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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

That article views life almost the opposite as I do.

1. I have long been inspired by Gandhi's having cleaned toilets in his ashram and he seems to have accomplished a fair amount of meaningful things. Monks garden and clean things in part to increase self-awareness and inner tranquility. The structure adds to my life, not detracts.

2. Happiness isn't "out there." It's "in here." Same with freedom. I suppose I could be happy and feel free either way -- doing my chores or outsourcing them, but doing them seems simpler.

3. Actually, the amount of garbage takeout creates is unconscionable to me. I couldn't live with myself filling landfills at that rate.

4. My home cooked food tastes better, is more convenient, costs less, is healthier, and is better in every way for me than takeout. The problem that takeout solves isn't time. It's ignorance of how to source fresh fruits and vegetables and to prepare them. Solving that problem improved my life more than take out ever could.

5. I incorporate cleaning my apartment into my workout routine, sweeping and mopping between sets. It doesn't cost extra time.

I feel the article misses the point of what creates happiness and freedom, but to each his or her own.

View on HN

Maybe there are people who would be happier washing their clothes by hand, but I'm sure they're the exception rather than the rule.

Most people just don't like doing the shopping, cooking, and cleaning involved with daily meal preparation. Most people also don't like cleaning in general, and hate their commutes. Thinking of these as therapeutic tasks is as much a luxury of white collar life as unlimited access to maids and food delivery services is.

And the idea that you'd save time or money with proper knowledge of how to source and prep your own fruits and vegetables, or that time spent cleaning disappears because you consider it exercise, all seems like magical thinking to me.

As soon as you place a realistic dollar figure on the value of your time, for most of us, all of those calculations break down dramatically in favor of outsourcing most tasks related to food, cleaning, and transportation, not only as a matter of comfort, but also as a matter of economics.

It makes sense that it would work out this way, too. A single Uber driver with a single car can satisfy the transportation needs of a dozen people. An Instacart shopper can gather everything 3 families need in a single pass through the store. The driver can get those groceries to 3 homes in a single round trip instead of 3 separate round trips.

Outsourcing can seem wasteful and opulent, but in doing so you're often participating in a sharing economy or benefiting from economies of scale and division of labor that actually serve to reduce waste and inefficiency.

You are assuming the value of time spent on these activities is inherently negative therefore having someone else do them is a net gain. I disagree, you can enjoy them in poverty or as a billionaire.

While say playing video games seems more enjoyable than taking out the trash that's a subjective assessment. And you can alter your subjective perceptions.

You are assuming the value of time spent on these activities is inherently positive.

If you like cooking or cleaning or taking out the trash then by all means you should do those things. But, if you don't like doing those things then the threshold for when it makes sense to pay someone else to do them is lower than most would think.

That is their theory, but I see a lot of trouble in their analysis.

A different take on their data is: Not doing things is becoming ignorant and in the short term ignorance of the negatives in life is bliss. In the longterm, not knowing how to do the things that are happening so you can survive is a larger stress for people. Consequently, people are happy when they are choosing to outsource, but it does not last and they choose to cycle back. The noveau rich outsource willingly and the other rich outsource more reluctantly as they are more familiar with the eventual costs of short term stress reduction.

I am arguing it's not not inherently positive or negative, but you can become someone that views it as a negative or a positive. Many people enjoy walking as a time for reflection and to de-stress. Other types of repetitive motion like folding clothing can fill the same void.

However a big part of this is simply how much space your keeping up. An efficiency can be kept clean though habitat, a 1,000 acre estate takes a staff.

PS: That's not to say having groceries delivered is a bad idea, just maximum productivity is simply a wasteful goal.

Yes, it is subjective but for most people cleaning toilets is not enjoyable and thus it makes sense to outsource it.

This assumes all quality can be expressed on a single scale of economic utility, which is an absurd premise.

It can, and has to, if you want to compare different qualities. That's kind of the whole point of putting a dollar figure on something.

And more and more we're finding that that is a terrible basis for policy making, because it's only as good as our ability to quantify things. How much is the love of someone's parents worth, for example? Why can't you buy your dog's affection with money? Putting a dollar figure on everything is a terrible way to organize society.

How do you save time outsourcing transportation?

I assume they're saying it's hard to read, type, etc while driving.

By reading a book while in an uber

I know it has been the fancy thing to say for at least the past 2-3 years, but I for myself get car-sickness at even the thought of reading in a car. I do not get any car sickness while riding the tramway or the trolleybus (even though I have to stand up). The billions of dollars spent on companies like Uber would have been much better spent trying to raise awareness about the benefits of public transport.

This is our state of the art for public transit in the US: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/6/14/15801694/mta-nyc-subway-dela...

