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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

Not tech but I think millenials, gen Z, and younger have lost the know-how to make a dollar independently of mega corps. I never see kids going door to door mowing lawns anymore, for example.

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I wonder if that's partly due to people (both young people and the older people that would hire them) being uncertain if they can get away with it these days? There were a bunch of scandals about ten years or so ago about politicians running for office who had housekeepers and didn't pay social security. And kids sometimes get in trouble for running a lemonade stand without a food handler's card or business license or whatever.

There might also be a disconnect between what people think they should pay and what the cost of living is. In other words: maybe people don't do that sort of thing because they'd still be losing money even if they did it full time.

As a millennial here's my childhood experience with that:

I knocked on the door of an older lady (Silent Gen, or Greatest Gen) in my small town and negotiated to mow her lawn and the price.

An unemployed older Baby Boomer who lived halfway between us saw me and/or overheard our conversation.

As I was walking back to get my dad's push-mower & prepare it to run, this neighbor jumped on his riding lawnmower and quickly mowed the lady's lawn.

I arrived with my push mower in time to see the neighbor with the riding lawnmower accepting payment from the lady for my job.

This is not a metaphor; it's a true story. Make of it what you will...

Reminds me of when I started noticing adults in cars delivering newspaper instead of kids in bicycles around the time of the last recession

We get this in the UK too but often it's someone driving the car and a kid that gets out and actually delivers the paper?

We also have car washes that are either 100% automated or have 6 guys all cleaning one car. You can guess which is the most popular option.

I hear we have a productivity problem, no kidding.

Paper routes were pretty exploitative. The children, often around 12 years old, were/are treated as independent contractors who buy the papers and have to collect the money themselves. Deadbeats could avoid paying for some time, usually until a parent chewed them out. When you went on vacation you were responsible for finding your replacement and paying them.

Throw stranger danger into the mix and it's obvious why kids aren't doing paper routes anymore.

I'm pretty sure that's also because the number of households that get newspaper delivery now is so low, and so the density so low, that it's necessary to have a car to do it.

Did you give up mowing lawns forever based on that one experience? My stepson related a similar story once. He left out the part about he didn't return to mow until the next day. And the person who mowed was long gone when he arrived. Not implying you didn't make doing the job a priority. That, however, has been a common them for my stepson.

I disagree with this, I'm (unfortunately) swamped with short videos on how to 'make side hustles' doing just these sorts of things due to the cost of living crisis.

And almost all of these videos are scams, lies, MLMs, or too obvious to be helpful.

You need a peaceful society for that. Also the State will fine you for not having a license to mow lawns. Something like that. Western world is a post-liberty world.

Non-tech DIY in general is becoming lost. There is so much knowledge available on YouTube but so many of my younger friends just pay people $hundreds to do very simple, quick things. I’m not talking about transmission replacement, but ridiculously simple things like fixing a leaking toilet and changing motor oil.

Changing motor oil always comes up but it is really worth paying someone a few bucks to do it for you.

Why? Especially if you have an SUV or higher car you can easily crawl under. Just unscrew the original plug, screw in a Fumoto valve, and an entire oil change is done in under 20 min, and then you just drop off the old oil at Autozone or whatever. While the oil is draining, you can change the air filters too.

Buy the Kirkland brand oil at Costco, and you do not have to trust whoever the mechanic shop hires to bust your car up or use low quality oil.

Option 1 requirements:

  - Equipment: wrenches, oil collection pan, oil container for transport to disposal, funnel?
  - Knowledge: Quality of oils, filters, Oil weights (5W20? 10W30?)
  - Willingness: To get dirty, to stain the driveway
  - Time: 30min if all goes well, then time to take waste oil to disposal
  - Trust: In self
  - Funds: $20 for oil and filter, assuming disposal is free

Option 2 requirements:

  - Time: 15min, plus a few minutes to drive to the shop
  - Trust: In "professionals", misplaced or not
  - Funds: $29.95

I change my own oil also, but I have no rational explanation for this choice.

I have the equipment, knowledge, and willingness to take the minor risk of mistake and deal with the consequences. $10 is not a fair wage for those prerequisites!

Of course I use better oil and filters than the shop would. Does this matter? Am I kidding myself? And someday I'll take my plastic milk jugs full of waste oil to a disposal place.

> I change my own oil also, but I have no rational explanation for this choice.

Of course you do. All the items you listed are a small, one time cost. Watch a YouTube video, buy the wrench, pan, and funnel ($50?). The “knowledge” of which oil to use takes 20 seconds to look up in the manual in the glove box of the car. And the disposal is pretty easy, you take the empty oil bottles, fill them back up with old oil, and dump it at Autozone.

And for this initial, let’s say 1 hour of work for procurement, you get to guarantee that the oil change on your car (which represents a significant portion of the average American’s wealth) is done properly, with zero risk of it going wrong.

Now, there is nothing objectively wrong with NOT wanting to do this and just preferring to pay someone else. But for a household with 2 ICE cars that they own for 10+ years, this is very little work for a lot of gain, and watching 1 less Netflix show is probably not going to hurt. The tools for for all of this also take a small space to store.

Which is why I do not consider it a “no brainer” to outsource oil changes.

> Of course I use better oil and filters than the shop would. Does this matter?

Why would it not if you intend on driving the car for 200k miles? My main concern is some minimum wage mechanic not doing the oil change properly. I know they are not getting paid enough to care, and if I have to stop and check to see if it was done properly, I might as well do it myself.

I've probably paid for 5 oil changes in my life. Many dozens done myself.

In those 5 (always while traveling cross country, and purposely done at a Sears or Firestone for national guarantees), I've had the following negative experiences:

  - 1 overtightened and stripped plug bolt, requiring three extra days in a hotel while the replacement pan (which they charged me for) was shipped
  - 1 case of badly greased up door, floor mats, and steering wheel
  - 2 improperly seated crush washers (or inadequately tightened) plug bolts, causing leaks in parking lots

In the latter two cases, I was hundreds of miles away before noticing, but the nearest franchise honored the guarantee.

So, I'm with you on the "trust" premium.

This can be simplified depending on your car. GM, for example, requires Dexos oil from any manufacturer. Pair that with an OEM filter and you have a 10,000 mile oil change.

The hard part is having the crush washer on hand and remembering to put it on. In my experience, shops have forgotten it too, used the old one, or have over torqued the plug screw. I think this is why many shops aspirate the oil instead.

I don't change my own oil for the same reason I don't mow my own lawn or haul my own garbage to the municipal dump.

Re. Changing motor oil example: I gave up doing this when my cars started having non-standard nuts on the oil sump. I had to pay the garage to fit a _headlight_ recently because the bulb was practically inaccessible without either specialist tools or 3 elbows :(

I mean we're in our 30's, even those millenials who do want to do yardwork as a career have hopefully moved beyond the "knocking on doors to mow lawns" stage.

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