Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksenzee | Hacker News Reader

No, that’s incorrect. Krusteaz Complete Buttermilk Pancake Mix (which, at least where I live, ten miles from Krusteaz HQ, is the only “Krusteaz” anyone cares about) contains flour, sugar, dextrose, baking powder, salt, starch, soybean oil, and buttermilk. Unless I’m using enough of it to justify buying an entire canister of powdered buttermilk - which, by the way, is not cheap, and probably throws that $1/kg calculation off - I can’t mix it up in a shelf-stable way. And if I am using that much of it, I can get it in bulk for ~$2/kg.

Even if your math had been accurate, it’s breathtakingly condescending. If you live in a modern society, and you want to buy pancake mix (pancake mix! of all the inoffensive products!) you should get to buy the damn pancake mix.

View on HN

In that case it's plausibly a good deal, and of course it would be extremely deplorable to try to take away people's ability to buy pancake mix, or smoke, or drink Coke, or drink Everclear, or snort cocaine. People are almost always better at making the choices that are best for themselves than anyone else would be, because they both know more about themselves and care more.

But that doesn't mean they're necessarily good at it, and explaining how to get better at it is the opposite extreme from being condescending. Condescending is, "Oh, you wouldn't understand," not, "Here's an demonstration of how to work this out for your own situation, which you'll be able to understand," which is what my comment is.

Maybe you think it's condescending because everyone already works out hourly wages for thriftiness-directed activities, but I can assure you that your friends are very unusual if you think that.

Sorry, I still think an off-the-cuff “buying Krusteaz is the same kind of self-destructive choice as smoking a cigarette or drinking a Coke [unless you’re rich]” is condescending, especially when coming from someone who presumably is not a domain expert, and has not in fact done the relevant math. If it turns out you work for the USDA developing the Thrifty Food Plan, or something similar, I’ll retract my comment.

I'm not a domain expert in Krusteaz, and I certainly have a lot to learn about thrift, but I've been living on an income of under US$8000 per year for over a decade, so I do know a lot of things about thrift that not many people do. I think I probably also qualify as a domain expert in self-destructive choices!

Then you’re certainly a domain expert in making that kind of calculation, so I do retract my comment. I do not, however, retract my assertion that nobody in a modern society should have to make that kind of calculation to such an extreme. $8k/year is hardcore, and if you’re doing that successfully, I both tip my hat to you and am a little horrified. I hope you’re doing it because you want to and not because you’re forced to.

I made some bets, metaphorically speaking, that didn't pay off, or took a long time to pay off. I'm not sure they were bad bets, given what I knew at the time, and it's been very educational at least—especially about the central question of why so many people in modern societies live in such scarcity. To an enormous extent it's structural issues, which I think you could sort of sum up as insufficiently capitalist societies.

Hopefully I'll be in much better shape materially soon! I've just overcome some big external obstacles.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com