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Stuff

paulgraham.com

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Re: Stuff

#111

Post by pg »

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…

The thing you seem to think I don't understand is in fact one of the main points of the essay. When you're poor you instinctively accumulate stuff. If you read a few more paragraphs on you'll come to that part.

Re: Stuff

#112

Post by philwelch »

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…

I'm not upper middle class at all. "Upper middle class" implies an income that's an order of magnitude above what my parents ever made. And I don't think spending-and-hoarding is why people are poor. Everyone spends and hoards--it's human nature. Unfortunately it's a bit of human nature that causes more problems the less income you have.

Nor did I say poor people are poor because they're dumb, or that they have poor impulse spending control, just that they might still benefit from a minimalist lifestyle. On the contrary--some that I've known have been bright and very deliberate about spending. But like most people, they still deliberately buy things they don't really need using the same poor justifications that wealthier people use.

I'm not interested in assigning any kind of blame to anyone. You're interpreting a subtext that isn't there.

Re: Stuff

#113

Post by schackbrian »

abstractbill wrote: post #12

Except books—but books are different. I suspect most people have their own personal caveat to this essay. Mine isn't books (I usually give good books to friends after reading them, and bad books to ebay). My own caveat would be raw materials for building or repairing things (electrical components, nuts and bolts, tools, etc).

I used to collect books, and then I donated them to the library. Now, I have more space, they keep track of them for me, and I can check them out whenever I want.

Re: Stuff

#114

Post by netcan »

gcb wrote: post #110
eelco wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live in your car, but you can't drive in your house ;)

you missed the point completely. It's all about status. Cant tell if it was a joke. I blame insomnia.

Houses can be about status too. A lot of things that most people spend their money on is, or can be. Cars, houses, gadgets, clothes even holidays can be "sold" based on what your friends will think.

Re: Stuff

#115

Post by dejan »

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

exactly, that is the one I had in my head ;) but still made a correction bellow...

Re: Stuff

#116

Post by peter_severin »

masterj wrote: post #83
gasull wrote: post #37

You can join the 100 things challenge: http://www.guynameddave.com/100-thing-challenge.html One problem I've found with it is that people buy me worthless gifts (gifts I don't derive value from because I don't use them). I've created an online list of things I want at kaboodle.com, or more exactly, a list of things I wouldn't mind possessing, but my family refuses buying anything on the list because that's "spoiling…

My solution was telling my family that if they wanted to get me a gift, it should be consumable. A nice bottle of wine, cheeses, beer, spices, etc. all make great gifts that you can enjoy, but don't have to deal with and store for years. They also don't feel bad about not getting you anything.

This is exactly the kind of presents I like to give and to receive. Good chocolate, a pack of good tea, a bottle of very good olive oil, nice bottle of wine.

Re: Stuff

#117

Post by andyjdavis »

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 how much of an emotional lift this gives you.

I really dislike the cult of stuff. I'm getting married soon. We've requested people give us money or just their congratulations :) Some people however seem to think we're rude for refusing to accept stuff we don't need. Somehow we're obligated to accept a burdensome gift that we'll have to quietly dispose of. They spend money that we could use for things we do need and we have to go to the effort of getting rid of it. Its a lose lose. Yet somehow we're selfish for asking people not to buy us stuff.

Re: Stuff

#118

Post by andyjdavis »

schackbrian wrote: post #113
abstractbill wrote: post #12

Except books—but books are different. I suspect most people have their own personal caveat to this essay. Mine isn't books (I usually give good books to friends after reading them, and bad books to ebay). My own caveat would be raw materials for building or repairing things (electrical components, nuts and bolts, tools, etc).

I used to collect books, and then I donated them to the library. Now, I have more space, they keep track of them for me, and I can check them out whenever I want.

I tried to donate a stack of books to my local library. They weren't "new or as new" so they wouldn't accept them :( They weren't damaged. They just didn't look new.

Them not taking them wasn't so bad. I was more annoyed by the attitude of the staff who made a big song and dance as if they were doing me a favour by even considering taking free books.

A library accepting free books in good condition seemed like a no brainer to me :|

Re: Stuff

#119

Post by nvoorhies »

gwern wrote: post #71
Luc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have thousands of books and would love to get rid of them. I would need a future-proof platform that allows annotations, and that lets me migrate between devices (so I can keep my books for at least my lifetime). I guess I would also need a convenient book scanner, for those books that are no longer in print.

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.

Re: Stuff

#120

Post by riffraff »

netcan wrote: post #114
gcb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you missed the point completely. It's all about status. Cant tell if it was a joke. I blame insomnia.

Houses can be about status too. A lot of things that most people spend their money on is, or can be. Cars, houses, gadgets, clothes even holidays can be "sold" based on what your friends will think.

yes but you can't drive them around. You get yourself a cool car, wherver you go people will see a person in a cool car. You get a nice house only people in your neighborhood will know.
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