This is ultimately a big part of it, and it’s universal, not just in dating. Most friendships are “friendships of convenience” and the other types of relationships typically progress from there. But in western culture, we don’t have any third places, and so we just plain don’t make friendships of convenience anymore.
That was my immediate thought. This is obviously the output of an LLM.
Prompt: “list the ways the 1% (or the most affluent and powerful segment of society) is actively preventing true ownership of the things we buy”