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The most precious resource is agency

simonsarris.substack.com

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Re: The most precious resource is agency

#271

Post by lotsofpulp »

beckingz wrote: post #266
lotsofpulp wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of this story? This will objectively never happen for anyone with a ”regular” job, I.e. anywhere within 1 standard deviation or less of the median income. Also, counting a home’s net worth in assets does not make sense to me unless you can afford to greatly downsize at anytime and the market is liquid.

If you invest $500 per month for 40 years and get 6% interest, you'll end up with almost a million dollars. $6,000 per year is a significant portion of your take-home income if you're making the median income in the US, but it's possible.

Having $1M (or even $2M or $3M) 40 years in the future is not FU money. Not to mention that if you are unemployable anyway due to old age, you do not need to say FU to anyone in the first place.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#272

Post by tailspin2019 »

agentwiggles wrote: post #227
sangnoir wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one will probably remember us the way they’ll remember pg. The older I get, the more the whole "legacy"/impact issue seems overhyped; pg (and everyone alive today) is not going to be remembered for long either; perhaps 2 more generations, and it's a wrap. No one is remembered forever. That thought keeps me rooted firmly in the present and on the immediate impact I can have. I have never been into poetry, but bot…

I've always found this goofy copypasta version of the poem to be really funny, because even in the silly voice it assumes, it still manages to capture something of the essence of the piece. Even as written here, that last line has a certain power and resonance: I met a traveller from way the hell off who said: two gigantic, fucked-up rock legs be out there in the middle of goddamn nowhere right next to them covered i…

For some reason, I enjoyed this very much

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#273

Post by TimTheTinker »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #233
malydok wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting fact that one could save many lives by donating to charities and yet wouldn't feel quite the same way about it. Clicking "donate" on a screen and filling in credit card details isn't as thrilling an experience as yours even if it achieves no less.

This nicely encapsulates why our society sucks. Helping people you can't see doesn't provide the self-congratulation dopamine hit, thus people don't do it.

That's why charities ought to be small, local operations helped chiefly by local volunteers and only secondarily by donations.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#274

Post by tailspin2019 »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #169
sillysaurusx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went and did the other side, living nontraditionally and trying to be what I wanted. I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money. My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. The work can be the most boring, crud-type work. As long as you’re working with people you like on something vague…

> No one will probably remember us the way they’ll remember pg. History is a highly aggressive compression algorithm. Entire industries are forgotten, let alone people. So, yes, the correct answer is, "relax and enjoy yourself." If you happen to contribute to the world in a way that escapes the compression algorithm - congrats.

> History is a highly aggressive compression algorithm. Entire industries are forgotten, let alone people.

You win “Hacker News Comment of the Day” :)

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#275

Post by tluyben2 »

bjornsing wrote: post #243
tluyben2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because risk. Rich, privileged people can try different things with zero risk of becoming destitute You can do that as well in many EU countries. Without being rich.

> You can do that as well in many EU countries. Without being rich. But, interestingly, few people do. And those who do seem to take on less risk than their counterparts in the US.

I think people take a lot of risks here: a lot of people would be dying of starvation if they did not have the safetynet. But yes, agreed, people do not seem to want to go all out. I think you need some existential panic to excel (depending on your definition of excel of course), but I am not religious so I do not want existential panic or any type of risk really. And I guess most people have the same feeling here. Just playing risk yourself is no risk as there is the safetynet, but once you start witb other people their lives, it becomes different.

Where I was born, everyone has money and people are generally modest: do not need ferraris or whatever so they just want a happy relaxed life. And that is very easy to get here. I worked very hard since I was 15 as I wanted (and have) (not ferraris but travel) more, but I was never interested in money or fame that can get someone kidnapped. I believe if I lived in the US, my parents would have sent me to Stanford or something and things might have been different somehow. I will never know: I like not having stress, at all so no regrets.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#276

Post by gpm »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #167
papito wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because risk. Rich, privileged people can try different things with zero risk of becoming destitute. And that's how they practically stumble into new opportunities. Adam Neumann was making collapsible heels and toddler knee-pads before he decided to try the pyramid that is WeWork, which ultimately bought him a private jet and multiple houses. Me? I didn't have a chance to "try" things. My room for error was zero . Mu…

I am not so sure "safety net" cuts it. I would prefer just taking every 21 year old and saying "here is 15 grand, go do something amazing". I don't know what the results will be, but a fair number will be worth the risk.

