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Re: Stuff

#121

Post by ErrantX »

potatolicious wrote: post #102
philwelch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe people with marginal incomes spend themselves into sustained poverty through wasteful consumption. If they saved money instead of buying minimally useful possessions and saving the possessions, maybe they wouldn't have to worry about being able to afford stuff they need. You and I have probably known different sets of poor people, but I've seen cases of this. That doesn't justify throwing things away once yo…

Wow, that's possibly the most arrogant, yet typically upper-middle class thing I've seen all week on HN. Unfortunately, the "poor people are poor 'cos they're dumb!" sentiment is way too prevalent just about anywhere you go. I had the (unexpected and unintended) opportunity to live on the wrong side of the tracks, in an incredibly poor industrial neighbourhood - the reality is far more complex than "poor people have…

> poor people have poor impulse spending control

Here in the UK it is broadly true though. It's not necessarily an intelligence or "dumb" thing. It's just that the consumer culture is enticing - and no one has been taught how to control those impulses or to budget adequately.

A lot of the poorest families do budget and consume well due to necessity. The problem is those (I think the vast majority) of people living just above poverty who "splash the cash", spend money they don't have and end up in thousands of pounds of debt.

(and, yes, I've lived in that group for a fair while. Though fortunately my parents managed the money ok)

Re: Stuff

#122

Post by riffraff »

nvoorhies wrote: post #119
gwern wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JPGs in PDF form? Both of those formats will be around forever. I recently scanned a bunch of books using gscan2pdf; it makes it relatively easy, and integrates some decent utilities like Tesseract for OCR. (Some fiddling with controls meant that I could start playing a movie and mechanically flip pages and punch the scan button.) Relatively high-resolution scans like 3-500 DPI mean you can get big PDFs (~200MB for a…

Scribbling in the margins of PDFs isn't very easy, and losing the ability to annotate effortlessly is a big loss for many readers.

I believe it's actually pretty easy in e.g. Preview.app on the mac.

Re: Stuff

#123

Post by johnyzee »

andyjdavis wrote: post #117

What Paul doesn't really devote enough time to describing is the pleasure that getting rid of stuff brings. Reducing the amount of stuff you own is liberating. You feel physically lighter. Its not just about avoiding a burden. It is physically pleasurable to reduce the amount of stuff you are responsible for. Go through your house and give to charity or throw out anything you haven't used in 12 months. Its amazing ho…

This is one of the greatest insights that I have had lately - throwing stuff out is liberating and makes you feel physically lighter. Sorry to repeat you verbatim but that is exactly how I feel.

I fight with my wife over this. She wants to put something in the basement (which is already packed to the ceiling) and I am like: If you don't need it, for God's sake get rid of it. If I had my way I would thorw out everything in that basement today.

Ditto on the gifts stuff. We get a gift, typically crockery or plastic shit for the kids, and all I am thinking is how long do I have to keep this before I throw it out.

Here's a hack for children's birthday parties: If people want to bring gifts (which we discourage), we take the gift at the door and throw it in a closet, to be opened when everyone has left. This way people do not bring gifts out of social pressure, don't feel they have to top each other, and there is no disgusting gift feeding frenzy in front of the other children.

Re: Stuff

#124

Post by papersmith »

riffer wrote: post #96
dejan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you've laid it out nicely, this is the mindset of the poor and average people. I always remember the photo of Jobs's living room in the 80s. When there isn't too much crap around, you can actually focus on what matters.

STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982 — “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0712/y_walker08.html

Some time later:

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2004/07/24/ho_jobs_1.jpg

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.ste...

$3000 Eames lounge chair, hand-made carpet, etc.

Re: Stuff

#125

Post by johnyzee »

mike463 wrote: post #105

I think the way to get a handle on all your stuff is to turn your life inside out (or more accurately, turn it rightside out). From an engineering standpoint, you have to design your life. You know - architect how you want to live. From that, it's easy to deal with your stuff -- does it support your design? If it doesn't, it should go. The computer should have a place. Kitchen stuff should live in the kitchen. The be…

> My personal test is the "might" test. Stuff you "might" need is not stuff you do need. It goes.

Exactly. If in doubt, you don't need it.

