Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

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My car was towed the other day and while I was paying my bill for the $700 or whatever SF makes you pay, there was this guy at the next counter with nothing who was sleeping in his van who had it towed and they wanted $100 to release it. The tow counter lady could obviously do nothing (his price is low because of low income etc. etc.) but the guy was going to have to sleep in the street otherwise. And there is a holding fee each day it's in the tow yard.

Sure, we could find each of these risky situations and try to regulate them, but you won't even know of them because most people will never get towed. It's better to improve access to credit.

The guy could get $100 the next day, but not $100+storage-fee/day. It's like $70/day. Any loan that goes between 0% per day and 70% per day simple interest would have been a net win for this guy.

Obviously, having eavesdropped on the whole thing, I paid it as I was leaving but I think perhaps those of us with easy cash liquidity should perhaps build some intuition on what kinds of situations cause people to take on onerous credit.

EDIT: Oh, I recalled a detail I'd forgotten when first relating the tale. He wanted to go get his phone from the van so he could call for help but they wouldn't let you in the yard without paying to release. I imagine he was going to have a damned hard time asking for help without the phone.

It’s expensive to be poor and people who haven’t ever been poor just can’t wrap their heads around that. They don’t understand the loss-loss choices poor folk have to make every day and the toll and psychological exhaustion it puts on them.

I will never let a chance slide to quote one of my favourite passages from my favourite author and fantasy series: the Discworld, Terry Pratchett (GNU!):

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

I absolutely hate that quote. It may have been true-ish for classes of goods and services 150yr ago but today it serves little purpose than letting yuppie consumers pat themselves on the back for buying premium products.

As someone who has been poor 10 years ago, trying to raise a family, that’s just false. We had to deal with the literal situation from the quote: shoes. We could only afford cheap ones for our children and the shoes “broke” before they grew out of them. If you think this only happened 150 years ago then I envy your privileged outlook on life. This quote is as relevant today, as it was then. Being poor is expensive.

I stand by my statement. You might occasionally find classes of long term consumable goods where the literal cheapest is just too short lived to work or medium term consumable goods where the fancier options last longer by a big enough margin to be worth it (sawzall blades and dish soap are the only two I can think of). The majority of long term consumables get destroyed by a mishap long before it succumbs to wear and tear. Coats and pants get torn. Tools get broken from too much being asked of them in a pinch. Anything with an electric motor will live until you do something dumb that lets the smoke out. If you want to save money your default should be to cheap out. You will win some and lose some but the losses will be so, so, so rare as to be a rounding error. More often the problem is you buy something that is cheap junk and it refuses to die so you are left suffering though it forever.

I went through my fair share of Walmart black no slip shoes before moving into tech. I hope financial hardship is in your future as well as your past. Maybe you'll figure it out the second time around.

> I went through my fair share of Walmart black no slip shoes before moving into tech. I hope financial hardship is in your future as well as your past. Maybe you'll figure it out the second time around.

Wow.. I had to check your post history to make sure I didn’t misinterpret your words. There was a clear pattern. You seem smart, maybe you can find it too.

My dear internet stranger and fellow HNer: I hope you find more love in your life and the ability to see it in, and give it to others. All the best to you!

Props on paying it forward. It’s not a systems fix, but we underestimate how impactful culture is & in a future where the wealth distribution is going to be even more lopsided, benevolence & sense might be a good stopgap.

It is $700 now? SF is ridiculous. They towed my car once and it was $400 back in 2017.

Strictly, it's $100 for the citation you pay online, then there's the city fees for ~$300 or something and the tow fees for $250 or something. They will take $50 off one of those things if it's your first-time. No one was amused by my request for a subscription plan.

Good man. Too few like you.

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