15 grand is enough to live off of... for a year... if you're frugal, have no debts, and your amazing thing doesn't require any startup expenses. It's not enough to make risk aversion meaningfully less important. I suspect most 21 year olds would still do the same things as they do otherwise, just with a marginally better lifestyle.

On the other hand, I actually like this idea. It would help people escape abusive situations, and I generally think it's fairly ridiculous how we ask young people to live on so little money while educating themselves. I just don't think it would cause many people to "go do something amazing".

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#277

Post by aarongray »

idolaspecus wrote: post #20

My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning…

I was fortunate enough to have two parents that let me stay at home and homeschool until high school, then they sent me off to learn from others. They taught me how to do almost all of those things in your list as the opportunities presented themselves. Did we disagree? Yes. Did I hate gardening a lot of the time? Yes. But then my parents would play video games with me after we were done which I loved. We learned how to give and take, how to do what each other enjoyed, and how to do life together. Now that I'm in my thirties, working from home, and have a little family of my own, I'm trying to replicate my childhood as much as I can. I think you have a great dream, I say go for it!

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#278

Post by david927 »

bedobi wrote: post #8

This article did a great job of articulating something I've always felt strongly about but haven't been able to put into words. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like my schooling was mostly a giant waste of my time and energy. I was waaaay ahead in subjects I liked, because those things I learned myself out of innate interest. Rather than the system accommodating and encouraging being ahead, in those subjects I…

My daughter, three years ago at age 12, felt that she could go at a faster pace on her own, so she asked to be home-schooled. We were really nervous at first but it's been great and agency is the reason.

She still takes math at school but that's usually her only class. Otherwise she's doing things. She's gone to Florence (with us) to take art classes there. (She wants to be an artist or author.) That first year she made a video game (#17 here https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-01-02), and this last year she wrote an 80,000 word crime novel. If she can get the kind of score on the SAT that she's getting on practice tests, she has a good chance of going to one of the schools that she wants. (Her early application choice is Yale.)

She's doing things and that gives her meaning to what she's learning. It's not just words on a page but something that she sees value in knowing. We get a lot of eye-rolls when we say she's home-schooled but for her, it's been a game changer. And agency is a big part of that.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#279

Post by icandoit »

borroka wrote: post #261
SpaghettiX wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe FU money is not about how much you earn, it’s about how much you save vs. spend. I can afford to stop working for more than a year, even though I’m not 25 yet, I would gladly say I have FU money. It’s because I don’t spend much.

That's not FU money, that's enough money not to work for one year. At the end of the year, you cannot, in this context, say FU to anybody.

He can say FU some fraction of his time.

The recipe is simple. If you spend 50% of what you make, then you only have to work 50% of your life. If you spend 10% of what you make, then you only have to work 10% of your life.

Turn off all sources of marketing and watch your free time and savings swell.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#280

Post by tomjakubowski »

vidarh wrote: post #170
leoc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all broadly true, but the fact that 'Ozymandias' is frickin' Ramesses II does undermine the message of the poems a bit. Or more generously, it adds another level of depth to the point that someone's future fame can't easily be predicted by looking at their current fame.

But even Ramessess II is not really "remembered" by more than a tiny handful of people. Most people who recognize the name know nothing about him, and most would never come up with the name unprompted. Most knowledge about him is lost. We know him in the very abstract, not all much different to how we know the Ozymandias of the poems. Does that level of being remembered matter?

Rameses's legacy did enjoy a brief revival in the West as a brand of condoms.

https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-of-the-condom/

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