I still try to take public transit when I travel (Chicago is pretty good and Portland is OK when it goes close to where you want. Bay Area doesn't have enough tendrils to get you within a few miles of where you want to go unless you're in SF proper, and half my friends refuse to ride Muni even though it's totally fine compared to SMART busses in Detroit) but it's hard to convince most people that the train or the bus could ever be not disgusting and filled with people who exist to make your life miserable.

darn that's pessimistic

Raising awareness of public transportation? It's not that people are not aware, the US political system is just a shit-show and thus it want happen. Even private public transportation is usually outlawed.

Uber style services is a market response to the problem of transportation, because public transit options have not grown form the market because the government is slow and outlaw most private public transportation.

so, listen to an ebook. you can also do that while you wait for an uber and walk to your office.

By not driving to the petrol station, not doing scheduled car service, not dealing with insurance, not renewing driving license, and likely a few other things.

How long does it take for the car to arrive or how long does it take to schedule it?

I think these should be also included in the comparison.

It depends how much money you have to spend. From public bus to private limo idling outside.

This time is often recouped by not having to get out of the garage and find place to park. (of course parking on or close to the street at home and having a designated place at work mitigates that)

1. I can use the ride to drink coffee and wake up, so I wake later and am more productive through the day. Plus I can use the time to generally relax, listen to music, listen to a book, read news, and so on.

2. I spend zero time at gas stations, washing the car, servicing it, warming it up, changing to winter tires, or cleaning the windshield off. I also spend zero time doing driveway snow removal in the winter.

3. I have to find parking with my own car.

4. I am more likely to use my feet as my primary mode of transportation. This means I am less likely to need to schedule separate exercise time. And I can still listen to music, news, or an audiobook.

5. Because it saves money, budgeting is a little easier (especially if you are poor) because you aren't as tight.

Very well said. The parent is living in a bubble. If you are a retired millionaire or financially well off, doing those mundane tasks might be fun. Just like people paying to go to gym to spend energy. It won't be fun to spend energy for doing hard labor because you need to put food on the table.

I mean clearly the article doesn't miss that point, because they measured it. People that outsourced stuff were happier.

It's like driving. Sure some people love the feel of the road or whatever. But I Uber everywhere and it's fantastic.

And the happiness level of all the Uber drivers who shuttle you around...? Remember: not everyone has such luxuries and your average HNer likely has much better QoL than the general populace.

What does that have to do with anything? This seems like reading an article about how exercise is good for you and replying, "But some people don't have time to exercise!" It's not wrong, but it doesn't add much insight either.

There is this thing where many humans mix up being happy and being nice.

... is happier than those drivers would be if you weren't asking them to drive you around, because your desire for an Uber ride increases demand and thus their wages.

Yeah. People who plant cocoa and get paid one half of one tenth of a cent for the material for each 2$ chocolate bar should thank you and their corporate overlords as well, because at least they're getting their $0.0005, right?

You're mixing two problems. You paying someone to do work to benefit yourself is almost completely orthogonal to their working conditions. As long as you're not buying slave work, your extra money can either improve or degrade their working condition. That depends only on their company policies/management.

But caring about their working condition is a different problem on its own. (Still valid)

Specifically re: cocoa because it's somewhat unique and interesting http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/en/farmers-and-workers/cocoa/abo... https://www.thenews.coop/102902/sector/retail/fairtrade-help... http://www.foodispower.org/slavery-chocolate/

These people are poor because they have shitty governments. Us not buying their cocoa does not make them richer either, in reality it makes them poorer.

The data on this is pretty clear, economics has studied this for a long time.

The alternative is not not buying or paying them 10^-2 cents on the dollar, it's paying them fairly! I understand we have all the leverage at the negotiation table and we can get away with paying them a pittance with which they often can't make ends meet besides working all year and providing the product to make someone else millions of fucking dollars, but that doesn't make it right! It's ethically wrong and we should recognize it and address it, even if it means a couple less grand a month in some fat manager's pocket.

And these people are poor because of several reasons among which is bad government, but not exclusively! The current "world order" (for lack of a better term) in regards to the economy ensures disadvantaged people remain disadvantaged, keeps people who are poor in poverty for the foreseeable future. We can't excuse that just because we like cheap shiny stuff to buy and because the richest among us want a few billions more, as if they don't have enough power on us already. And I'm getting off topic so I'll just stop here.

1. I don't buy a chocolate bar.

2. ???

3. Cocoa farmers make more money.

No, its not a real alternative unless the morality of all people changes and that is unrealistic castle in the sky thinking.

Most people use buy chocolate based on price and quality. That how it is in the real world, and that gone stay that way. Even fair trade chocolate can only give farmers a tiny bit more money and the economics of fair trade basically shows that it does not make a large difference and it makes no difference in the long run.

You can claim it is not ethical, fine, you don't have to participate and you can buy 'fair trade' products if it makes you feel better but in the real world this will never actual solve the problem of poverty. Poverty will be solved when poor people/nations evolve institutions that facilitate growth.

