Things You're Allowed to Do
milan.cvitkovic.net
milan.cvitkovic.net
As silly as it may seem, I use that singular point in time as the reference for when I commenced adulthood. I've got no idea if others have similar experiences (I grew up very poor, so I was probably primed against the idea of spontaneously buying something to begin with), but the contents of this list seems to be very much in the same vein.
Reminds me of a time when I was in the city with a friend.
My shoes were broken, so I said to him "I need new shoes" went in the next department store, bought a pair, threw my old ones in a trash can and wore the new shoes.
He was mind-blown.
Of course, having a reasonable amount of cash on hand to enable immediate, necessary purchases is also a mark of adulthood (it means you have a decent job), so the story still works.
It's not like it's an item bought for no reason at all. (Not to mention in both instances they could go and return the item the next day)
I know people who are not going to break their budget by spending $10 on Uber when they are late, yet they would rather wait for a bus in the freezing cold or rain, waste time and be late.
Like, I have a friend who was finally convinced to take an Uber. She'd ask the driver to drop her off at the bus stop she'd usually get off at, and walk the rest of the way.
It is perhaps a bit paranoid, but when trying an unknown and unusual service for the first time, not over the top, especially if she is a girl living alone.
Then one day I did, and holy shit it's the best thing ever, I'm never using cash again (this was before covid hit which has made contactless mandatory now).
I'm sure there are a few other things in my life like this, i.e. things that I'm aware of, but making stupid choices about, I'm just not aware that it's a stupid choice.
It's hardly hidden:
> I grew up very poor, so I was probably primed against the idea of spontaneously buying something to begin with
My next step was not wearing shoes at all.
But I have to admit that's only working in the summer and outside of clubs/restaurants.
This may not resonate with Americans due to the free refills or British because in UK it’s normal to have tap water served.
Its perfectly fine to go to a restaurant, eat 1/2, 1/3, 3/4 of a meal and still order a dessert.
I'm still not 100% comfortable with it though...
I had been collecting whisky from a bunch of small liquor stores and had run out of clothes to wrap my bottles in when packing them in my suitcase, so I grabbed a towel from the bathroom.
Being a fancy hotel, I saw they had a price sheet for items that "unexpectedly" went missing, and I think the towel was like $60 or something insane. When I was a kid, I never understood why anyone would pay that much for a towel, but at midnight in my hotel, with a bottle of Japanese whisky worth far more than that potentially on the line, it suddenly clicked why someone might want to do that.
I think I put the towel back and went to the local Don Quixote (open 24/7!) and bought some cheap packing material, but in that moment I definitely understood the prioritization exercise that others I this thread have talked about (how much is my time/how valuable is this thing).
I think if my income was 2x what it was at one point, I would have taken a hotel robe under the listed price. I've had really mixed experiences buying robes at stores and on-line. You can't tell how well they'll work wet. Hotels sometimes have really nice ones, with the upside you can try them out straight out of the shower, and see how they work.
Downside is the markup.
How do they know?
I thought it was a fun take one the whole thing and had it not been for me not having any room in my luggage I would’ve taken it. If I recall correctly the note said it was somewhere in the $50-$60 range.
Now, imagine guests being offended and not coming back to the hotel and leaving negative reviews out of spite, even if they didn't have any intention of stealing the robe.
That would make the hotel staff less snarky and rude, and more mindful about what they write on notes to guests...
Because this is the rude equivalent of the store clerk following around the aisles assuming you're a thief. A high end hotel for the rich would never dream of writing something like this -- at least not in the good days before the race to the bottom.
But also in all fairness I'm paraphrasing, I can't recall the exact wording so it may well have been formulated much better than I make it seem.
I’ve heard this generalised to “when you’re poor, rules control you, when you’re rich they just set price tags on different actions.”
In my defence, I did not think I would need a jacket on a sunny day in May in San Francisco.
I’m not sure I mark this as “adulthood,” but it was a strangely significant milestone in my budding independence.
Chocolate cake and coffee for breakfast at 7:00 AM? Hell yeah! At 2:30 after the bars have closed? Why not? At 9:30 PM because you are feeling a bit 'peckish' after dinner? Sure.
"Wait, I'm an adult, I can eat ice cream for dinner if I want to"
as well as the
"I guess I'm an adult, because I don't want to eat ice cream for dinner"
Wait, what? Is that USD?
Its a staple experience of the meat eating upper middle class here in the US.
That's not "steak houses in the US", that's a specific type of steak house for the upper middle class. I've had excellent steaks in places like the Cattlemen's Steakhouse, OK, and they were nothing like $100 per head.
So, it's not like this was the parent's only option for steak outside the house. They could have a $30-$50 fine steak experience in tons of places.
Most people would draw a clear line between a hamburger and fries from McDonalds for $5 and a hamburger and fries from an upscale burger place for $20. Those steakhouses you are referencing are McDonalds equivalent and every city in America has them in additional to upscale steakhouses that are 4 dollar signs on Google. It looks like Mahogony Prime Steakhouse would an example in OK. The comment I was responding to expressed disbelief at $100 steak which is a staple of the American experience (meat eaters obviously) and not at all “just for upper middle class” Americans. Giving out a steakhouse gift card for birthdays and graduations was pretty common amongst lower class families when I was growing up. Buying a $100 steak twice a month might be upper middle class behavior but buying it once or twice per year is well within all but the lowest classes ability to purchase when desired.
Here, you can get a good steak in a proper, table service, not fast food, not chain restaurant for the equivalent of $30-$35. $100 would be stupidly expensive, you would only pay that in the most expensive restaurants in the country.
My point was to highlight that these are high-end places that go for the $100/head, not the common steakhouse experience, and hardly required to get a decent steak, as the parent makes it appear:
"If you're going out, a decent steak would cost you over $100"
Well, no, a fancy high-end steakhouse will cost you that. You can have a decent steak for much less.
>Those steakhouses you are referencing are McDonalds equivalent
No except in the eyes of golf & country club types, $200K/year FAANG engineers, or Paris Hilton-caricatures saying you can only get a "decent froyo" at some $50/cup high end place.
