Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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> It also shocks me that so many people don't know how to repair anything -- though the rational part of my mind wonders if they might be making the right call.

I can see knowing how to repair things but choosing not to: Maybe your high income means the time you might use to repair it could be better spent making money. Maybe you're busy with something today, and are willing to pay for the convenience of having someone else do it. Maybe you're getting old and just can't get on your back and do complex auto wrenching anymore.

But, I see people (mostly younger than myself) who never even learned to do even basic, basic home/auto repairs. I'm not talking brake jobs and kitchen remodels, I'm talking they can't change a flat tire, replace a leaking sink supply hose, or hell even vacuum their own apartment. They pay people to do everything. That's shocking to me. I kind of just naively thought everyone just gets taught this stuff when they're teenagers.

> I'm not talking brake jobs

A disk brake job is an almost ideal first DIY repair IMO. It seems daunting and risky, but there's fairly little chance that someone who is trying to do a good job will end up with a brake job that, undetected, leaves the car unsafe. (There is a higher chance you'll somewhere get stuck unable to complete it or need to ask for help, but that's not a safety issue.)

I’m not God by any means, but if you don’t know how to change a tire (even if you physically can’t), you have no business driving a car.

AAA will change a tire for you, and I've driven past plenty of service calls where I saw exactly this happening. Also, run-flat tires are a thing.

I get where you're coming from. People in the US mostly don't put in time to learn the ins and outs of vehicle maintenance. They want turnkey personalized transit and turnkey maintenance. I've just accepted that as the state of how things are.

AAA is fine if you’re in a city. Drive through the desert? Not so much. I’ve changed mine on a soft shoulder, it was not fun but when roadside assistance is an hour away…

I had to change a tire in the middle of evacuating from Hurricane Ida. I don't think calling AAA would have been advisable then.

Welcome to the Brazilianization of the world (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/the-brazilianizat...).

As social inequality increases, people with more money start being able to afford services much more easily. Do you think British nobility used to vaccuum their own homes? Ask someone with money how the Brazilian upper middle class used to live. Or ask people in India.

Doctors can afford to have people to clean up their houses, to cook their food, everything.

I’m a doctor. I’m married to a doctor. We have no children. We have a once a week housekeeper who does some laundry and puts up the dishes and vacuums the place. We do not have a cook, unless you mean ordering takeout.

Medicine pays well, but it’s all W2 or 1099, not something like getting stock and long term capital gains.

Sorry, I did not mean doctors in North America. But if you go to rural Brazil, or to India, that's the living style that many doctors can and do afford.

The interesting thing is, I've seen a pervasive view on HN of high-income people doing this, and being proud of it. Trading their money for time (sounds backwards, I know), but by having the most mundane aspects of life done by others, they get to do more meaningful things with their time.

I personally am of the low-income, do-as-much-myself-as-possible and pinch every penny crowd. But HN has always seemed to me to be the opposite, given it's well over average income skew.

Part of this is reprioritization as you get older. The old saying:

When I was young I had time but no money.

Now that I am old I have money but no time.

Like you, I did a lot myself when I was young/poor, pinched pennies etc.

It got me to the point where I was successful. Now that I am older I value the things I am running out of time to do. So the money is well spent on maximizing my time left.

> Trading their money for time (sounds backwards, I know)

How does this sound backwards for you?

Probably just that for those of us who are accustomed to working for a living, we see our time as the commodity and money as the compensation for marketing and selling it. Wealthier people can sit on the opposite end of that transaction and purchase our time commodity with their money, freeing up their own time in the process. But walking a mile in those shoes can feel backwards when one is accustomed to it only ever working the other way.

I mean, you obviously do trade money for time just like the wealthy. You have a dishwasher, or a washing machine and a dryer etc. You probably have a car, or some way to go around places that isn't walking etc.

The scale is the only thing that is different.

I question whether the time 'saved' is really put to better use than learning how to interact more deeply with the world around you, and giving yourself more direct agency.

I put cooking in this same sort of category, but over the years have noticed a lot of people on HN who seem to dislike cooking and have no interest in learning how. Maybe because it's such a regular imposition for them, it feels different.

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