> The current "world order" (for lack of a better term) in regards to the economy ensures disadvantaged people remain disadvantaged

No it does not. A country that manages to establish effective government can turn itself into a middle to high income country within 30 years. Look at Vietnam, China, Botswana, Chile and so on.

In fact its the exact opposite. Never has it been so easy for a country to go from poverty to wealth. Most of the tech is already invented, you can simple jump over many generation of technical evolution. You can use your competitive advantage effectively because you have a huge market to sell to.

> The current "world order" (for lack of a better term) in regards to the economy ensures disadvantaged people remain disadvantaged, keeps people who are poor in poverty for the foreseeable future.

I mean, that's demonstrably false. When I lived in Bangladesh as a young child, GDP per capita was $250 per year in current dollars. Today it's about $1,500 per year. In my lifetime it's gone from about 6% of US GDP per capita to 10%.

I absolutely agree with the other poster that the "world order" does not keep countries poor. With a lot of exceptions, it's bad governments and bad value systems that keep people poor. In 1969, Korea's GDP per capita was also about $250 per year (about 5% of that of the US at the time). Today, it's $27,000 per year, or about half of that of the US. Nothing happened to Korea in 1969. Instead, they started getting their government in order (though it was something of an autocracy at first), implemented market reforms, and prosperity followed.

Note that it took Korea just 25 years to go from having 5% of US GDP per capita to having 33% of US GDP per capita. Meanwhile, in ~35 years Bangladesh has only gone from 5% to 10% of US GDP. Nobody is doing anything to Bangladesh to cause it to grow slower than Korea. It's not a victim of some proxy war like some countries. It's all about the quality of the government and the moral virtue of the people.

Tell me a story about how I decide not to buy any chocolate bars and they're better off.

Oh so I guess I shouldn't go to a resort to vacation because of the happiness level of the service staff, or eat out at a restaurant. People can afford different luxuries, so you shouldn't deprive yourself of the ones you can afford just because some luxuries are better than others.

My point: many people are dramatically unhappy due to finances... Either because they come from a lower economic class or because they are massively in debt precisely because they buy things (takeout and maid service?) that they cannot afford. The advice "spend to be happier" with this type of services seriously needs the caveat that not everyone should blindly spend spend spend.

Actually, they address this explicitly to some extent:

And it didn’t matter if they were rich or poor: People benefited from buying time regardless of where they fell on the income spectrum. (The authors note, though, that may not hold true for the poorest of the poor.)

Neither the NYTimes article or the research paper addresses debt. Nor does it address if punching yourself in the face increases or deceases happiness, nor if the lesser savings of someone who spends on a maid makes them miserable in 50 years time when they retire.

Well, kind of. I don't want to be that guy, but the reason you can go to those fancy resorts is precisely because the vast majority of people cannot (like the resort service staff).

But would those people be better off if the resort didn't exist?

Consider how they'd be if capitalism didn't exist.

Yes, I do, they would be even poorer then they are now.

Everyone has to work at some point in their life.

I bike everywhere and love it, so, each to their own indeed.

> Actually, the amount of garbage takeout creates is unconscionable to me. I couldn't live with myself filling landfills at that rate.

Does it really create more overall? At first it would seem obvious that it would, because there is now packaging for transporting the prepared food from the restaurant to my home. If I prepared the same meal at home that packaging would not be needed.

But, on the other hand, the restaurant does much more volume than I do. They will buy ingredients in bulk, whereas I'll buy them in much smaller packages. For a given total amount of an ingredient the restaurant will probably generate less garbage per serving than I do at home.

So the question then is does the savings in garbage per serving from the restaurant operating at high volume outweigh the garbage from packaging individual meals for take out?

My guess is that it might depend on what kind of food is being taken out. Food that is taken out in styrofoam containers probably has more impact than food taken out in paper bags.

> They will buy ingredients in bulk, whereas I'll buy them in much smaller packages

Buy your produce in re-usable or recyclable containers, or grow it yourself? We pick up produce from a local farm, they bring it to the pick up site in re-usable plastic bins, we pick it up using re-usable cloth bags. Eggs are in recyclable containers.

It's really hard to grow your own pasta, and it comes from the store already in a package. It's hard to grow your own hot dogs, or vinegar, or ketchup. It's hard to grown your own pineapple in Minnesota, it's hard to find a farmers market with unpackaged soy sauce. My local produce stand won't let me buy a pocket full of rice.

I don't know where you can buy Franks Red Hot in a re-usable package, but when you find out you'll let me know, right?

Push a comment to the extreme and of course it fails. The point that takeout makes more waste than cooking at home is very real. I don't do anything crazy, have a landfill I'm my yard, etc. My neighbors had a family the same size as mine. Each week their trash cans (2 of them) would be overflowing and my single can was 3/4 full, sometimesonly 1/2. The only real difference - they ate tons of takeout, ready made it frozen and we eat out once a month and cook our own meals.

