Felt sad for that last crab who ended with a shell worse than the original :(
B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-but tHiNk Of AlL tHe LoSt ShArEhOlDeR vAlUe ThO!?
Seriously though, if crabs used currency this would never happen. There would be one crab with all the shells and the other crabs would have to bring food offerings or whatever their currency would be in order to get one.
The US would use its navy to protect
the wealthy crabs"important commerce lanes" lol
Seems more analogous to clothes than housing --- clothes can be "too big" in the sense that the extra size is detrimental to the function, which is somewhat different from houses.
And it's pretty common to have buy-nothing groups in cities or even at large companies. Got a loooot of hand-me-down clothes for my toddler from friends, family, and randos in the neighborhood.
Yes and no. I'm sure there is an argument to be made that a house can be too big. Bigger houses require more maintenance, cleaning, higher taxes. Downsizing a house is also a retirement strategy.
An animal named a hermit crab has better social relationships than humans I'm so pissed.
as a hermit human i can confirm: less human interaction = more mental health
You know I've never quite bought the hermit crab shells = houses analogy. They seem much more analogous to armor.
The Soviets had an "apartment swap" system for people who wanted to move around filled-to-capacity neighborhoods. You would get on the list with where you currently lived and put in where you wanted to move and would get informed when there was a match. Sometimes matches would be arranged in triangles or other more complex shapes, but since everybody involved needed to get on the same page this was rare. The wait to move depended on how lucky you were - sometimes you'd get a match right away, sometimes you'd forget about it until ten years later when you would get a letter asking if you were still interested.
This was all in the 60s and 70s when things were generally more chill.
Sometimes matches would be arranged in triangles or other more complex shapes, but since everybody involved needed to get on the same page this was rare.
A web service could handle this neatly. You could commit to being ready for a match within the next 2 weeks. If the server can find a way to move any number of people between equivalent apartments, everyone gets notified and confirms receipt.
Humans could have this too if enough of us just started doing it
That's similar to how it works in Singapore, where housing is fully public
