Care externalities — the unmeasured ripple of being loved
A post on LessWrong surfaces an overlooked externality: the ripple effects of personal life choices on those who care about you.
When you change jobs, move cities, or take a health risk, you reshape outcomes for family and friends who depend on your presence or choices. These effects — joy, grief, financial strain, relief — are rarely priced into decision-making, yet may dwarf the externalities economists usually track (pollution, congestion, resource use).
The framing invites a question: how much of human behavior is already optimized around care relationships, and how much remains invisible to policy?