Variable Cost Living Sadly Doesn't Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Variable Cost Living Sadly Doesn't Work

#41

Post by billswift » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 1:28 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #18

Another reason moving around a lot is always going to be a painful because your address, you being known to be available at a location, is important for legal and financial purposes for lots of service suppliers. Any kind of ongoing transaction will be made difficult by history of moving around a lot.

If you're staying in the same city like he is, all you need is a fixed mailing address. Even moving between cities you can use a mail forwarding service (paying a friend you can trust would probably be better than a commercial service).

Re: Variable Cost Living Sadly Doesn't Work

#42

Post by mbrubeck » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 2:52 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #30

jlees wrote: post #15

I really like the concept and I'm glad someone managed to try it out. I also immediately thought of Airbnb (good job on ramming your brand into my brain guys!), but there seems to be something missing that even Airbnb doesn't quite cover: standardisation, perhaps? If you're extending the parallel to cloud storage, sure, you can spin up and spin down as required - but you (generally) stay within the same provider to d…

What about something straight out of Snow Crash? Take one of those storage space rental places, and rent out something like that on a daily basis. You might have to do some work on getting things like plumbing,etc in there, but it would be cheap space that could be rented quickly and for variable amounts of time. Of course, it would be relatively low-quality... but in Snow Crash he wasn't living in a 'high-class' nei…

In countries like the U.S. with rigid building codes, it could take quite a lot of work to turn a storage locker into something that you could (legally) rent as living space.

Re: Variable Cost Living Sadly Doesn't Work

#43

Post by prewett » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 3:38 PM UTC

billswift wrote: post #40

pyre wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about something straight out of Snow Crash? Take one of those storage space rental places, and rent out something like that on a daily basis. You might have to do some work on getting things like plumbing,etc in there, but it would be cheap space that could be rented quickly and for variable amounts of time. Of course, it would be relatively low-quality... but in Snow Crash he wasn't living in a 'high-class' nei…

I remember reading somewhere that there are hourly hotels in Japan, because of the extreme hours many "salarymen" work. You pay by the hour, just for the time you're there, for a shoebox barely bigger than the bed.

I thought the hourly hotels in Japan were "love hotels", due to lack of space available for privacy?

Re: Variable Cost Living Sadly Doesn't Work

#44

Post by iamelgringo » Sat, Oct 03, 2009, 10:04 PM UTC

hussong wrote: post #28

scott_s wrote: post #21

I like having a place I call "home." I want more than a roof and a bed to sleep in. I want a place that feels like my base and is emotionally comforting. Also, the pop-up chat thing is amazingly annoying.

I was surprised the author didn't mention the (hard to quantify) emotional cost of living out of a suitcase. Bits don't care where they live, people usually do.

Some of us grew up like that, and we like it.