I wouldn't consider Outback, or Longhorn for that matter, or places like McCormick & Schmicks or Cheesecake Factory as "fast food". They're just chain restaurants that also serve steaks.
They're not McDonalds, however, nor some kind of "McDonalds of steaks", to be considered "fast food" (a place like Sizzler buffet might be that). And there are tons of non-chain restaurants serving steaks with similar prices.
I've eaten at lots of Michelin-star restaurants in Europe and around the globe, and had $300/head bills a few times, but I don't consider restaurants with $30/$40 steaks or places like Outlook beneath me or "fast food".
It's just the rampant US-version of classism (if one think it's bad in the UK, have them wait till they talk to some upper-middle class US people).
It depends on what you call "decent" and what's the general quality of produce in your country. There are cheaper steaks here too, but they it's just pieces of charred mediocre meat, which you wouldn't risk to order done medium rare anyway.
> It's just the rampant US-version of classism (if one think it's bad in the UK, have them wait till they talk to some upper-middle class US people).
Not that there's anything wrong with classism, but classism itself is your attitude towards people, not things. Taste in food is not and cannot be classism by definition.
Of course it can. You use food and restaurant choices to signal your class. You're not an "Olive Garden peasant" for example...
Besides, how exactly would you signal it and to whom? Since transition to WFH, I haven't met a single colleague of mine offline. I eat out completely alone 90% of the time, and just with my girlfriend 9% — whom are we showing off to? Each other?
That would be a good counter-argument if I said people are doing this food signalling thing just or particularly or generally these last months.
But humanity and restaurants existed before covid/wfh, and would (I bet) exist after it. I was referring to something people do in general (and have done for centuries), not to what temporary situation they are forced because of WFH to do.
That said, even with WFH one can (and many do) flaunt their food buying habbits online, with pictures of the high class foods they stocked their fridge, their expensive deliveries, their subtle knowledge and enjoyment of expensive coffee beans for their espresso habbit, and so on...
And this is for things that don't have negative externalities such as the environmental damage, animal cruelty and health downsides of eating steak every day.
That's what the price tag is for.
> animal cruelty
Depends on how do you compare it with not being born at all.
> health downsides of eating steak every day
That differs from person to person, each with his specific problems and issues — and my neurosurgeon actually have recommended me to eat more red meat. It would also be very healthy for me if I could gain some weight.
In stage two, my wife told me not to.
The first step to breaking out of prison is recognizing when you're in one.
When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
And the minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
I think that’s very important and however, you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
One couldn't argue that as they knew about Chinese labor law violations at Foxconn & Pegatron.
Do you seriously think China has laws that mandate abuse of workers?
Just look at the U.S. handling of COVID and how there's still no universal healthcare. China did a much better job here even if you think their figures aren't exact, (most likely true, but so is the case in places like Florida etc.)
I don't think they're somehow uniquely more corrupt that here in the West, they're however much younger, (convenient how we disregard our meddling there for centuries), they're trying to match the West in as short timespan as possible and of course they're going to line up their pockets along the way, as almost everyone with enough power and access does when given the chance, sadly. But they've also massively expanded the middle class and lifted people from poverty.
Remember the U.S. had slavery and yes it is appropriate to compare that since the U.S. had the same government then than it does now, China didn't.
As China grows in strength and prosperity so do its laws become more worker friendly as it transitions from a factory for the world to a more knowledge based economy. In other words it follows a fairly standard development trajectory, just on a much shorter timeframe so the abuses are more visible and less spread out, unlike in the West. Plus there's more technology to document it all.
Why do you assume that it has to be Apple's fault that China is fucked up?
Or maybe simply quitting would be even worse than taking their own lives, somehow. And Foxconn might be part of making that situation a reality.
For some reason the notion of Foxcon == Apple manufacturer has stuck in the public consciousness, mostly because it brings in the sweet sweet clicks just by having "Apple manufacturer <bad thing>" in there.
Having said that, I personally also think that it would better if the non-molding was a conscious choice, and not due to lack of thought. I personally often see people suffer due to lack of possible molding.
Don't forget that Steve Jobs is not an all-knowing oracle. He was human, and in many ways a product of his time. His '60s hippie ideals certainly influenced Apple I's marketing and story (taking on 'the man', IBM). But in his personal life, he denied paternity of his daughter for years, well past the point where he was a multi-millionaire and could have afforded to support her.
The audacity of this guy! So he starts from the assumption that he's just as smart as everybody else that lives or has ever lived. Then he works from there.
Everyone around you who has ever lived or will ever lived are just grown up kids like you, muddling their way through life just like you.
That is up to and including (but not limited to) your Mom, your Dad, your Teachers and Professors, the Mayor, Prime Minister or President, and even the Secretary General of the United Nations!
Possibly this might even apply to people like Einstein, The Pope, and Steve Jobs, though the jury is out on that one.
And I'm actually coming from the other direction: I'm arguing we shouldn't put anyone too much on a pedestal.
While he definitely made some awesome contributions; in the end even Einstein was a mortal man who will have struggled with life, and he likely had his own setbacks and made his own share of mistakes just as much as anyone else.
I don't want to think that I'm saying we should. I think each person can achieve great things, but only some will be able to achieve great things in the realm of theoretical physics. And some will achieve mediocrity with less effort. I don't know if that warrants a pedestal or not since one mans greatness very well could be another mans mediocrity.
I want to say that it would be nice if society would recognize and be comfortable with the innate differences in all of us, since we are all just humans with spectrum for all things related to our biology, but I don't know what that society would end up looking like.
Sure, but it depends from where you start your reasoning from. I guess my upbringing was just the opposite as that of arrogant people like Jobs. My parents taught me to assume that most things are the way they are probably because a lot of people smarter than me set them up that way. This leaves you in a perennially grateful, happy state. When you find something that does not work in an optimal way, you become sad and try to fix it for the better, but only after you have thoroughly understood how it works. How is life like for an arrogant asshole? Do they become happy only when they "gotcha" the failings of less smart people? Won't they unconsciously find errors in many things they don't understand? It must be a living hell to be like that.
