think about such scenarios in the less-isolated past and compare with the more-isolated present, it doesn’t feel to me like “drugs” and “MLM” are much of the difference, which is why I don’t find those very plausible explanations.
You’re mistaken about lemon markets: the initial fraction of lemons does matter. The number of lemon cars is fixed, and it imposes a sort of tax on transactions, but if that tax is low enough, it’s still worth selling good cars. There’s a threshold effect, a point at which most of the good items are suddenly driven out.
It looks to me as if, of the four “root causes of social relationships becoming more of a lemon market” listed in the OP, only one is actually anything to do with lemon-market-ness as such.
The dynamic in a lemon market is that you have some initial fraction of lemons but it hardly matters what that is because the fraction of lemons quickly increases until there’s nothing else, because buyers can’t tell what they’re getting. It’s that last feature that makes the lemon market, not the initial fraction of lemons. And I think three of the four proposed “root causes” are about the initial fraction of lemons, not the difficulty of telling lemons from peaches.
urbanization: this one does seem to fit: it means that the people you’re interacting with are much less likely to be ones you already know about, so you can’t tell lemons from peaches.
drugs: this one is all about there being more lemons, because some people are addicts who just want to steal your stuff.
MLM schemes: again, this is “more lemons” rather than “less-discernible lemons”.
screens: this is about raising the threshold below which any given potential interaction/relationship becomes a lemon (i.e., worse than the available alternative), so again it’s “more lemons” not “less-discernible lemons”.
Note that I’m not saying that “drugs”, “MLM”, and “screens” aren’t causes of increased social isolation, only that if they are the way they’re doing it isn’t quite by making social interactions more of a lemon market. (I think “screens” plausibly is a cause of increased social isolation. I’m not sure I buy that “drugs” and “MLM” are large enough effects to make much difference, but I could be convinced.)
I like the “possible solutions” part of the article better than the section that tries to fit everything into the “lemon market” category, because it engages in more detail with the actual processes involved by actual considering possible scenarios in which acquaintances or friendships begin. When I think about such scenarios in the less-isolated past and compare with the more-isolated present, it doesn’t feel to me like “drugs” and “MLM” are much of the difference, which is why I don’t find those very plausible explanations.
You’re mistaken about lemon markets: the initial fraction of lemons does matter. The number of lemon cars is fixed, and it imposes a sort of tax on transactions, but if that tax is low enough, it’s still worth selling good cars. There’s a threshold effect, a point at which most of the good items are suddenly driven out.