The guy is a hustler, I can appreciate that. He works for himself, I can appreciate that.
However if lots of other people try to do the same thing then does all the competition create a situation where lots of people are squabbling over a few crumbs? It looks like its a niche. And its only a matter of time others try to muscle in on his turf.
Why does Western Society have a fixation on only doing things that make sense for the rest of your life?
Who cares how long it will last. Who cares about The rest of your life. Do something that's interesting NOW.
Let him enjoy it for however long he wants. When he doesn't enjoy it, or it doesn't work anymore, he'll find something else to do that he finds interesting. That's great for him! Maybe it's not the life you want, but that's not what we're talking about.
If you have a strong generational support system then I think the focus can shift onto what you want to do now versus what you need to do for later.
No, what's changed is expectation. In the 1830's a lot of people just got old and died, were impoverished and angry about it, but what were they going to do? Now we have widespread literacy and a middle class that doesn't expect poverty until you die as a retirement plan.
Yes, family and religion. I don't think American society was ever as multi-generational as in Asia or Europe. But, yes, AFAIU back then it was much more common for immediate and even distant families to live under the same roof, long-term or temporarily. Grandpa or Uncle Charlie too old to live alone after being widowed? Move him into your guest room. No hand-wringing negotiation required; no serious disruption to lifestyle.
My grandfather rented his basement to his best friend for years until the friend married, and then the two couples were best friends. It wasn't that the friend had fell on hard times or was wanting for anything; it was just because people back then demanded less personal space and were more comfortable living near or with each other. These days moving into your friends basement is practically a moral failing. I guess maybe because as society has become more diverse we have fewer signals to different in-group people from out-group people; we've been reduced to relying on independence and wealth as the most important markers of people's character.
"Man made $2500 doing X once, never to be repeated again" or "Man made $2500 in a year doing X" might be equally true headlines, but a lot less attention grabbing.
Here's another example:
"Man makes $2500 in a day by buying a lottery ticket".
That is a weird sentence, because buying a winning lottery ticket is a discrete, non-reproducible event - so why include "in a day", unless it is to suggest something to the reader?
Or another one:
"Man makes $2500 in a day by winning competition after preparing for months" - you can see where I'm going with this.
You railing against "Western Society" strikes me as off base, like you have an axe to grind. It doesn't matter to me if he does it once or for the rest of his life. That not why people post stuff like this to hacker.
However what does matter is this video was shared on HACKER NEWS, probably because of its entrepreneurial based content. Most of the links posted here have some sort of connection to either technology, science and/or entrepreneurship. It's not the latest javascript library, but he is using eBay + hustle to brick and mortar stores to generate revenue.
The question is it's relevance to this forum. The guy is trying to make a business, and exploiting gap between supply and demand. That part is interesting. The reason why it's relevant is "can anyone use this video to recreate a similar business?"
Is this video demonstration of a potential service a sustainable, repeatable and potentially scalable business model for others to emulate on this forum? My humble take on it is NO IT IS NOT.
> Who cares how long it will last
Literally most of the people who come to hacker news. We're not to watch some guy drive 700 miles to 20 Walmarts to buy 100+ monopoly board games. Most of us are interested to see if this can be a real business idea.
Which is why I conceded certain points about the idea. He's working for himself. He's hustling. I don't know if he does this full time or in addition to his regular job. There is something impressive to what he's doing. Making $2500 over the course of a weekend is pretty impressive. And if you could keep making $2500 per weekend doing this kind of thing that would be of interest to me, even if it isn't my thing.
I would assume because he isn’t doing something sustainable or long term so he takes any criticism of that personally?
And I agree with him. Not everything needs to be sustainable. Not everything needs to be profitable over the long haul. Sometimes getting set up to take advantage of a one-time event (e.g., "Snowcopalypse" T-Shirts) with a short horizon is worth doing and worth studying for future opportunities.
My personal take on what he's saying is "adapt or die."
I've been moving around Africa for 2.5 years now, and often things from "Western Society" strike me as quite odd or strange. The longer I stay here the more obvious it is how severely broken "our" society really is.
Often I see "Western people" promoting things that don't generate happiness, and attacking things that do generate happiness, and I feel inclined to question that, because that doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
It's not western society, it's the ethos of the upper-middle class of western society, which emphasizes not only career stability but intergenerational success. And of course it's also concerned with differentiating itself from lower classes, thus the skepticism/condescension.
Poor and working-class Americans don't talk like that because their time horizons are as equally short as Chinese and Russian hustlers/go-getters.
The last time I checked, your videos can also be de-monitized randomly without notifying you, because they "may not be suitable for advertising". This is done by bots 99% of the time and you'll have to have the video reviewed manually before you can run ads again (Yes, they're actually trying to get bots to recognize offensive content, and it's done with the content itself, not just the video title/desc).
I also once saw someone do a video subtitle/translation and strike the original owner for copyright infringement. Whether this was accidental or not I don't know, but it took days to resolve.
(this post is accurate based on how youtube worked ~6 months ago, it's possible they've changed things but I'm not betting on it)
Is being a waiter, or a checkout clerk, or a fast food employee, or a Chili's line cook?
3 PS3s guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sjhjFOw4Ok
It doesn't say they had to sell at a loss, just that they didn't get the ridiculous markup they hoped for.
The PS3 really was in short supply and prices did remain elevated. The article mentions that.