Comment by andai
1 day ago
I saw this video of an American tourist in the Mediterranean, stunned that people would drink one coffee for hours and didn't feel pressured to order more.
He said, back home, he would have been getting dirty looks, if he wasn't constantly justifying his existence in a place by either consuming or producing something.
That coffee shop isn't paying much rent. When your local leech increases the rent, you have to sell more coffees, and kick people out who don't buy more coffees.
To expand on this: rent is a manifestation opportunity cost for a gated resource. So one person lounging around drinking coffee is no more judged on their activity in and of itself, but compared to the other "industrious" person who might have taken their place and been more productive. This is why marginal spaces/resources not being optimized for economic output are so important to exploratory and risky endeavors: https://paulgraham.com/marginal.html