Yes my pasta comes wrapped in plastic and my vinegar in a plastic bottle like everyone else - but it doesn't compare to the waste of takeout and frozen dinners.

Can you buy a pocket full of rice? No, but why would you? Buy a huge bag at Costco and see how long that lasts. That is how you reduce waste per meal.

The comment above you had a ton of examples of where you couldn't get something in a re-usable package, and you responded by shifting the goalposts to just using less plastic.

One person above suggesting produce, then someone responded about pasta, hot sauce, and other things that aren't produce.

Even letting slide that moved goalpost, some things requiring packaging doesn't merit disparaging the idea of reducing packaging.

In my case, I stopped buying pasta and mostly replaced it with legumes, which I buy from the bulk food store with bags I bring with me, so I've achieved the same effect. As best I can tell, the legumes are healthier and taste delicious in my stews. Plus I've learned to make more foods in the process.

The point is, even if you can buy produce without waste (which you totally can at a grocery store too, my bell peppers don't come covered in plastic), there's more that goes into grocery shopping than just raw produce. The goalposts were "making entire meals", munin was the one who moved them up to say "look how easy it is, all my produce is waste-free". It doesn't matter when everything else you need to make your meals comes in non-reusable packaging.

> Does it really create more overall?

Yes, much more, in my case. My transition from a standard American diet took a couple years, but is one of the biggest improvements I've made.

I get most of my fruits and vegetables through a CSA or the farmers market, which use much less packaging than any store or restaurant I've seen. The farms are within a couple hours' drive.

I get most of the rest -- mostly dry legumes, nuts, and spices -- from a bulk food store a couple blocks away, filling containers I bring with me. I also avoid packaged food, as I document in this blog post: http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging, which has improved the deliciousness, freshness, savings, convenience, and healthiness of my diet.

I compost and recycle so my landfill garbage gets emptied about twice a year, as shown in this video: http://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-environment-podcast-5.

One takeout meal produces months worth of garbage so in my case the difference is orders of magnitude.

And my homemade food is more delicious, convenient, cheaper, healthier, etc.

All the restaurants I know of buy their stuff directly from markets early in the morning.

In London, restaurants all pile down to Smithfields, Spitalfields and Billingsgate markets at the crack of dawn for their day's ingredients - they don't go down to their local supermarket and walk around with a basket.

They fill up their crates with the stuff they buy and head back to their kitchens.

> And my homemade food is more delicious, convenient, cheaper, healthier, etc.

I get everything else you are saying, but how is homemade more convenient?

Convenience is the most important reason (for me) to do take out. Normally its picked up when already out on the way home, no time spent preparing/cooking, no time spent cleaning up (except the extremely bad part of throwing it all in trash)

It's more convenient because I cook many meals at once so have several containers worth of meals in my fridge almost all the time.

Also, when meeting people, I have them over for lunch or dinner more than before learning to prepare food from scratch, business and personal, so meeting gets easier. And cheaper -- I save money cooking them and me dinner compared to eating out and just paying for me, though they usually bring something with them.

Plus it deepens the relationship faster to cook at home and share, so there's a convenience in shortening the get-to-know-each-other part of a relationship.

The picking it up takeout on the way home part is an inconvenience. As is dealing with paying for it. I pick up my CSA delivery once a week, but it's one of the highlights of the week. Seeing all the fresh fruits and vegetables, the anticipation, the creative challenge of figuring out how I'll combine and prepare them... I'd choose it over going to art galleries, movies, or many social things. In fact, I bring people with me to pick them up as a social event.

In summary, food becoming an enriching part of my life replaces a lot of time wasters. Healthier food means less exercise time and cost for the same fitness, etc.

> It's more convenient because I cook many meals at once so have several containers worth of meals in my fridge almost all the time.

Thanks for the reply. Do you by chance have a recipe list on your website somewhere for the meals you normally cook for the week?

I don't follow recipes, but make tons of vegetable stews in the pressure cook.

This video -- http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute-vegetable-stew -- shows how I do it. The video isn't supposed to be entertaining or glamorous, just showing how I make a half-dozen meals in about 20 minutes' preparation time.

People give the stews rave reviews. The same technique as in the video with different vegetables gives very different stews. Following the same process as different vegetables come in and out of season... I've never tasted the same result twice, but they're always delicious.

I hope it helps.

If I'm hungry now, I can ...

1. Phone for delivery, and they will say "45 minutes" (it will probably be here in 35).

2. Phone an order for me to pick up, and they will say "half an hour", and I'll go and get it, and it will probably take me 10 minutes to get there and back, again 35 minutes.

3. Take a small detour, and spend 10 minutes sitting at the food vendor (as in your example). How convenient this is depends on how big the detour is. If you are on foot, even a small detour can add quite a bit of time. If you are driving, parking up and walking between car and vendor is an oft-ignored time sink.