But I don't read "everything around you (...) was made up by people that were no smarter than you" as necessarily arrogant.
It could also be read as recognizing that we are all equally frail human beings. (Possibly my own bias is showing too)
Sleep until noon every day.
Work only as much as you need.
Work from home, or anywhere else for that matter.
Have multiple romantic partners in parallel.
Have platonic friends of the opposite sex.
Share multiple flats with multiple people (i.e. live in multiple places, but cheap)
Study 10 years.
Make your own iced tea in the fridge.
Buy food in bulk.
Drink tap water.
Create your own dishes by mixing ingredients.
Cook/fry/bake food you would usually eat raw.
Eat food raw that you would usually cook/fry/bake.
Sleep everywhere in your home.
Learn languages, instruments, or sports after you turned 30.
Drink no alcohol at a party and still have fun.
Start/stop smoking and drinking after 30.
Found a company like you would buy a game console.
Take no VC money.
Take muliple years and tries to create a good product.
Write music/give concerts for yourself or your friends only.
Don't wear shoes outside.
Don't have an opinion on a topic.
Overall:
Don't play pre-defined games in your life, but ask if they make you happy. You only have one life, make the most out of it.
Sometimes you have to play by some rules made up by other people to get into a better place, but look at them closely, it could very well be that they are more open to interpretation than they first seem.
You can go further though: sleep when you're tired. wake up when you're done sleeping.
for me sleeping until well rested led to sleeping till noon.
It literally makes me sad how few people actually can experience this.
I have done this when I got caught up in a really good book and read until 4:00 AM. Generally, I wake up on my own, before the alarm goes off, but it is a safety valve.
> Share multiple flats with multiple people (i.e. live in multiple places, but cheap)
I've never even heard of people doing this. How does it work? What's it like? It sounds fascinating, and like something I should've tried in my 20s.
You can also rent a room in a shared flat, which is cheaper.
From the money you save, you can rent another room in another flat.
Some of my friends even let their rooms to other people while they were out of city to save money.
it's like Airbnb without the middleman ;)
Carry a pad and pencil and do sketches of strangers.
Walk or take public transport in random directions.
Put a chair outside and spend all day there.
Sleep on the balcony.
Draw graffiti.
Experiment with clothes, hair color, face paint.
Work out outdoors.
Tell people funny lies.
Go hungry just to feel hungry.
Bake cookies and give them away.
Talk to people nonverbally and see how much you can express.
Modify/deface objects to make them look funnier.
Just not in my city please...
Do those "multiple romantic partners" know about each other? If the answer is "no" then yours is a very jerky suggestion (I know "jerky" is a harsh word for this forum, but I can't come up with anything else to describe this).
I feel this is nitpicky, but considering the GP's point about entering predefined games...
Some people don't want exclusivity, but also don't want to know what you're doing with other people.
Those years ended for me a long time ago, but they were important, for me, and for my partners at that time.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-census-idUSKB...
Median mortgage payment is $1550/mo. 40% of US homes are free of mortgage.
https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-mor...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nea...
There are a lot of folks in the US that are just scraping by.
There are a lot more folks with enough disposable income to pursue one of these strategies. Not everybody.
[And this doesn’t include wealth and savings.]
I would expect a median family with median mortgage to have little money left over if they have children.
I saw it with my old boss. People would always be asking if they needed help or would just offer free stuff in hopes of getting something later.
I grew up lower middle class instead, so I have other stupid frugal habits. Growing up, my parents never, ever, ever replaced a thing that was working. The only time you were allowed to replace a thing was when it was irredeemably broken.
Took me a while to get rid of that habit.
That just sounds like common sense to me. Why replace a washing machine that still works just fine? For some gimmicky features or a shiny modern industrial design?
I fall firmly in the camp of not replacing stuff that works, clothes that still fit and aren't worn out, anything that still serves its purpose. Obviously I will repair or modify things to the extent of my skills to keep them going, clothes and computers are what I'm best at.
My TV is a 42" LG LCD that I picked up for $20 ages ago when my company was moving to a new office building. It works perfectly, supports 1080p and the picture quality is good after the usual adjustments I would have to do on a new TV anyway. None of the new TVs I can buy offer any real tangible improvements that make them worth the additional cost.
Sure, when this TV eventually breaks, I'll probably replace it with one that's slightly larger, 50-55" would be ideal for the space I have on the wall. But there's no need to rush that upgrade.
Consumerism has broken people's brains, they're stuck in an eternal loop of trying to keep up with the Joneses, never happy with what they already have. It's unhealthy and wasteful.
My desktop machine is 2011 vintage hardware (Phenom II X6 with 16GB RAM), upgraded piecemeal to an SSD and a Radeon RX560. It plays the games I like to play (currently GTA V and Mudrunner) in 1080p on max settings and it's obviously plenty powerful for ordinary desktop applications.
If a PC does eventually become too slow to be practical in daily use, then I would say it's no longer really fit for purpose. That happened with my old Chromebook, which couldn't even play Youtube videos smoothly after they changed the codecs. It happened with my old P4-based PC, but the person I gave it to kept using it for years for basic desktop stuff.
I just don't replace stuff for the sake of upgrading, so I buy very little new stuff and keep what I have for a long time. I prefer spending more up front for something I know will last, and based on how much use i expect out of it. I'm not going to buy a super fancy drill, since I only need to drill holes a couple of times per year, so a basic one is fine. On the other hand, I prefer walking to get around, so I buy good quality footwear that lasts and can be repaired.
Edit: I fully agree with you on all your examples. Just wanted to give a counter example.
Yeah, but that's now what I wrote.
There's a long, long, infuriating way between "works just fine" and "irredeemably broken". Trust me, I know.
Obviously, if a washing machine doesn't complete the washing cycle or a toaster doesn't toast right, it does need to be fixed or possibly replaced.
