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Comment by olefoo | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty fascinating article even though it is frustratingly superficial. It seems like there are a bunch of different threads here that would benefit from exploration; the behavioral economics thread; the anthropology thread, the climate change thread ( notice how weather has changed the price repeatedly in the article ), and the producer/consumer disjunction thread. Maybe the author should do some more fieldwork and turn it into a book.

The Malagasy vanilla farmers behavior in the face of a windfall is not that different from many Americans actions in similar circumstances from what I've seen. People with a sudden access of money will often splurge on bizarre displays of wealth, sports cars and motorcycles, fancy clothing they rarely wear; etc. Often not because they have a long-held desire for the toys they are buying but because they have a cultural template of what wealth and success should look like that they are trying to act out.

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For a somewhat deeper anthropological dive into this, although in a very accessible way, you might check out the book "cows, pigs, Wars, and witches". One of the case studies is a culture with a boom-bust cycle much like this.

> People with a sudden access of money will often splurge on bizarre displays of wealth, sports cars and motorcycles, fancy clothing they rarely wear; etc. Often not because they have a long-held desire for the toys they are buying but because they have a cultural template of what wealth and success should look like that they are trying to act out.

It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to realize this and take appropriate action when they gain a lot of wealth. Seems like common and easily accessible knowledge at this point. I suspect it's a form of evolutionary wealth redistribution that's built in to the human genome.

Delayed gratification is a huge predictor of wealth.

> It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to realize this and take appropriate action when they gain a lot of wealth.

Who says they're not self-aware?

The article explicitly mentions it's unsafe to take the large amounts of cash traveling, which it notes "are usually a day’s trek away". It's not uncommon for developing-world banks to be untrustworthy, as well.

Spending it instead of having it stolen or being murdered for it might be the right approach here.

You're right, although I was mostly talking about that part of the comment in isolation. There's definitely strategy in spending as well.

Wouldn't lavishly spending it still be an issue as you're likely to stand out / be targeted?

Let alone that stealing stuff might not be as convenient as cash, but still desirable...

There are a number of confounding factors, class and education for instance. It can be hard to be rational about large amounts of money especially if most of your socialization around finances comes from advertising that explicitly pushes a consumerist mindset on you.

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