>This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply you.
Spot on perfect. I see this too often and not just in tech.
Spot on perfect. I see this too often and not just in tech.
Their rationale? “It’s mine, they owed me this”. They are 100% convinced that they are in the right, not just that they can keep it but that they actually intended to send them this to begin with. I get it $100k isn’t nothing but they’re also throwing their life away for less than what they used to make a year in salary.
People do weird things when given sudden access to money or power.
Then one day I get a Chase Zelle email saying that someone was sending me money. Something like $500. Logged into the Chase app and sure enough, could have taken it with the click of a button.
I contacted the sender to explain the situation and recommended they call the intended recipient for a correct email address.
Couldn’t image just taking it knowing it wasn’t intended for me.
So I called CS, they said it was safe to return the money and so I did and the guy called back just to thank me.
Now you've done nothing wrong, maybe even haven't noticed yet, and suddenly they kill your business overnight.
$95k does not seems like enough money to totally upend your life like that for.
That's because most of us here are so used to the amount of money we earn. But for people who literally struggling with month-to-month payments, 100K feels like a life-changing amount of money. If they were just saving month by month, they might have never reached that amount in their entire life.
Our perspectives here on HN are very one-sided when it comes to things like this, anyone who been poor previously (or is currently) could attest to this.
It's as if the more money you make, the more you need to feel fulfilled, so people start stealing and scamming to cover a self inflicted psychological money deficit.
This is a myth. The original 2010 Kahneman-Deaton study showed that how favorably people judged their overall lives continued to improve beyond $75k. Daily emotional well-being appeared to stop improving around that level. [1]
A larger 2021 study by Killingsworth using real-time reports found no happiness plateau at $75k; instead, well-being continued increasing with income, including above $200k. The relationship was logarithmic - going from $40k to $80k mattered more than going from $160k to $200k, but the benefit didn't disappear. [2]
So of course, in 2023, Kahneman and Killingsworth jointly re-analyzed to resolve the conflict, leading to more nuanced conclusions: in the least-happy 15-20%, unhappiness declined as income went up but eventually leveled off; for the majority of people, happiness continued rising with income beyond $75k; in the happiest people, the association sometimes became stronger at higher incomes. [3]
Science, baby!
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Not if the jump from 80k to 120k also means a jump from working 40h to 60h.
What does that mean for where and how the person live though? How much money were they realistically having left at the end of the month? 6 figures surely means a lot in some places, in others not so much and maybe they didn't have much left after all. Even with 1K left in a month on average, that's 95 months (~8 years) of saving for the same amount, maybe it was always the plan to just get the fuck out once they got close to 100K or whatever.
Humans do rash things, especially when some shortcut appears. But all this is also speculation and hypothesizing, who knows the real reasons behind it for sure.
It means they lived somewhere where a 6-figure income is feasible, which already puts it on the expensive end of the spectrum. If they are fleeing to somewhere where 95k looks like retirement money, that's not going to be a place where replacing that 6-figure income is feasible (especially with a default judgement against them blocking access to the whole US-influenced banking network)
Talk about deeply unfair ...
For sure unfair. It drove whole generations to seek to emigrate to the US to work in Silicon Valley - one lucky break in the Bay Area, or 10-15 years of regular work, could set your whole family up for life back home. Now the equation is shifting, as US immigration policies become less predictable, and BigTech is back in layoff mode.
I expect that the EU's more moderate (but still high globally) salaries coupled to robust worker protections, cheap healthcare + education systems, are going to start looking pretty good for the next while.
Crazy how many people try to find excuses for crime. There's people living on fractions of that that don't commit crime. No, income is no excuse.
It's more that money and power enable you to be who you really are, and amplify your worst traits if you're lacking self-awareness.
There are many people who are rich/wealthy and/or powerful and they're decent individuals living relatively ordinary lives. You don't read about most of them because they're "normal".
If you’re only a certain way when you have money and power, is it really “who you really are”?
This is what Christians tell themselves and others to explain why believing in their religion is so important, but it's not even remotely true. Humans evolved community and society long before we evolved organized religion.
I constantly see Christians pitching this like some kind of gotcha: "If you don't believe in God, then how do you know what's right or wrong?" The simple answer is that I have empty and I care about how other people feel; I try to do things that make things better and avoid things that make things worse, both for me and for others.
If the only reason that you don't rape and murder is because you're worried about consequences then that makes you a horrible person whether you act on it or not.
Conversely, it seems as though Christians see these 'teachings' as a get out of moral quandary free card; if the Bible implies it's okay, or you can justify an interpretation where that's the case, then it's completely fine to do whatever you like. Harass or attack trans people, bomb Iran, make miscarriages illegal but refuse to feed the poor or help with daycare - all because one reading of the bible supports the things you want to do (even though it doesn't) but doesn't require what you don't want to do (even though it does, actually).
