Weak take. Social clubs have been the norm for this forever. How ignorant to reality are you? Social clubs require funding in some form to exist. How would you expect them to work? Someone donates their space and the club exists entirely on their good will?

It's weird how all of the sudden in 2024 people have completely forgotten how things work. There is a local symphony because of the people that buy season passes and attend fundraisers. People don't buy season passes to see every performance, they do it to support having XYZ. When I lived in Santa Cruz we bought season passes to the State Parks, Monterey Symphony, Monterey Aquarium, and others because we wanted them to exist. We attended fundraisers for things like museums, etc. My parents did similar. It seems like now people just expect everything to be there 'in case they happen to want to drop in'. It doesn't work that way. Someone has to actively keep things going both by running them and by funding them (and create them initially). I think the next generation is either just too used to 'someone else' doing all that, or they really don't understand that someone else did it in the past and think things just magically existed. It's the equivalent of growing up and being shocked you have to pay for your own food, with your own money.

I think part is also having so many 'free passes' people forget this stuff takes money. 'Free state park pass if you have kids' is a great idea, but families are the people that use the parks the most. Families are the people that originally banded together to do fundraisers. To build the trails. Not passing on funding/maintaining something to the next generation ensures it's death when the older people pass. At some point it has to stop being 'other people' that take care of making sure all the stuff you enjoy exists and is maintained. Free park days, totally. Free park pass and it just becomes expected, like state parks always existed and always will somehow. No, they exist because people pushed to create them, fundraised/crowdsourced to create them, and fundraised/crowdsourced to maintain them. When I was a kid we had community social events. And most of those events were also fundraisers for things that benefited the community. It seems like people now expect all the stuff that in the past the community fundraised for to just magically exist/stay forever. Now fundraisers all seem to be a very specifically charity versus general 'build the community. I remember my grandparents town holding events (which brought people out, like dances, concerts in the park, etc) in order to fundraise to add a beautiful fountain to downtown. I bet people today think that fountain just magically came into existence and 'someone' should pay to maintain it (and don't understand how the trust the does maintain it was funded and how precarious it's existence is).

Edit: this is already too long but here's a better example. When was the last time you went to your local library when they were having a book sale? You don't go because you want a warn out copy of a random book you are barely interested in, you go because you believe in local third spaces. You buy worn out random books you barely have interest in because you want your library to exist. If you can't go do that and spend the $1 a book on that, the future is really bleak for society. So I will ask again, when was the last time you did that? They sell off old books multiple times a year. If we can't count on the HN community types to go do this multiple times a year to help out their local library we are doomed. Go buy crappy old books. Go buy starter plants from your local horticulture garden's/parks department's fundraiser. Buy a season pass to your local/state parks. Buy season tickets to things you enjoy having around.