4. Spend 20 minutes preparing and cooking, then eat. Put the leftovers in the fridge or freezer.

5. Get something I made earlier in the week out of the fridge or freezer, put it in the microwave for 3-5 minutes, eat it. (Granted, the same is true if you over-order your takeout)

Options 1, 2, and 3 all rely on the vendor being open and not too busy at the time I decide I want the food.

If you only ever eat out or takeout, hire a cleaner, and have someone do all your laundry, you might be able to get away without doing any grocery shopping. In which case, adding such shopping to your weekly routine might add an extra hour. However, if you do already have to do that shopping, then spending an extra 20-30 minutes each week in the supermarket choosing vegetables is likely to be more convenient than stopping off at a food vendor each day.

Depending on the variety of food vendors available on your route home, and the size of their menus, you may be stuck eating pretty much the same thing every night, or having to take larger detours, or make special trips to get something different (negating the convenience). If you cook at home, then there may be a few dishes requiring exotic fresh ingredients that you can't have, but beyond that, the world is your oyster. You can get a lot of variety from basically the same stuff put together in different proportions.

If you eat at the same restaurant a lot, and it's a family restaurant that cares about the little things, you can usually arrange with them to give them some of your own reusable containers. Call for delivery, food shows up in your own little glass+rubber storage boxes, you eat it, and then wash it up (or, as the article suggests, get a maid to do that bit.) Every once in a while, bring the stack of clean boxes back to the restaurant for them to use again.

Note that this system is already how many catering services work. Except that in those cases, the caterer will also take away the containers themselves. (Personal catering—i.e. "an arrangement with someone who cooks to prepare meals for you and stock your fridge with them"—is a commonly-consumed service among both the upper class and the physically disabled. But oddly, outside of those two contexts, you just never hear about it.)

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Even harder is which is actually better for the environment?

For example, in many cases it is more environmentally friendly to use disposable paper coffee cups compared to ceramic cups, once the energy usage to produce and wash them is taken into account. See http://sustainability.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/Comparati...

Is he really saying that it costs 0.18 MJ to wash one cup? That's 1.7 litre of water raised 25 K or or 1 litre raised by 43 K. Washing my cup by hand I don't use anything like that amount of water.

I've just checked by washing my teacup.

I used 0.25 litre of water at 53 C. Incoming water temperature here is about 10 C so that means:

    0.25 kg * 4200 J.K-1.kg-1 * (53 - 10) K

  = 45 kJ = 0.045 MJ

So it sounds as though dishwashers aren't as efficient as people like to say.

Your calculation assumes that the production and distribution of 1MJ of electricity takes 1MJ of raw energy (e.g. in the form of Coal).

This is off by a factor of several. For example coal fired power stations are maybe 45% efficient. Then you have to mine the coal, transport it to the power station etc etc.

> Your calculation assumes that the production and distribution of 1MJ of electricity takes 1MJ of raw energy (e.g. in the form of Coal).

> Hocking assumed a new, commercial dishwasher running on Canadian electricity, requiring about 0.18 MJ/cup-wash.

Nowhere in the article does it say, or even imply as far as i can see, that the energy cost included cost of mining and transporting coal (or oil or gas or solar energy) to the generator.

If that was the intention then it should have been made much clearer because it dramatically affects the results. Where I live (98% hydro) the total energy cost of the energy I use from the grid will be lower than, say the UK (mix of oil, gas, nuclear) simply because the raw material cost is eliminated.

If these details are omitted from the article then the information cannot be effectively used except in that one location in the world where it was written making it rather difficult to draw useful conclusions for or against the use of disposable cups.

The footnote at the bottom says that 1 MJ will raise 3 quarts of water to boiling and that is clearly the energy delivered not the energy consumed in the total process.

So perhaps the only conclusion to be drawn here is that ILEA Leaf carries some rather sloppy articles.

Like I said.. it's hard to work this out, especially in any kind of generalized way.

Don't you have to factor in the time to clean your pots, pans, plates, silverware into your "convenience" factor? Take out reduces the total time involved, but you may have to sacrifice food containers that are not re-usable unless you make a point of bringing your own take-out containers.

You know why? Its designed to.

The clickbait title is designed to appeal to a set of people that are frustrated with life at this time. Either they have the money and are able to do these things or they don't and see it as something to strive for even though their toil might be for nothing .

The title has the opposite effect for people who don't believe that these actions will help them. I am not sure if this is intentional or not but it helps it to go viral. The article is so polarizing that people would want to repost it on their Facebook / Twitter or whatever and criticize it. Of course this has the side effect of spreading it to more people and thats the point.