Re: Stuff

#126

Post by pbhjpbhj »

zasz wrote: post #98
fnid2 wrote: post #76

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars. Wow, Paul, you really don't understand what it is like to be poor. The poor people don't have a lot of cars in their yard because they can afford lots of cars. They have lots of cars because they never throw them away. Rich p…

That is true. My parents were reduced to selling all their crockery for food during the Cultural Revolution, and we were certainly poor after we came to the US. However, we are not poor anymore, are unlikely to be poor again, and there is no longer a reason for my mother to save our used Kleenexes. I wish I were kidding.

>My parents were reduced to selling all their crockery for food during the Cultural Revolution

Our crockery is pretty good, it was quite expensive but I doubt we'd get more than say £20 GBP for the lot.

Did you/they then eat from cooking pots or was it cold food only then?

Re: Stuff

#127

Post by roundsquare »

potatolicious wrote: post #102
philwelch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe people with marginal incomes spend themselves into sustained poverty through wasteful consumption. If they saved money instead of buying minimally useful possessions and saving the possessions, maybe they wouldn't have to worry about being able to afford stuff they need. You and I have probably known different sets of poor people, but I've seen cases of this. That doesn't justify throwing things away once yo…

Wow, that's possibly the most arrogant, yet typically upper-middle class thing I've seen all week on HN. Unfortunately, the "poor people are poor 'cos they're dumb!" sentiment is way too prevalent just about anywhere you go. I had the (unexpected and unintended) opportunity to live on the wrong side of the tracks, in an incredibly poor industrial neighbourhood - the reality is far more complex than "poor people have…

From what I've read, there is a lot of truth to what he says. Its not that poor people are dumb, but that the short term spending that everyone does has a much bigger effect on them (as its a much bigger proportion of their income).

Caveat: The paper I'm thinking of was referring to incredibly poor people in India, so it might not necessarily carry over to all contexts.

Re: Stuff

#128

Post by Groxx »

potatolicious wrote: post #102
philwelch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe people with marginal incomes spend themselves into sustained poverty through wasteful consumption. If they saved money instead of buying minimally useful possessions and saving the possessions, maybe they wouldn't have to worry about being able to afford stuff they need. You and I have probably known different sets of poor people, but I've seen cases of this. That doesn't justify throwing things away once yo…

Wow, that's possibly the most arrogant, yet typically upper-middle class thing I've seen all week on HN. Unfortunately, the "poor people are poor 'cos they're dumb!" sentiment is way too prevalent just about anywhere you go. I had the (unexpected and unintended) opportunity to live on the wrong side of the tracks, in an incredibly poor industrial neighbourhood - the reality is far more complex than "poor people have…

Around my house, the poor sections of town were the ones with ridiculously tricked-out cars, and the siding on their houses was literally falling off, with lots of roof damage. They'd spend thousands on a paint job, but nothing to stop the leaky roof, drafts, and higher energy costs that go with those. I've seen nearly identical things many other places (replace cars with expensive-but-uncomfortable shoes, stereotypically-goth-$100 pants, etc).

From my experiences, it's typically that moderately-poor people spend themselves into further poverty by having poor priorities. Status-buys seem to rank higher than life-improvers.

Re: Stuff

#129

Post by fburnaby »

tel wrote: post #60

I'm always aware of this when I look at model rooms for designer furniture. They are always alarmingly spartan. With that image, it's easy to notice that without the pressure of real stuff, your mind prefers it not be there. That always struck me about IKEA. It tries to have both by trying to appeal to high design while filling their model rooms with clutter. It's very telling and a wonderful business model since the…

I remember thinking the same thing about Ikea when I went through one of their catalogs last week. But I think it seems like a bad idea; it makes their products feel less enticing. I could look at their furniture and -- though the pictures still look very nice -- think to myself "how would I navigate around that with a cup of tea and a book in my hand?".

Re: Stuff

#130

Post by fburnaby »

jseliger wrote: post #34

I wonder if this got submitted now because of my submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124086 on "The Possessions Exercise:" http://jseliger.com/2010/02/13/the-possessions-exercise-acco... . (For those of you who don't want to click the second link, here's the money shot: List the ten most expensive things (products, services, or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university…

Geoffry Miller, nice! If I owed a house, it would be on both lists. Other than that, my computer, education and guitar are shared on both lists. Below those, my most expensive purchases have been necessities (think bed mattress, rent, etc). Honestly, it feels wrong to regret spending money on these. I may not love them, but they're part of the cost of living.

The list exercise might make more sense to non-students.

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