Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748) | Hacker News Reader

Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748)

founders.archives.gov

111 pointsroschdal34 comments

> The most trifling Actions that affect a Man’s Credit, are to be regarded. The Sound of your Hammer at Five in the Morning or Nine at Night, heard by a Creditor, makes him easy Six Months longer.

> never keep borrow’d Money an Hour beyond the Time you promis’d, lest a Disappointment shuts up your Friends Purse forever.

> the good Paymaster is Lord of another Man’s Purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the Time he promises, may at any Time, and on any Occasion, raise all the Money his Friends can spare.

> Creditors are a kind of People, that have the sharpest Eyes and Ears, as well as the best Memories of any in the World.

Credit scores have replaced reputation and credit has become very impersonal. Interestingly, most of this seems more applicable than ever... with the exception of banging your hammer at 5 am.

Maybe, but not in all environments. It would be interesting to update these for the VC economy.

The above is a debt investment, whereas VCs are generally looking at equity investments. These are fairly different in principle and strategy, and both have history dating back many hundreds of years.

Yes, but.

You don't have to pay back the money, but you do have to be seen working hard. You have to maintain good relations with your funders.

The principles are the same.

Fantastic point. Credit scores allow for greater “efficiency”, but don’t necessarily capture all the relevant information.

There is a common problem of seeing quantitative measurements as “more objective” than qualitative evaluations, but this is oftentimes naive. Notice that many of the best VC’s focus on the individuals and group dynamics of the founding team, something that can’t be captured quantitatively.

“Giving someone no map is much, much better than giving him a wrong map.” — Nassim Taleb

Some of us have been known to schedule emails early or late, CC'd in to people who matter for just that first point...

Summary:

Live within your means. Invest well. Collect what's yours. Trifling expenses add up. Time is money.

Pay what you owe, when you owe it.

Isn’t that what living in your means mean by definition?

I think they're different.

"Live within your means" is basically don't overextend yourself to live a life you can't actually afford

"Pay what you owe when you owe it" means that if you said you'd pay somebody, make sure to do so on time. It's entirely possible to be living within your means but still have a bad habit of paying your bills weeks late.

Key takeaway for me:

> In short, the Way to Wealth, if you desire it, [...] depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality; i.e. Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both.

Was it the norm then to capitalize every noun in English like German still does today?

In short, yes. See also the Declaration of Independence, etc

I've found that it depends a lot on the writer.

Just as an example, if I'm remembering correctly I saw this happen a lot more in John Adams' writing than in Thomas Jefferson's.

I have to wonder how far back that advice goes.

It's oft repeated, to the tune of new wisdom being discovered and brought to the masses, and nary a single thought given to whence it originally came nor whether it is, indeed, new.

Good to see good ol' Benjamin Franklin pirating other people's work.

Great artists steal.

Research. It's research.

Reminds me a lot of PT Barnums article on Money written in 1880. A lot is still applicable today.

https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/

Reminds me of the advices given in the book: The Richest Man in Babylon.

Same. A fantastic book.

I found the contraction of them to 'em interesting, and it flowed rather well. I wonder why it fell out of use?

It hasn’t. Not in England anyway.

“Go get ‘em boy”

It hasn't. I still hear it occasionally, and use it myself.

I've been saying that all my life, as most of the people in my family and many friends.

Etymologically speaking, it's not a contraction, but a preservation of an old 3rd person plural pronoun form (from Middle English "hem"): see https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/'em

I don't think it ever fell out of use, it just isn't written.

I'm from the US south, I use both "them" and "'em" in everyday speech depending on context, but I never write "'em", even where I would use it in speech. This is partially because "'em" in written form ends up conveying a slightly different tone or meaning than I might intend. "Them" is just a word; "'em" has more nuance and is more easily misunderstood.

That's what I meant, in writing. Of course, it's still spoken that way.

There was a push in American education against using contractions in writing sometime in the earlier 20th century (perhaps earlier). The APA style guide says to avoid contractions in all official writing. People probably continued to write as they were taught in grammar school.

If it were to make a comeback today, it would probably be in the form of "m". Like, "ru goin w/m?"; or "m ain't spiders. mr2 spiders."

You don't give 'em hell?

Out of use? Not in my neck of the woods.

I grepped a bunch of source code I have lying around, and I found it used in OpenSSL (3 times), the Postgres C driver, and the Snappy compressor -- the latter because it includes a complete copy of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND!

I did not know that style of title was so old. I assumed it was crafted by digital metric driven forces.

> Hitherto we solicit advise to our merry apprentice; thou won’t believeth doctrine 3!

Verily I say unto you, if your left had should prevent your right hand from clinking on this headline, then you should cut off your left hand, and cast it away..."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com