Not the person you replied to, but here&#x27;s my take on your confusions:<p>&gt; I&#x27;m unsure of what &quot;privatizing public spaces for socialization&quot; is supposed to mean, or why it would be bad.<p>I think they were referring to the movement away from communal spaces and communally owned spaces, especially ones which contribute to socialization&#x2F;enculturation. Things like parks, libraries, schools, which are for people and of people, but which increasingly are not by people.<p>&gt; After all, a private property owner may extend nonpossessory or usufructory rights to usage of their land, which would make it perfectly viable for social gatherings without being necessarily more exclusionary than a commons or public ownership.<p>There&#x27;s a difference between being a tenant on someone else&#x27;s charity land and being a member of a community, and although I don&#x27;t really have the expertise, time, or space to go into it, I imagine it involves a sense of belonging and ownership and community, that sort of thing.<p>&gt; The promotion of the nuclear family model is an organic result of prosperity, which enables its existence to thrive.<p>This is true, and we&#x27;ve seen people moving back in with their parents on graduation now that the economy is weaker. This being true doesn&#x27;t preclude there being a narrative that might eg take ideals like Independence and Self-Determination and turn them into a social impetus to form weaker bonds with extended family. I personally think it has a lot to do with our physical mobility increasing faster than our ability to maintain meaningful connections long-distance, but who knows.<p>&gt; Same with beauty standards.<p>This has been problematic for generations and there&#x27;s a lot of literature out there. I think that waving away the effects of image crafting on the psyche of young and impressionable folks in pursuit of profit is wrong of you, and you should consider re-evaluating this stance.<p>&gt; I also fail to see how &quot;promoting exotic vacations and recreational activities&quot; is bad.<p>I mostly agree, except in the sense that people are maybe being sold a bad cure for an ailment they might not have had, spending money they don&#x27;t have, perpetuating the problems that caused them to want to escape in the first place. Again, just for example.<p>For the last sentence, here&#x27;s my interpretation: Markets are flawed because the actors in them are not rational or well-informed (which is often an axiom of whatever model one chooses to use), and because the actions available to them are dictated by those currently on top[1]. I think OP was referring to the way that boiling human interaction down to market interactions - trusting the Market to be a true and somehow just proxy for Everything - is causing problems; that is, trusting markets (alone) to meet human needs is failing.<p>Hope this helps.<p>1. For instance, violence or overt threats of violence in pursuit of gain is considered to be taboo in markets (that I know of), since those who have goods or the means to produce them generally want to keep that relative power over those who do not. We see alternative, or extra-market action in eg ecoterrorism, where someone whose needs or desires are not being met, and who have no in-market recourse, resort to destruction in order to reduce profitability of hummers or whatever.