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Comment by erejacob | Hacker News Reader

You could just do something else then. I'm not saying "everybody copy me". There are paid versions of my activities, but I eventually found the versions there were free or almost free. This holds for almost everything unless you insist on a particular paid version. For instance, when it comes to going out. Lots of people like that, but why are they really going out? Probably not to sit in a particular restaurant and pay money. Maybe more about not having to cook and meeting friends? If so, this could be accomplished by taking turns inviting each other for dinner at home. If the cooking isn't great, that's something that can be learned. Just an example.

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In my experience, a lot of people do in fact enjoy going out to eat for the food, not merely the experience. You get a professional preparing excellent food, usually to a standard higher than you would easily manage at home (assuming you're going to good restaurants), and in a wider variety of cuisines than you can affordably stock up for, too.

Expansion on the previous point: I bounce around national cuisines quite a bit, because I'm a cook as a hobby, and whilst, say, a gumbo won't cost you mutch if you're regularly cooking Louisiana staples, cooking it ab initio from a cupboard that's normally cooking Italian-influenced meals will cost you a small fortune. A quick look at my Louisiana recipe book tells me I'd need to aquire cayenee, paprika, garlic salt, onion salt, white pepper, spiced sausage, Tabasco (specifically Tabasco) and a bunch of other stuff. Then you need to get in all the meat and veg, some of which may be difficult to aquire from local shops or require specialist outlets, which adds in travelling time and cost, and which you'll probably be paying for higher quality for - at least if you're serious about cooking and food - than you might for a common-or-garden meal. That makes your one gumbo cost almost as much as it would at a restaurant.

On the topic of food...it's interesting that Tabasco is specifically mentioned. I'm originally from Louisiana, and my family and I prefer Crystal hot sauce; we think it has more flavor.

I suspect that it's less a case of Tabasco being ideal, and more a compromise between "ideal" and "aquirable world-wide".

Having spent literally months trying to find the correct chilli sauce for authentic Pho recently, I'm sympathetic to that argument.

There are examples which cannot be done free as far as I know. For example, I love to go paintballing. To make it cost less, you can buy your own paint and own your own equipment. But it still costs money because I don't own a giant plot of land or have 100 friends with their own gear. Then I have to buy the paint itself on top of that. Can you find me a non-paid version that matches that experience?

I suspect most people go out to have fun. What is fun? Meeting people and creating experiences/memories. Sure, you could sit with your friends at someone's home every night but that gets boring honestly and turns into the same people and patterns.

Have you considered airsoft or reballing? I used to play airsoft, never played paintball. The land/playing area would usually be provided by someone one of the players knew, private forests, empty barns, junk lots, etc. We all had our own guns. We usually managed to scrape together 5-10 people for our games. Not sure about 100. That sounds rather ambitious for a game(?)

The general trick to owning expensive equipment is to find something with very little depreciation (usually top quality items) and buy used. This makes the carrying cost rather low. For example, my hand planes for woodworking are $300+ each, but I could sell them again for 90%+ of what I paid for them, so my effective cost is only thirty bucks. A brief search on the net reveals one can get 2000 paintballs for $30. Now I don't know if they're any good or not, but that sounds pretty cheap to me. How many shots for a game? 100? That's less than two bucks.

So I think you could do it pretty cheaply if you "invest" the money and do the organizing footwork.

Just to clarify the details of the paintballing example...

Land is a serious problem except once it's no problem at all. If you don't know anyone who has land that they'll let you use, how do you find someone? Everyone I've met that plays paintball cheaply just plays illegally on land that they do not own, which may or may not seem unethical to other people. In my opinion, access to legal land actually is a significant hurdle for many people.

Now, in practice, paint is the main cost. Perfectly good paint costs less than $0.05/ball (maybe $0.03 is a bit low-end), which is usually marked up 100% or more if you're playing on a paid field (this is their main revenue). The problem is, many players are accustomed to a play-style where they burn thousands of rounds ($50+) a day. If everyone agrees to use pump-action guns (cheaper!), you can have nearly the same experience at 1/20 the paint cost. If everyone around you is using semi-auto and burning paint, it's a lot harder to go pump (some people like the asymmetric challenge, but most do not).

Especially living in a city. You also need to travel there (it's almost certainly not accessible by public transport). Paint is the main cost, I do own my on equipment, and most places require field paint. Also, I love walk on paintball with 50-100 people in a giant game. You're going semi-auto and burning a lot of paint, that's part of the game play.

Whatever... the first X paragraphs (I stopped reading your drivel) are dedicated entirely to saying "everybody copy me".

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