Do you have any evidence to support this? Feels like this opinion is made up, for unknown reasons.
In reality, psychopathic tendencies are about 4.5% in the general adult population, a far cry from 'most people', with the gold standard assessment being only 1.2%. [1]
From that same article, "The construct of psychopathy is understood generically as a type of personality disorder characterized, among other important features, by the presence of behaviors that conflict with the social, moral, or legal norms of society, giving rise in many cases to clearly criminal behaviors ..."
There's also the bagel experiment described in Freakonomics. [2]
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....
[2] https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/WhatTheBagelM...
Citation needed. There are a lot of ways I can improve as a person, but I can promise you I am not and not ever been a murderer or killer regardless of consequences. Even if someone threatened me or someone else, I would do my best to not kill them and simply diffuse the situation.
Maybe take some time to reflect.
…yeah, it’s fitting that sama was the top user here. What a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Apart from that, the problem with "who you really are" is that individual is more of a process than a static thing, so any such reification becomes invalid in the next instant.
You don't hear about these people as much because they're not out looking for attention, making outlandish statements or even trying to "change the world" in a narcisstic Silicon Valley way.
"Who you are" at your core drives the direction you go in when you acquire wealth and power.
Given your story its not sounds like this is power grab. More like they actually on spectrum and have some mental issues on top this. Or had mental breakdown because something happened before that money arrived.
Situations when people do something weird, bad or just plain evil for money and power are usually logical. E.g people think they got access to more money they percieve they can earn in next decade, or ever, something that settles them for life.
Earning more than $100,000 and throwing everything away for $95,000 only make sense if you are terminally ill. Or if it was never your real identify in first place and its well planned scam.
I lived across South East Asia for more than decade and now live here full time. I have to live on around $20,000 / year most of the time since starting my company. And I do not live anywhere close to what average US / EU citizen will call "comfortable" let alone people from valley.
Stories of rich living for cheap in poor countries its just that: stories. It only possible if you preserve your US salary. For $50,000 post tax a year you can live well unless you have kids that need not a "poor country education".
If you're born there you unlikely to ever end up in US on $100,000+ job unless your whole family or village invest in it.
If you're expat you will soon end up finding out that as expat you'll pay completely different prices and starting local business is just impossible unless you become part of a family.
How the hell you end up in US on $100,000+ job? How much time it took and how much you spent on education / job search / migration to US?
If you're from India then likely all your relatives invested into your education and migrarion.
And that’s not available income. France median pre-tax "net" income is ~€2.100 / month.
Nothing of it available in cheap country for expat. If you move to developing country you better pay for health insurance like 80-250 EUR / month / person.
Also if you have a partner who is not remote worker they might not be able to find well paid job there. If you have kids then giving them good modern education in English is exorbitantly expensive.
I wont even start about fact that government of cheap country might change and you lose your residence permit, social circle or even property. And in most of countries that are easy to enter never give permanent residences and passports. You have to pay pay pay all the time or jump countries.
As a supporting point for
> 50,000 sounds like a lot. Most people in West European countries don’t make that much.
And a counter-point to
> I lived across South East Asia for more than decade and now live here full time. I have to live on around $20,000 / year most of the time […] And I do not live anywhere close to what average US / EU citizen will call "comfortable" […]. It only possible if you preserve your US salary. For $50,000 post tax a year you can live well unless you have kids that need not a "poor country education".
> I wont even start about fact that government of cheap country might change and you lose your residence permit, social circle or even property. And in most of countries that are easy to enter never give permanent residences and passports.
Good, because that is an entirely different and very loosely related point.
I am afraid I am not getting your point.
I do care about having to waste my life setting DIY solutions because country I live in doesnt have it.
I just lived around the world a bit especially in said cheap countries. A lot of people who spend 3-6 months travelling there after college or while nomading seriously undersell how much hassle living there can be if you're there for good.
Its a good to have a job or company in US / EU while living in SEA knowing you can always return if something go sour or when you decide to start a family. Its nowhere as easy if you have hypothetical scenario of moving there for a decade.
Thats all.
They are not free, the costs are deducted from the gross income listed above. Not that fundamentally different than employers paying for your health insurance (besides the system being way more efficient etc.)
And good education is either non existing in cheap cities or expensive in expensive ones.
As it is in most if not all of the world? Free, high quality, public education is a rare thing, in most countries, even fully developed expensive ones.