Same, but I think that's a good thing. The culture of throwing things away and buying new ones just for the fun of it is bad for the future of humanity. I only replace things that are working when I have certainty that the still-working thing can be useful to someone else.
(I guess the super rich can have very trusted employees with such access, or banks provide white glove service at some point, but that’s clearly different)
You can add a signatory to a bank account (and I'm guessing to a credit card as well). I don't know of any services that specialize in nit-picking through the use of an authorized signer however part of said hypothetical service could be to bond / insure that the secondary signer doesn't take some sort of negative action that leaves the account/owner in bad standing.
But again you're running into the ultimate question of why isn't your bank / credit card taking care of you...maybe it's because the bank / CC just make money off of the fiduciary mishaps of the owner when they don't have 20 minutes to wait on hold.
Most of the virtual assistant services have you store your spending details for this exact scenario.
If you have substantially more money than that then you can enlist financial professionals to legally act on your behalf and settle disputes for you.
Especially when it gets tangled up with moral judgments or self-image: "why order something at restaurant that you can make at home?" "what kind of cyclist can't change a flat" "only a loser has to pay to get dates" etc...
None of those things are absolute right or wrong, but it should be based on a honest assessment of the tradeoffs, not emotional associations or ingrained assumptions.
- Just because my hourly rate is $X, it doesn't follow that I can always work an additional hour to make an additional $X.
- After working 40+ hours/week doing paid work, working an additional hour at my day job to avoid doing something else does not make for a happy life. In fact, it makes life quite dull, and made me a very narrow person.
I can repair my motorcycle any day I choose. Delivering my motorcycle to a mechanic during office hours has a cost. Finding a good mechanic has a cost.
I also find that eating at restaurants is more time-consuming than cooking at home. I have to go there, order and wait, then head back home after.
I make a salary, not hourly, so it really doesn’t make sense for me to hire someone to do a task I can do myself. Just tossing $$$ away.
this is a good point for salaried employees. in any case, your pre-tax hourly rate is sort of a meaningless figure for comparison. if you want to do this kind of comparison at all, you should probably think in terms of disposable income. for example, if you make $30/hr post-tax and half of your budget is fixed costs, a $30 discretionary purchase is two hours worth of work.
The overarching point of the author is that most of his target audience (and those reading HN) are used to being thrifty and not spend money at all, even when they get older. They fail to realize that at some point, it's worth your time to spend the X amount either because the value of investing X down the line is so great, or because the time saved by spending X is now so much greater than before, because of something changing in your life (career has progressed, valuation of free time has changed).
I definitely see this myself daily, ending up wasting few minutes each day on trivial things that add up, while it could be fixed by paying a small amount.
Or for example trying to wade through a free course to learn something, but ultimately just dropping it out of no motivation. Compared to paying for a course, which makes you more responsible s you paid for it and usually also offers more effective training.
For the longest time, I had not encountered a concept of "self-care" but then I started seeing that term pop up around the internet and it seemed quite obvious that it was an important thing. That might seem silly, but if your timeline for these things reaches back to the '90s, like mine does, a notion like self-care is relatively recent on the historical timeline as a familiar concept.
I've also seen this in writing, with how you handle plot and character development. Or even some things that are silly but obvious like the fact that you can just go out and go on hikes if you want, and there are tons and tons of places to do that.
I feel like there's all kinds of hidden mental blocks that you can go your whole life not knowing that you have, and I appreciate this idea of elevating the concept to its own genre and targeting it with articles such as the one posted here.
I'm a bit of a DIY obsessive, so maybe I'm just all the way on the other side of the spectrum, but I don't hire someone to do something unless I feel the task is so far outside of my comfort zone that it poses a danger to me. I usually only do it after I've tried the task myself and utterly failed. You'd be surprised what you can do yourself with just a few YouTube tutorials and a decent collection of tools. As a side effect, I've gotten pretty good at being handy around the house, managing the family's finances, repairing our cars, doing major home improvement projects including building barns and sheds, building furniture, lawn care, tree trimming, electrical, plumbing, etc. I consider developing these skills a better investment than the alternative which is perpetually needing to pay someone to do them.
And all it costs is my time, which is free.
Well my time is definitely not free; people pay lots of money for access to it.
The problem with "muh welcome to upper middle class prosperity" lists like this is it doesn't account for the management time and mental load involved in something like "Hire a researcher or expert consultant." For that matter "Cleaning services" or "Hire a graphic designer to turn your appalling sketches into ..." require significant cognitive overhead and time to hire and manage unless you or your spouse or close friends are already doing such things for your day job. If you're already doing such things for your day job you probably already thought of these things.
Some of them are pretty insane: people who need a maid to chuck their clothes into the washer and dryer, then put them away: if it takes you longer than 15 minutes a week to do this ... I have to wonder at your wardrobe. I mean, I understand some people deeply resent performing such menial tasks, or maybe they have large families, but it's not that big a job compared to feeding yourself and getting some exercise.
For myself, hiring experts to assist with my day to day life has been a fairly mixed bag, and my education, hobbies and lifestyle is such that DiY is usually the win.
Consider a large family with multiple children, a humid environment where towels have to be washed often or they smell, plus the safety precaution of washing outside clothes more often to eliminate any possible coronavirus, then you have the recipe for a full load of laundry almost every day. It easily adds up to way more than 15 minutes a week.
Your working time is worth money, but your free time is free. Your time is only worth money (opportunity cost) if you'd otherwise be working on some money-making opportunity.
If it's 1. Hiring someone for $25/hr to mow the lawn while I work on a contract that's making me $200/hr, I'd choose to hire the gardener. If it's 2. Hiring someone to mow the lawn while I play video games, I'm better off if I mow it myself.
Anyway, maybe that's why I don't see a lot of those things on the list as desirable; if I have to spend two hours managing the graphic designer to make a chart/plot/figure, I may as well fiddle around in xfig or whatever to get it done myself.
This is specially important to me now that I have children and very little time for stuff that I care about besides my family.
> I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).
