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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's infuriating to see someone you care about fall for an obvious scam, yet... I don't know... If it's his money and it makes him happy, or a little less sad, a little less lonely... Why not...

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You'd give away all your money to feel a little bit less sad?

Eventually yes. Just comes to degree. But I do very often spend money to feel that little bit sad. Be it food or snacks or some mostly useless junk I think I need.

If you think about it, the only reason we ever spend money, is to feel a little bit less sad.

When you put it like that it doesn't sound like the worst idea.

It sounds terrible. You used to be sad, now you're still sad and you're destitute too

But less sad!

Honestly the main problem is one of efficiency not whether buying happiness with money is a bad idea. Being less sad is more important than having money, but you do need to plan ahead so you don't run out too quickly.

For some people that’s the best they can hope for.

I can’t tell if you’re joking but people do that all the time, every day. It might be alcohol, strippers, or just random stuff they don’t really need.

If this sounds surprising to you then probably you have enough money that you don’t need to give all of it away to be less sad.

In this thread we're talking about people who have life savings to be scammed out of. I'd say it's probably not an everyday thing that people empty their life savings and blow it all on Temu and strippers.

Because the same techniques are used in the media and politics to get believe and vote for things that aren't true, by people who will not just scam money from the victims in many different ways, but do far worse things to other innocents.

We don't need voter id or age verification laws, we need laws that make any form of deliberate online deception for profit a crime punishable by jail time.

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