Even when the schools themselves are nominally free you see well-off highly educated people do their best and pay a very large premium to get to live into the proper, usually expensive, neighbourhoods so their kids can live in the "right" school district to get into the "right" school.
Which is just paying a premium for supposedly better education. An indirect education cost.
And that is on top of the taxes deducted from the gross salary figures I mentioned, which are, in part, used to cover said "free" education.
And the actual cost of healthcare to the organisations paying for it is actually far lower than the US system, probably partly because it's more regulated and also because there is far less litigation so insuranace for doctors is cheaper.
So I don't think the US system is "more efficient", unless by "efficient" you mean in extracting money from patients / their insurances. In the US hospitals exist to make money, in the EU it's more about providing treatment.
There of course cities with a lot of expats and activities, but imagine what - living there is not cheap. Cheaper than US / EU, but you still gonna need that $2000 / month.
Wont even start on topic of lost opportunities from lack of networking since we talk of some extreme downshifting here. But most people need friends and safety net at least.
So with half $500,000 US dollars you could survive on 1666.66 per month in Yugoslavia most people, however, will spend beyond that amount however, the temptation is too high. Soccer players and basketball players, well actually most people will simply not have the discipline.
So one ends with $100k and out of US. What can be done? Adriatic is one option. $100K will last long enough for something else to come up.
Also idk where you get data on "most people". My "most people" consider "(major US Bank) savings account" a losing proposition against even inflation.
Side note for the original commenter: It would be kinder and more accurate to state “lower cost of living countries” than “poor countries”. There are numerous lower COL countries that offer a higher quality of life a than that of the US but they aren’t “poor” (I moved to one).
I understand that side note wasnt for me, but yeah most of cheaper developing South East Asia countries are not "poor". Though there are ones you can call that, but again in a such countries you dont really want anyone to know you have $100,000 somewhere on a bank because its can get unsafe very fast. Its either "live just a little better than locals" or get in trouble.
PS: I talking of Myanmar, most of Laos and Cambodia.
Easy to live on sub 700$ a month if you're happy with air conditioned studio, mostly asian food, scooter and not going to high end bars.
Get the 1 bedroom apartment, quite often takeaway/delivered western food sub 1500$ a month.
Go eat out western food everyday, live in a 3 bedroom in the nicest district go to fancy bars etc and yeah maybe you can reach your 5k a month...
People have no clue / are not willing to experience adjustment for 3 weeks... But easily possible to live here for budgets mentioned above...
Plus health insurance like Cigna for $100-200 unless you want to pay $10,000-20,000 in vinmec if you crash on a motorbike or get other serious sickness.
Plus border runs like $200-300 three times a year or often for cheaper depend on your paasport.
Problem that I doubt its how average SWE on HN imagine "comfortable" living.
Then if you have a partner who is not remote worker and kids there will be other surpeises for you.
Why would you go to vinmec if you can use google translate / chatgpt to gwt better and cheaper service.
Border runs default are 4 times a year but only need to cost 140$ each or cheaper if you're willing to organize / drive yourself.
Comfortable is subjective and humans can change. Yay.
Well if you wanna move the posts and all... But even then with ai etc a degree becomes less relevant rather than your /their problem solving ability
For example, Thailand would be 2 years like you say. Neighboring Burma/Myanmar would be EASILY 5 years, possibly 10 depending on how long the civil war goes. That's assuming you don't work and live in the capital Yangon.
Person from that kind of country likely had to spend $100,000 just to find job and move to US and survive there for the first time.
Legal migration to US is super hard and super expensive. You have to be both very successful in what you do and very dedicated in order to do it. Or very rich. And it take years.
People who choose to migrate to US and manage to do it isnt the type to throw it away on small scam.
And if they managed to get in easy, fast and illegally then they wont be the ones competing for $100,000+ job.
To be fair this is smarter than like 95% of white-collar criminals.
They quite clearly do not believe that. If they did, they wouldn't need to go into hiding or leave the country.
My first thought was I hope they didn't make this mistake for everyone, and second thought how do I safely return this.
(Turns out it was a one off mistake, and returning the excess was pretty straightforward though probably the largest bank transfer I've ever made)
10 years ago my last boss told me one last advice before going onto entrepreneur ventures: « be careful, people do become crazy and stupid with money » (and I guess he knew what he was talking about…)
Kid 1: What are you going to do with your $20,000
Kid2: quit school
Homeless man: good idea, school is for fools!!
I wouldn’t do that for a million (these days).
You'd be surprised how far down poor impulsive choices can drag you down even when there's no money on the line.
"Money? $15 million is not 'money'. It's a motive, with a universal adapter on it."
Is this referring to a foreign national who can leave at any time?