Last year I bought a new bed and it improved a lot of things for me. It's simple, but if you grow up thinking about every penny you spend you get weird habits.
The average human spends (or should spend) 8h in bed every single day of their life. The next 8h is the place you work, the ergonomics should fit you.
Spend money to have quality sleep. Spend money to work comfortably.
I guess my objection to the article, as presented, is it’s kind of tone deaf particularly at a time when many people are financially struggling to just assert that you’re “allowed” to hire people for a long list of tasks, at a cost that many people wouldn’t even dream of being able to afford or justify.
So you have to spend/trade something, but (for me) it's harder to think of what's worth spending/trading for. Hence the post.
To be totally honest, all lists like these make me think of young male friends who went through a distinctive weird phase in their early 20s. For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable."
Of course, it is naive to think that just because many things can be bought, all things can be bought, at least reasonably. And as my friends got older and acquired adult responsibilities, families, roles in the local community, they dropped their philosophical regimen and just tuned into typical affluent suburbanites.
But it's that glimmering realization that still strikes me as kind of fascinating to watch: "I can buy... things!... with money! That means I can buy... anything!"
In particular, I'd love to know what exactly the person in the post I linked to was thinking when writing this sentence:
> Spend more to go to events where you will meet exactly the people you want.
My experience in this arena has been that you need serendipity, and it's hard to buy serendipity.
[1] https://meteuphoric.com/2014/03/25/how-to-trade-money-and-ti...
I went through this too. It,s a result of pressure to Do More, Faster, which comes with that engineer salary and long work weeks.
You have 1-2 hours free per day, max, and feel an enormous pressure to do something worthwhile with that time. It,s chasing meaning while already having given away most of your time to build someone else,s meaning.
Of course that might not be the greatest advice right this moment... But generally speaking I think it's fairly sound.
- academic conferences, but these are generally not relevant to the public, and if they are relevant to you, you're already attending them because you're an academic for the sake of your career
- premier fan events like San Diego Comic Con, but most people don't go there to make friends
- trade events like the Milan Fashion Week, but, again, you already know if you belong there
- international sports competitions, if you're a world-class athlete
- technical conferences for programmers, but in my experience these have been an extraordinarily poor value for the money as a normal attendee
The ones that sort of make some sense to me are:
- if you're a bird-watcher, you could pay to go on an international bird-watching trip to the Galapagos or something
- if you're a young and rowdy party-goer, you could travel to one of those mega beach parties in the tropics
My little moment of enlightenment here came when I realized that I really can attend that event I was really interested in that's happening on the other side of the country. All I need is to travel. Oh, other side of the country is far and travel time will take as much as the two-day event itself? I can always fly there. Domestic air travel is a thing, and isn't that expensive (which may be obvious for people in the US; it's less obvious in Europe).
I ultimately ended up not going to that event for personal reasons, but planning it made me re-evaluate the possibilities I have, and how many of them appear once I reframe the question as "how much money am I willing to spend to get there?".
The point isn't that you can spend money on travel. Everyone knows how to book plane tickets. The interesting (and dubious) claim is that you can pay money to hang out with exactly the kind of people you prefer.
I'm going to think about how to do that again now.
On that note:
- While on vacation, buying event tickets short-notice on auction sites (if you care more about going to the event than the inflated price)
- After attending a theater performance, realizing that you can still almost make it in time to $other_event if you grab a taxi right now, grabbing the taxi, then calling the venue ahead to ask if its okay that you'll be late by 5 minutes (it was no issue, they didn't exactly start on the minute anyway).
This doesn't seem like something you're "allowed" to do. Maybe more like "able" to do, in the sense that you can violate other laws, and maybe the payoff or the risk/reward ratio makes it worthwhile. My understanding of "allow" is that it means people will accept you doing something. The existence and enforcement (like fines) of rules that prohibit doing things seems exclusive to something being "allowed".
But even those who lived on campus, the furthest dorms were where I'd have had to park on those mentioned days. I did that sometimes, but it really was a 20- to 30-minute walk depending on where I was going on campus because they decided a mile long parking lot made more sense than a parking deck (later built, after I graduated).
Also it had a bus service, but it really only covered connecting the business school, psychology school, and main campus. The massive parking lot was not covered by the bus service, which didn't make sense.
If the driver in front of you loses a piece of trash from their truck bed, consider it may not even be theirs!
That surprises me. I would have thought that most colleges had a rule saying that they wouldn't give you a diploma until you had settled all arrears.
But some people just never registered their vehicles, which was also an option. There was no electronic tool for the ticket givers (fellow students working for the school) to look up a vehicle. So instead of towing every violation, they just gave up. I knew a guy who had accrued a couple hundred tickets by the time he graduated, car wasn't under his name (his parents) so no penalties for him (from the school) if they'd tried to find the owner, and the school never pursued his parents for it.
It was not an effective system. The only people who actually had to pay for a parking permit were those who lived on campus because their cars would be there overnight, that's when cars would be towed if they lacked a current parking sticker. (I worked or studied on campus until 10 or 11pm most nights so I was paying for a permit.)
For example many programmers have it in their heads that their only two activities are writing production code and staring at/thinking about log output. Sometimes it's helpful to be reminded that you are "allowed" to write scripts to analyze log output. No one is worried that they will be punished for this. But a surprising number of programmers will stare down a programming-shaped problem and fail to put two and two together.
Instituting a fine can actually cause the undesired behavior to increase.
E.g. daycare adds a late pickup fee, then it becomes, "Oh well, I can <get thing done> for $20" instead of something the parent feels really guilty about, thus actually INCREASING late pickups.
Then one day I just needed to run get something, so I parked in the hotel loading zone. I ran into someone and chatted for about close to an hour and then, remembering where I parked, freaked out and ran outside.
Car was still there, no problems.
In true hacker fashion, I went and sat in the car and waited to see when someone would a campus metermaid would come along.
They never did!
And so for the next 2 years I parked there every day.
In the end I did receive 6 $25 tickets and, ingloriously, I was towed once which cost me $250.