I think the feeling that you are mentioning could be more appropriately called being at peace, purposefulness, meaningfulness, mindfulness etc. It is quite different from the western concept of happiness. I don't think Gandhi or his disciples were singing and dancing when cleaning the toilets. They approached this duty solemnly. This approach to life is indicated in the Gita where it says that you need do things because they are your Karma without any expectation of reward(read happiness) in return. In this view of life, happiness and sadness are both transient and therefore it is useless to pursue happiness or run away from sadness. This perspective is thus tangential to the western pursuit of happiness. In fact, I think it can be argued that the pursuit of happiness is the real cause of sadness.

Apart from Karma-based approach in Gita, you can also look towards the Service-based approach in Sikhism or the Non-Detachment in Buddhism. In Sikhism, service is an integral part of religion and every Sikh is expected to give at least some time to do voluntary service in Gurudwaras(Sikh Temples). This is mostly in the form of chores like cooking food, washing utensils, polishing the shoes of visitors etc. In India, you can find some of the richest Sikhs doing these chores in Gurudwaras.

Similarly in Buddhism, detachment of the self is an important aspect of living a life which involves restraining oneself, cultivating discipline and practicing mindfulness and meditation.

None of them have any details about pursuing happiness specifically.

"I think it can be argued that the pursuit of happiness is the real cause of sadness." - that's a very interesting idea to meditate on.

I think it is true- but specifically when we limit happiness to very low forms of it (cheesecake, casual sex, meaningless gratifications, etc.)

That's not a small point - it's very true when we're talking about that, and I believe it is the type of happiness that is pursued with the most energy, most of the time.

However - if we re-frame happiness to some other definition, say the happiness one finds in keeping a home sanitary, or helping a friend, or building something useful, then I think it has the opposite effect. e.g. the happiness that comes from learning something new that improves the lives of you and those around you, is not the same as that which comes from getting drunk. Pursuing the first will not lead to sadness, but pursuing the latter will.

> 4. My home cooked food ... costs less

Not really, if you consider the time and effort needed to prepare a meal at home. Starting from shopping at a kitchen market, transporting the goods to home, cutting, prepping, the cooking and finally cleaning up afterwards...

Unless you have several hours of free time each day, preparing ones own meal is not something everyone looks forward to...

I'm sorry, but it does cost less, like I can shop and make both the dinner and next days lunch in an hour. Sometimes I make 3-4 portions so I can eat for two days. My hourly rate is less than the difference of home cooked meal and eating out. I don't cook that often, because while I enjoy doing it, I don't always have the time or motivation, but even counting temporal expense, I save money considerably. Several hours each day is either a ridiculous overexaggeration or you're just very inefficient.

> I'm sorry, but it does cost less

That leaves us wondering why economies of scale haven't beaten out your costs? A place like McDonalds should be able to buy food considerably cheaper than you can, hire people at a fraction of the cost of your time to prep for yourself, etc. While I understand why you may not want to eat McDonalds food constantly, from a price perspective you shouldn't be able to compete.

Have you forgotten some of your costs? It's easy to ignore the opportunity cost of owning the means of production, for instance, despite being a substantial cost, especially in high-cost cities. I have calculated in the past that simply having land allocated for the averaged-sized kitchen in SF costs about the same as a meal out at a nice restaurant 365 days a year, every year. That's even before getting into the cost of building the kitchen structure, furnishing it will the tools needed to prepare food, etc.

If you still believe that your methods are cheaper than a restaurant, what prevents it from working at scale to allow restaurants to offer food just as cheaply?

> I don't always have the time

This is an interesting statement. "I don't have time" means that you value doing one activity over another. If cooking isn't your top choice when faced with options, then perhaps you have undervalued your time spent in the kitchen when calculating your costs?

Of course the manufacturing cost is considerably smaller for restaurants, but they charge a significant markup, which is the only reason eating at home costs less. It's funny that you mentioned McDonald's, I shamelessly love it (in moderation, of course), but in my country it's not the dirt cheap option. It's somewhere in the mid range of fast food places. I literally would not be able to afford to eat at McDonald's 365 days a year.

My setup costs are pretty much next to none, I pay a rent for fully furnished apartment with kitchen, pots and pans, tableware and everything included. Actually it would be a shame not to use them, those would be wasted expenses.

My cooking habits are opportunistic, if I'm at home, with no plans, I'll cook a meal and enjoy the process of doing so. A lot of the times I'm simply not home, so I don't even have the opportunity to cook.

> but they charge a significant markup

Having explored some investment opportunities in the restaurant industry in the past, I don't see the markups being that large. Competition is fierce enough that there isn't a lot of room to go overboard with the margins. Even McDonalds makes the vast majority of their profits from being in the real-estate business[1], rather than the food business.

> Actually it would be a shame not to use them, those would be wasted expenses.

That I agree with, but the cost of the kitchen is still baked into your rent/utilities. You cannot simply ignore the cost because you happen to already be paying it. It is a very real cost that affects how much it costs to cook at home.

