The $20 Theory of the Universe | Hacker News Reader

The $20 Theory of the Universe

esquire.com

40 pointsfallentimes12 comments

I've had luck saying "is there anything I could possibly pay to make this better for me?" For instance, I got my car sprung from a Chicago city impound, where it would have sat over a weekend racking up fees (they wouldn't release it until I got a licensing thing worked out, but the impound lot tow guys would tow the car out of the lot for me for a couple bucks).

How do you say "Tip people $20 and they will sometimes give you what you want." in 2000 words or more?

Probably by giving specific examples of all the places you tried to do it over a week in New York.

There's a fine line between good writing and verbose writing.

I'm taking a writing class right now, and they really stress that real-world examples explain your argument better and make the writing more interesting, and I think that's actually true.

That said, giving too many examples makes it too long to be worth people's time and/or bores them with too many examples that are too similar.

This is quite interesting when you take into consideration what the author was doing: haggling. It's usually a mute point, as many don't talk about how/where/why they haggle as the action is under the radar - particularly here in the US.

Certain cultures outside of the States embrace haggling as a predominant means of exchange, i.e. in China via tuangou: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuangou

I realize it was an experiment, but some of the examples are sort of silly.

$20 for some corporate meeting's catered buffet? Why not just buy a nice lunch with the $20?

In New York you'd never get two plates and two beers for $20.

It took me fifteen minutes to realize I was listening to a symposium on corporate ethics.

Worth every penny.

You get a pretty good story along with your lunch this way ;)

Wow, maybe this works with politicians too?

yuck.

Usually I consider TL;DR to be the sign of a dull-minded loser, but...

well, I can't say TL;DR. If it were more interesting, I would have read it to the end. TB;DR.

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