Compared to a parking pass it was an absolute steal, and in true "things you're allowed to do" form, it helped me realize the risks of transgression are lower than you think.
Pick from your spices at random when cooking and resolve to use whatever you get
Schedule working sessions with remote coworkers where you share a zoom room but just work
Shave your head and donate your hair
Volunteer to speak with elderly (maybe by phone for now) and collect their life stories
Learn who is building what in your neighbor hood (e.g. https://dbiweb02.sfgov.org/dbipts/)
Picket things by yourself
Find a big mud puddle and jump in it until you look like a monster
Climb trees as an adult
Play music on street corners
Go to church and ask questions until you're asked to leave
Knock on people's doors and introduce yourself
Troll craigslist for free ceramics (plates dishes etc) and smash the heck out of them
Take apart your toaster and put it back together again, don't stop until it works again
I find entry interesting. But what happens if it short circuits.
Are there any tests which we can do on things to know that before turning them on?
> don't stop until it works againYes. Buy a cheap multimeter and test current flow on cables.
(When you google for those, combine with the term "DIN" or "Rail Mount")
Sounds too risky to do on your own, without any activist structure behind you that can come to your help if things go south. At least prepare a lawyer contact.
Haha, maybe in about 6 months from now...
Certainly you are _allowed_ -- but if it's for an economically meaningful service, like renting an apartment, the follow-on suggestion that it's "only weird if you make it weird" really fails to capture how likely it is that it _will_ change the nature of your relationship as soon as someone decides not to pay, or whatever other irreconcilable issue comes up. Just be careful when going into business in any way with people you otherwise like.
I wanted to do this for a long time, but always thought that it might be expensive. Until one time my brother in law was on non-paid leave for two weeks and he was looking for anything to do. We decided to give it a go. Everyday he would sit beside me, watch Netflix for all day and just look at my screen from time to time. Productivity rose _instantly_. After a single day I was thrilled, after a week I was absolutely sure that I need to hire someone after he gets back to his old job.
Some tips: the person you're going to hire must be somewhat cheeky. They must cut through your bs, force you to explain why you're on youtube, ask you if you really need that for your work etc. Furthermore, working side by side works better than through Hangouts, Skype and others. I have multiple displays and I've started to cheat the system as vast majority of screen share apps allow you to share single screen only. We're in process on finding an app that allows one to share all displays (you might need couple extra CPU cores if you have 4-5 displays).
For this community especially, there will come a time when sedentary starts to take its toll. For me, 35+. It is a royal pain in the rear to try to start a fitness program on your own and stick to it. Too many excuses and too likely to overdo it and either injure yourself or lose motivation.
Enter the personal trainer. It took me 6 months of training to get over the hump and into a self-sustaining mode. 3 days/week for 26 weeks. You don’t need elite training. If you skip on a day, you are skipping on a person. They will ensure you stay safe and motivated. Worth every penny and pays dividends for decades. Split it with a friend and get the semiprivate rate.
Shameless plug: if you're looking for a productivity monitor I can (personally) help: https://coding-pal.com/
I am getting lots of emails from outsourcing companies. I ignore them. I find their follow up emails extremely frustrating.
"Thanks for taking the time to read this email. After I sent my previous email (See below) I had put a reminder in to check-in with you to see how things were going with the need of a Data Engineering."
Why should I care about your reminder?
My father drove this into us as kids. It always made sense to be, and then I grew up, and realized how many times adults just make shit up to avoid looking like they don't have the answer. My in-laws are pros at this, and playing Balderdash against them is impossible as a result.
To this day, as some one that has been an engineer for 36 years, if someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer, I say "I don't know", generally followed by, "let's see where we would find that answer".
And I am raising my kids with the same advice.
Basically: Outsource your personal life to accomplish things that you want to do. Ferris was using Brickwork India at the time if I recall.
This is why all fine-based penalties should scale progressively with income.
Contest unjust fines.
I’ve received 4 parking fines in my life, all were for parking somewhere that had no signage or had signage that permitted my behaviour.
All 4 were successfully contested with photo evidence and a minimum of fuss.
Not something I’d abuse, but second chances can be had.
Specifically, parking. If I park in an illegal place, get a fine, and mentally consider it a fee, that feels alright by me. But if I park in an illegal place with the same intention as above, and don't get a fine, I'm a jerk. It's tough to decouple those two.
The real alternative is jacking up the cost of parking to the point where there’s always an empty spot.
And somehow making that number scale with income makes that better?
The point of raising the price accessing any shared asset is to optimize usage of that asset. Otherwise you end up with private enterprises like non-street parking lots eating the profits with nothing going to the rest of the people.
If you don't want non-street parking lots to funnel in all the profit, then you provide efficient and wide-spread public transport.
- Often don't have cars at all, and have to walk that much longer to get across all the parking between places they want to be
- Spend a large portion of their incomes on cars, maintenance, fuel, insurance etc. when they even can
- Are required to live further away from productive places by the high cost of e.g. minimum parking requirements and low density ceilings "because traffic"
- Suffer the brunt of air pollution
Parking in a central business district should probably be as much of a luxury as living in one is today, and vice versa.
It’s a solved problem, look at European cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, and many more... But in America robust public transport never gets done for many reasons including that special interests don’t want it to.
Likewise, if the car is impeding traffic, tow it out of there. The fine does nothing to fix the problem.
Parking illegally in a specific spot could result in the death of 8 people? then the fine should be 8 * value of life. the value of life is ~ $9M in the US, so the fine should be 72 million dollars.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...
An acceptable middle ground is for fines to scale with the value of a car at registration. And if you can't afford the fines, then don't lend your expensive car to people who don't know how to park.
I'll be fine, because I already own all my shitboxes, but this is just bad policy.
>acceptable middle ground is for fines to scale with the value of a car at registration
The type of car one drives is not at all an indication of their actual finances. Many people, unfortunately, feel the need to impress others by spending money they don't have.
If I keep my car parked in a space and the street sweep needs to miss that spot, the trash that remains has the same negative societal impact whether I'm rich or poor.