> A lot of the times I'm simply not home

Which, I would argue, is also a cost that should be considered as part of cooking at home. Time to get home, cost of travel to get home, giving up the opportunity of whatever else you may be doing, are all costs involved in cooking at home when you are away from home. And it seems that you have found eating out to be the cheaper option under these circumstances.

[1] http://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-beyo...

This is silly. People have home cooked for millennia because it's cheaper than outsourcing it. Although traditionally women were stuck with the task and not compensated for it. In some ways now we're seeing the end of uncompensated domestic labour and people reaching about for ways to replace it - robots? Temporary labour of strangers from the precariat?

Maybe a lot of the traditional home cooking stuff isn't as good as what you'd get from takeout. A subtle form of inflation. For really cheap stuff the early blog posts of Jack Monroe are a good read; https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/02/jack-mo...

Home cooking benefits from amortisation. Cooking more servings is often only a little more labour, up to the size of your kitchen. You don't need to shop daily either.

I do my own cooking and it rarely takes more than half an hour of actual work, plus up to half an hour (longer for weekend roasts) of semi-unattended cooking time.

> several hours of free time each day

Do people really need to spend several hours a day cooking? I don't think so. Simpler meals, simpler prep, putting something in the oven and setting a timer. Totally doable in much less "active" time. Maybe people are just not spending enough time at home.

Gandhi had a particular fascination with toileting. I read in a biography that the first question he'd ask anyone in the morning was 'Have you had your bowel movements yet?"

That seems to be pretty common among yogi - one I had a few years ago was always telling us that we should have regular bowel movements etc, which I found a little weird.

It's just common among quacks of all varieties, from yogis to Kellogs. To paraphrase a doctor who's name I forget, "I think it's the transgressive nature of the act [enemas in this case] which appeals to the quack. They can't give you injections or perform surgery, but they can do all sorts of things to your bottom."

Nah. It's from personal experience. Try meditating when you're all blocked up, or having diarrhoea.

I only meditate when I have diahrrhea.

Based purely on anecdotal evidence, I would say "Want to Be Happy? Have regular bowel movements." Of course anyone with long term health issues will know that it's easy to let them run your life. Based on conversations I've had (especially with older people), having the toilet run your life is pretty common and debilitating, though. For me, it was complications from surgery (which have mostly sorted themselves out, it seems). Quick piece of anecdotal advice: 25 grams of dark (>= 72% cacao) chocolate a day works absolute wonders.

I eat about 500g of black beans (raw) and 200g of rice (around 2000kcal) and the poops are miraculous.

> black beans (raw)

What sort of black beans are those? The ones I know aren't edible when raw.

I would hazard a guess that these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_turtle_bean are the beans in question. They work quite well as an alternative to refried beans in Tex-Mex style food.

Yes, black beans. And no, eating them uncooked would take quite a while, and be hard on the teeth. I suspect that "raw" referred to the weight basis.

But anyway, the are great fiber. Much more comfortable than grain fiber. But one must rinse them carefully after cooking, to reduce gassiness.

PSA: Raw beans are dangerous, especially kidney beans. Beans contain toxic lectins when uncooked.

I meant 500g of raw beans cooked. Given that there's a lot of water in them after, I do not know how much 500g of raw beans weighs when cooked.

Ah, makes sense. I'm from Brazil where rice & beans is a staple, but 500g sounds like a lot!

That does make me wonder how many angry people I encounter each day, especially drivers, who are just constipated?

>Monks garden and clean things in part to increase self-awareness and inner tranquility.

I feel somewhat masochistic even uttering this, but I really enjoy pulling weeds by hand.

Please, let me explain why!

I just bought my first house this past year with a lawn that the previous owners left in considerable disrepair.

Weeds... weeds... creeping clovers of all types... and more weeds.

But there was a good 75% grass cover, so it felt wrong to rip it all up and replace it with sod.

We have a dog, and our previous one passed of bladder cancer, so roundup or any other herbicides were completely out of the question.

So I sat on a milk crate, and started digging at the dandelions at first with a garden tool.

That worked well enough.

But I was ripping up a lot of the grass with each punch of the garden tool, so I tried to start ripping them out by hand... and by George by worked!

I was weeding my lawn twice as fast now because I was just grabbing and ripping with my bare hands instead of an awkward tool.

Smiling every time I got the root, and grimacing every time I did not!

I was losing less grass.

But my back hurt.

Sitting on that milk crate and hunching over really did not sit well with my back.

So I tried bending over.

And my back felt great!

A few days later, I noticed a strange pain in my hamstrings.

Lactic acid was building.

But I hadn't been running or cycling or doing any kind of workout recently... or had I?

Bending over and placing your hands to the ground is actually a great stretch that I always considered myself somewhat incapable of doing. And I never did it regularly.

Yet there I was, stretching for an hour a day, out in the open sun and breeze. Hanging out with my dog.

