Hacker News Reader

Comment by virissimo | Hacker News Reader

"Cheap" isn't absolute, but is relative to your level of wealth. When airbags first hit the market, they were too expensive for most car buyers and, in fact, most cars didn't get them until decades later. Presumably, the people in the article are wealthier than you or I, and they aren't acting irrationally any moreso than the early adopters (relative to the the late adopters) of airbags.

View on HN

Panic rooms will never get cheap - except in new construction - though.

Unlike cars, houses aren't replaced every 3-10 years. Retrofitting panic rooms will always be expensive - just like retrofitting airbags to a car without them (no one does it).

Similarly, the cost/benefit isn't there to everyone. Every passenger probably has a roughly equal chance of being in an accident, the likelihood that an average person needs a panic room is much lower than the top 0.001% (and probably bottom percentage in the hood would benefit to, but can't afford it, or even giving up the real estate to one, unless it was the primary bedroom).

Airbags were also expensive predominantly because they weren't being installed - and automakers DIDN'T want to install them: https://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0519/abelt.html. I'm not sure cost of production or installation was ever really the significant hurdle to their uptake.

Panic rooms are already cheap for the "rich people" mentioned in the article, which is the point I was making by characterizing "cheapness" as being relative, not absolute, so the analogy holds.

but they'll never be cheaper for not ultra-rich people, nor will they have the utility to warrant the expenditure.

They're probably not worth it for most people. They may have enough utility to make it worth it if they're combined with other purposes (eg tornado cellar made out of block and reinforced door). They don't have to be extremely sophisticated, and they could be relatively cheap if one does it themselves. Sort of like the backyard bunkers during the cold war - they were obtainable for a middle class family if they built it themselves.

Exactly. If I hit the powerball, I might as well buy a bunker, get one of those VIP health screenings, etc. The risks may be low, but the relative cost is inconsequential.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com