If that trash "cost" society $100, why would society subsidize a poor person to park illegally who could only afford to pay $20?
"a sum imposed as punishment for an offense"
Do you now agree that fines are punitive?
If so, do you agree that fines need to be set high enough to provide a disincentive, even if that is higher than the average negative externality created by an infraction?
The purpose of a fine can be seen in at least two ways:
1. Provide recompense to society for the production of a negative externality.
2. Create a disincentive against the production of a negative externality.
If fines could be levied perfectly, automatically and without administration cost, then perhaps you can see the fine as #1, and set the fine at the societal cost.
But, because it costs money to enforce regulations, there's usually some sampling done: if you park illegally, you might not be caught. Because the chance of getting caught is not 100%, and because those who are not caught do not contribute their share of enforcement costs, the fines for a single infraction must be a multiple of the actual harm caused. (Assuming that can even be measured.)
Let's say the harm caused is $20 per infraction, and this is normally enough to disincentive a poor person from parking illegally. If they make a mistake and are subsequently caught, is it better for them to pay $100 (for the harm caused, plus paying for those who weren't caught), even though this may be equivalent to their family's monthly food budget?
As long as $20 fine is enough to:
- provide a strong disincentive, and
- provide recompense
... then that should be enough, no?
The rich person, for whom a $20 fine is not enough of a disincentive, should pay more ($200?). And the money raised can be used to cover negative externalities for those who weren't caught, and overall enforcement costs.
It only sounds good in low resolution.
Depending on a bunch of hard questions, devils in the details, you’ll end up with dilemmae where neither option is good:
Is parking income net worth, or taxable income? Previous year or trailing? Can you deduct your charity donations before deciding what you’ll pay for parking? What about a company car; is it the company’s income or the driver’s?
A more simple system off the top of my head: you have fine modifier based on your previous year taxes. Your accountant now tells you you have a fine multiplier of 6. When the ticket comes in, it is always addressable to a given entity. Can it be gamed? Of course, just use a car registered to your broke ass cousin. Progressive fines could work just like progressive tax.
If interested in actually keeping access open, parking kiosks and aggressive towing make up the effective solution.
in more serious cases (eg, blocking a fire hydrant or alley) simply towing the vehicle seems like penalty enough.
Minimalism, abstention, freganism, hand me downs, barter, begging, and luck.
Make websites which work in any browser, including 25yo classics, in the spirit of the open web.
Sleep without a schedule.
Ditto kay on multiple parallel romantic partners, with a whole larger than the sum of the pieces.
Travel somewhere without any lodging plans, only a sleeping bag.
Think for yourself and don,t do unhealthy things even if they are normalized. This is a whole other list.
Maintain your health and sanity as top priority over anything else.
Abandon materialism and attachment.
Harm no living being on purpose.
Make friends with mammals, plants, insects.
Meditate any time of day for any length of time as many times as see fit.
Be effective and happy while doing all this.
Tailor your own reality based on your intent.
Not eat for 72 hours comfortably and be better off for it.
Sadly, I am seemingly not allowed to have a reasonable Web browser with a view source button and unstupid address bar on a small form factor device. I,m looking, though...
Wow, all that's holding back my life satisfaction is a major windfall! Thanks for the useful tip.
> Refuse to fill out paperwork of any kind.
I'm joking, of course. I know he doesn't actually follow most of the list. More of a wishlist probably.
The kind of person who thinks rules don't apply to them because they're 'free' but they're just blissfully inconsiderate of others.
"Don't walk on the grass." "I will quietly ignore this rule, because ME ME ME, freedom!" - Later, the groundskeeper: "I have to roll out new sod everywhere those people were stepping..."
Or can you imagine being a bank teller and trying to help this person? "Sir, I need a signature." "I don't like, DO signatures." "...Sir?" "It's like, freedom, man." "...but to execute your request..." "Get me someone else who will bend the rules for me and my freedom!"
i devote time daily to ponder how to be more considerate of others, so i,d like to know.
Instead of using your base assumptions and ruling out what they said, ask probing questions to validate your understanding. At the end, you may just come to the same conclusion as before (but this time with data!) or you may learn something.
As for “the rules don’t apply to me,” there are many rules that really don’t apply that many folks just assume to be required. It is ok to eat breakfast for dinner for a silly example.
I agree that rule breaking should not involve pissing in someone’s cookie jar, but if you are not inconveniencing others, it seems all fair game to me.
I spend around $380 a month for rent and I know a bunch of people in shared flats who spend even less.
Also, money can often (sadly not always) substituted with good ideas, time, or good social connections.
I'm in a similar situation, and I'd say the main contributing factor to my happiness is not having to work 40 hours a week. Everything else is just sugar on top.
Unlike the OP, I DO do paperwork though.
What does ditto kay mean?
Especially the "not eating" part.
Have you looked into it at all before commenting?
" Imagine there's no countries , It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too,
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you"
A lot of these sound a bit naive and even harmful.
I thought it was targeted more towards the general population. I was a bit too harsh.My apologies.
The harmful bit was because I read it as though you were preaching rather than talking about intensely personal choices. With that qualification, my statement of it being harmful was unwarranted.
That's pretty much in the same category as "win the lottery and live off the interest"
Many people struggle and fail to achieve one romantic relationship, let alone several simultaneously.
It,s still a shitton of effort, not a walk in the park, but it,s also fun and rewarding.
What reliably empowers is: choose a skill and practice it constantly. So few people do this, it's a practically guaranteed route to financial, social, and intellectual security. Taking the time to do your own grocery shopping, or not, is a gating factor exactly never.
Almost all other types of human activity are weak compared to the compounding action of just doing something all the time. In the short term, activities like complaining or optimizing random chores may seem stronger. But on timescales of years they're just noise.
I agree, but empowerment is for poor people. Just poor people have to learn a trade and have the skill in order to sell their workforce on the labor market.
I have seen many rich entrepreneurs, that just buy those skills and set up successful business. Of course, they have some skill too: being able to buy they right resources is a skill, sort off.