Admiring my progress as the pile of weeds I picked grew, and the ground I stood foot on looked more like a real lawn... I was in heaven.

I now find myself weeding my lawn first thing every morning, before even eating breakfast sometimes.

I'm absolutely loving it.

And I hated doing "yardwork" when I was younger.

I use cleaning and tidying as a procrastination to organize my mind before work and it makes me feel happier.

Even the best takeout food is low quality. You can't trust the ingredients.

I don't really understand the fascination of westerner's about a weirdo through and through...

In a world that epitomizes heinous men like Columbus or Alexander, it comes as no surprise that a racist, kinky pervert like MK Gandhi is hailed as peacemaker...

His `ahimsa` nonsense benefited the British raaj more than the Indian subcontinent. Because of his stubborn refusal to support forceful eviction of the imperial forces, independence had been delayed by a decade. Thousands of young men had been killed. Their blood is on Gandhis hands. Not to mention, during WW2 he sent Indian forces to reinforce the ailing British army.

During the 1899 2nd Anglo-Boer war, Gandhi volunteered for the British army. He preached independence, except for Black people. He expressed his disdain for Black Africans, by frequently referring to them as "Kafirs".

In 1930, he raised Rs 1.32 Crores - a humongous sum in those days (even in present day India that's a substantial amount of money) for the Dalits of India. No records yet exist that a single penny of that fortune had been spent for the betterment of the people. Not very surprising for a failed lawyer, who tried his luck abroad and decided to work as legal counsel for a wealthy Muslim smuggler in South Africa charging hefty fees.

People extol his vow to celibacy... and forget to mention, that he would separate married women from their husbands, and lie with them naked. He'd advise the husbands to take a cold shower whenever they felt aroused, while he was lying naked with their nude wives in the same room. He'd even lie naked with nude teen/pre-teen girls. When in Bengal, used the Bengali Muslims as an excuse to sleep naked with his 18 yr old grand-niece. He was 77 then, arguing that muslims may kill them, they should remain in the state of purity in case death comes. So he forced his grand-niece to sleep naked with him.

Though there's no account of Gandhi ever having sexual relationship with any of these women. Lying naked with nude women was his way to demonstrate his resolve... the "vow of celibacy"... Of course, it should be easy to refrain from heterosexual romp with all the nude girls and ladies lying with him in the same room... someone who was decades later found to be a closet homosexual...

Imagine if Mahatma Gandhi was alive today, and indulged in the weird activities that he did...

This is my sentiment exactly, that happiness is internal and requires awareness. When you shop for yourself, you can look at your shopping cart and be aware of what your needs are in life. When you cook your own food, you exercise control and awareness over what is going into your body. Cleaning requires you to be aware of your environment, and in the state of improved blood flow your mind has the freedom to clean itself of anxieties, bad memories, etc.

Fantastic take at addressing things. I would tend to agree with you on literally every point you raised.

Earnest question: how many young children do you take care of in the home?

Thanks. How did you learn source fruits and vegetables? I'm also keen to learn this.

Two practices forced me to learn:

1. I joined a CSA with a rule for myself not to let anything go to waste. That forced me to figure out how to prepare local, in-season fresh vegetables and fruit. The first year I did it, I had to steam a lot of vegetables and eat them with salt and pepper since I didn't know what I was doing. So, healthy but not delicious. The next year I knew what I was doing and learned to make things delicious. Now I can go to farmers markets and get local, in-season produce, which is cheapest, healthiest, and most flavorful. I barely ever go to markets any more.

2. I gave myself a rule to buy no packaged food for a week (no bags, boxes, bottles, rubber bands, stickers, etc). The challenge seemed hard at first, but I made it 2.5 weeks and by the end of it, my views on food changed. Packaged food became far less appetizing and more weird in a way I can't explain but you have to experience. Anyway, it forced me to buy almost exclusively fruits and vegetables.

Oh, third: I found a store near me that sells bulk foods, so legumes, nuts, oats, and a few other things I get there.

The short answer: force yourself to buy only fresh vegetables and fruits and you'll figure it out! You're not going to die. You'll only face a challenging transition.

I've been happier since I stopped trying to prepare my own food and switched largely to Joylent.

There is no single path to happiness.

yeah, that's why every person is different.

For example, I really relax when I fill or empty the dishwasher - but I hate cleaning my flat - it's like wasted time for me - really thinking now about hiring a maid to clean it once a week.

To be fair, ordering takeaway was just an example used in the article. I actually enjoy cooking, so it really wouldn't make me happier to order. I also like polishing my shoes and some things like that. But I hate ironing my shirts and cleaning the toilet.

I used to incorporate cleaning into my home workout routine as well. I knew I couldn't be the only one! A "rest" for me was sweeping the floor. Now I go to the gym because bodyweight isn't enough any more but I haven't found a good way to keep my floors clean because I hate doing that too.

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