>Roots cause unemployment, since they make people less likely to move to a new job
That's true, but unemployment is not a huge problem in the US compared to problems like addiction and father-less children which are made worse by rootlessness.
In other words, the genius of America is how it removes barriers to people's becoming economically productive and following individual visions, but it is possible to take that spirit too far, particularly in domains like subsidized housing for poor people.
For most of the last 2 million years, most people were surrounded by the same people all their lives, and interactions with strangers were rare. Although it is necessary for most of us to diverge from that ancestral way of life to maintain what we have achieved as a civilization, diverging too much causes social pathologies, particularly addiction.
Someone very close to me has spent the last 18 years in a subsidized apartment building for poor people in the Bay Area. Half of this person's neighbors are the same people as when he moved in 18 years ago. There is value in that.
There is more to maintaining a healthy society that young people pulling up roots to move to the Bay Area to do fearsomely economically-productive things with computers, young people moving to Cambridge, MA, to become research scientists and young people obtaining law degrees and moving to Washington, DC, to gain enough influence to inject some wisdom and sanity into our government. In particular, there is a "social fabric" that can become diseased by too much emphasis on individual freedom and economic efficiency.
That's true, but unemployment is not a huge problem in the US compared to problems like addiction and father-less children which are made worse by rootlessness.
In other words, the genius of America is how it removes barriers to people's becoming economically productive and following individual visions, but it is possible to take that spirit too far, particularly in domains like subsidized housing for poor people.
For most of the last 2 million years, most people were surrounded by the same people all their lives, and interactions with strangers were rare. Although it is necessary for most of us to diverge from that ancestral way of life to maintain what we have achieved as a civilization, diverging too much causes social pathologies, particularly addiction.
Someone very close to me has spent the last 18 years in a subsidized apartment building for poor people in the Bay Area. Half of this person's neighbors are the same people as when he moved in 18 years ago. There is value in that.
There is more to maintaining a healthy society that young people pulling up roots to move to the Bay Area to do fearsomely economically-productive things with computers, young people moving to Cambridge, MA, to become research scientists and young people obtaining law degrees and moving to Washington, DC, to gain enough influence to inject some wisdom and sanity into our government. In particular, there is a "social fabric" that can become diseased by too much emphasis on individual freedom and economic efficiency.