Turns out, it was affordable, and we did it. It was, however, the scariest night of my life. I don't recommend doing this, but it was a lesson in what is possible, if I think outside the box.
It was an adventure!
It seems that (in San Francisco) it can be cheaper to pay the ticket fines than pay for the parking upfront like one is supposed to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24796412
Side note: this experience has also really opened my eyes to the importance and power of affordable home ownership.
Maybe I'm just grumpy, but... if you send me a cold email, I'll either respond or delete it. Then, if the original didn't have an "unsubscribe" link, plus you follow up on it, I'll tell gmail to block you.
I gave advice to many people who cold emailed me.
But in my personal experience, most cold emails I wrote wouldn't lead to much, because my inquiries were too specific.
However, one thing people don’t do often enough is follow up when the other person has expressed interest. This kind of followup is usually welcome, as inertia and distraction lead to things not happening. This is especially true in commercial context. Eg someone may express strong interest in buying, get busy, drift off, then enthusiastically buy when you ping them a bit later.
Be very careful about this. Surgery in the modern age is safe, but there is always a risk, whether from the surgery itself, the anesthesia, or from infection.
Be sure that you are really sure that the benefits outweigh the risks.
There is so much excellent online content that, given a public library (beside the library itself) one can gather as much knowledge as one wants.
Three other recommendations I give all youngsters:
- stay sober
- minimize debt
- remain married
Is this such good advice? Relationships are hard work, and can be made (or mended) given sufficient effort. But sometimes, it just doesn't work and can't be made to.
Most people seem to choose their SO for bad reasons and then stay in it due to sunk costs.
If your SO proves a sociopath, you may be forced into unfortunate measures.
Turns out a year in you don’t have a lot in common.
Should you stay together and have kids together because you made a stupid decision based on sex?
Your partner doesn’t have to be a sociopath for someone to decide marriage was a mistake for both parties.
For a guideline to be helpful it needs to be true in most circumstances.
“Remain married” can be actively harmful as much as it can be the right thing. That makes it useless as generic advice.
It supports propagation of the species, sure.
In the individual context of this thread, anecdotally, marriage is a forcing function that drives maturation.
Or not. Punt on the SO, and let one's humanity stay stunted.
Note that I am stipulating a non-abusive relationship here. Merely kids gaffing adulthood off.
Also yet another use for BluTac
I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).
I live in Texas, a good chunk of the year, it would be nuts to try to live without A/C (We're not quite Death Valley, but it can get pretty hot here ...). So, I'd amend that one to:
"Open the windows and turn off the A/C"
I really like the few months a year where I can do this and not get cooked!
There is also a time cost to orchestrating all those services. Aligning schedules is not nearly as efficient as doing thr work yourself.
I prefer the idea of working less, spending less, and learning to do things yourself. Getting your hands dirty gives you a better appreciation for the result. It makes life more interesting and leaves you with a more diversified skillset.
[0] www.ozbargain.com.au
Just like Mr. Cvitkovic, I grew up in a very frugal environment - out of necessity. But it took me a lot of time to realize, in my adulthood, that I can now afford some tradeoffs.
Grocery delivery is big on my list. I hated, hated, hated going into malls to shop. So did my wife. So we switched to grocery delivery five or six years ago, and never looked back. And in Covid times, it is a double blessing.
Of course, it is easy to "overcorrect" and start spending too much. That is part of the process of learning, after all.
- You are allowed to buy lunch/dinner as much as you want and not feel bad for not wanting to cook.
During my holiday this month, I've made it a point to go for a nice lunch every few days. Yes, it costs me money, money that I could save for my future (although I don't know what I would do with the extra money), but it's enjoyable, relaxing and the food is great.
Not so much if you don't enjoy it.
I love cooking occasionally. For example, I will spend a week trying to perfect a dish I just learned. I do it over and over everyday, trying different ways and failing until I make it great.
But for most of the time, I'd rather not have to do it.
>Just be aware that it's rather expensive in the long run.
True. But if your time is valuable, it's much more expensive to have to spend all that time in the kitchen.
> park illegally and let yourself think of the (expected value of the) fine as a parking fee
That one made me laugh out loud. Is it a serious document or a parody of sorts? Is it mocking a "rich" people's lifestyle?
It's really worth properly doing due diligence before you commit to the donation. And if you don't have a good cushion yourself, rationally speaking, chances are you should save it. Just earmark that amount to be willed to charity upon death or extraordinary loss.
I have considered studying physics myself to answer the question (free education FTW), but won't have the time for another 3-4 years (unless I happen upon a hundred thousand euros or so to pay my living expenses during the 3-5 years of study). Paying an expert to do it seems reasonable.
Do free lance researchers exist?
No you can't. You can't tickle yourself and you can't proof read stuff that you wrote. You will just read what you thought you wrote.
- Play back what you've written with text-to-speech software. On a Mac, you can do this with the option-escape keyboard shortcut.
- Read it out loud yourself, slowly.
- Leave at least 24 hours between drafting and proofreading, longer if possible.
- Print the text in a different font and proofread on paper, marking errors with a pen.
- Use a "focus mode" that dims everything but the sentence you're proofreading. Read through each sentence slowly and deliberately. iA Writer can do this, as can a few other text editors.
- Use tools like Grammarly, but consider what they say guidance rather than hard-and-fast rules. They are often wrong or have an overly narrow definition of correctness, but they will help you to catch typos and and errors such as repeated words.
However, depending on time and money constraints, it's often more efficient to pay someone to do it for you.
I agree with most of the stuff in this list - they’re at least things to consider.
https://zalberico.com/essay/2017/02/21/asking-questions.html
...and write a script to do this, along with rotating your drawing tablet to match (which may actually involve rotating it the other way depending on where the cable is and what works with your desk. Because poking around in the prefs with just one of monitor/tablet rotated is a major pain in the ass.
More seriously, some good suggestions there that aren't too obvious, like hiring article authors as consultants instead of googling for professionals.
Parking illegally may trigger a $25 fine. Or a $1,000 tow.