Somewhere in the early discussion, a poster asked if people without a Beryl benefited from other people's Beryls not only as individuals but on a wider societal scale.
It's taken a while for me to remember what this reminded me of but it's the discussion of social capital in Putnam's Bowling Alone .He makes the point that as someone who travels a lot and isn't at all involved in his neighbourhood networks, the safety of his home, and the impact on his relatively low insurance premiums, depends upon the networks to which he makes no practical contribution.
Putnam benefits from Neighbourhood Associations, the neighbours who keep an eye on each other's homes and who look after each other. All of these affect the value of his home and neighbourhood and make it somewhere with a good quality of life.
More widely, there are implications for public health, civic engagement, and other social goods. We're disconnected from others when there is an absence of regular social connection and the exchange/acknowledgements of actions and favours (that's my clumsy summary there).
There's a discussion of some parts of Putnam's ideas here:
If a decline in civic activities is the input then a drop social trust is the output in Putnam’s social capital calculus....Couple that with the “loosening bonds of the family” and closed-off neighbors and according to Putnam, we see a society that is dishearteningly disconnected. Conversely, controlling for most socioeconomic factors—race, income, education, etc—he found that with more social capital in a state, the more educated and well-off are its children, the lower the homicide rate, the greater the degree of public health, and the smaller the likelihood of tax evasion.
medium.com/@abhinemani/bowling-alone-and-living-with-others-2eb0a8298031
Does Beryl have some contribution to this or is this sort of social capital framework more to do with altruism (from some) and the desire for social recognition/valorisation (from others)?