“People simply empty out” • Hacker News Board

Re: “People simply empty out”

#461

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Aug 17, 2013, 9:32 PM UTC

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #436

brightsize wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a 50 year-old slim guy with a full head of hair and a 911? Is that pathetic? Why? That would be me (minus the 911). I'm too frugal to buy a 911 but if another guy has socked away two or three million $ (or more) over the course of his tech career, how is this different than a 25yo with a big exit buying a 911? You seem a bit misinformed about age, a bit of an age-ist perhaps: I'm healthy and can bench press…

jewish proverb/saying: it is better to be young, rich and healthy than old, poor and sick. all your efforts are to look younger , but this is lost as your youth is long gone. if you think you made great use of it by sitting at the office... well not even sure how to comment on this. let me rephrase it: guy in 911 in his 50s even in great shape is a little bit like a woman in her 50s in great shape who just had a boob…

Are you completely incapable of recognizing that powerful cars are fun?

Re: “People simply empty out”

#462

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Aug 17, 2013, 10:33 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #191

wwweston wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If literally no one did any work, then yes, we'd have trouble with this. However, most industrial societies, things are long past the point where most people would need to work full time in order to feed and shelter their populations -- we now employ a decided minority of the labor force doing those essentials. Apparently instead of reaping a leisure dividend, though, we've decided other things are more important. Pe…

and why would those "minority of people" doing all the work agree to share their fruits with you (who is not working!)?

Taxes. They might complain but they still have 10x as much money as non-workers.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#464

Post by ctdonath » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 2:07 AM UTC

_flag wrote: post #435

ctdonath wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just 5% of people are employed in agriculture precisely because "those in position of wealth and power" DID allocate resources in a way that does not require most people to waste their lives toiling in fields. Without such high-profit motivation to invest in advanced research & infrastructure projects, we'd still be stuck with most people working in agriculture the hard way. Glorify employment? The socioeconomic worl…

> The socioeconomic world is as good as it is because most people are employed, doing something which contributes to maintenance and advancement of society & technology. Can you justify this? If we use the US as an example and look at the most common jobs, we find that over 4 million people are employed as salespersons, another 3 million as cashiers, followed by 3 million people employed serving food (including fast…

Sure I can justify this. You present 10,000,000 employed people working jobs which could, conceivably, be automated. Do you seriously think that given technology currently applicable, their employers would not replace those people with machines in a heartbeat if the latter were cheaper? Sure, you can hypothesize about how that should be the case, but you would overlook a multitude of realities that indeed render the human worker superior to the automated alternatives.

I dislike human-clerk checkouts at stores. Nothing against people per se, but as a high-tech introvert I'd rather do it myself - exactly as you suggest. Sure, the technology is there; heck, Walmart even has a phone-based self-scanner so you can do 95% of checkout before you even get to the self-serve register for final payment. The technology sounds great on paper and in rhetoric, but in reality it sucks (despite my valiant concerted efforts to be a automation-supporting customer). Standard self-checkout chokes on the bottle of wine ("Human clerk, is customer over 21?" Uh, yeah, I'm greying with two kids in tow, of course I'm of age). Phone-based on-the-go checkout is time consuming (stop, turn on phone (again), tap Scan, point camera, wait for slow auto-focus, wait for crappy in-store wireless connection to function, get to payment station, get selected for another 15-minute "you've been selected for a compliance check" which confuses human staff every time). Never mind shoplifting, mis-scans, and a host of other problems. Those ten million "technology replaceable staff" are still employed because they're better at the work than technology, and relieving them of their duties does NOT make their freed-up wages available for confiscation & redistribution as "living wages" to the now-unemployed former workers (it's going to technology costs and high-tech maintenance staff). That's 10M people "contributing to maintenance of society".

As for manufacturing wants and increasing money spent vs. consumers making rational choices? I'm watching a startup put serious money into marketing staff; the product is [r]evolutionary and WILL "advance society & technology", but isn't going anywhere without convincing a lot of people to buy it, and the staff IS earning their significant wages by doing so. Oh sure, there's a lot of sales of superfluous goods out there, but even that helps fill out & support an infrastructure which gets vital goods to a broad clientele: Walmart isn't going to get five pounds of bread flour on a shelf for $1.89 without the delivery system greased with the profits from the "cheap crap" they're famous for; in comparison, that same sack of flour would cost about $5 at everything-is-perfect Whole Foods.

Indication that considering what is and isn't necessary in society could "liberate" half the population? Yeah: every society that tried it, like the Soviet Union (hint: they'd kill people for trying to leave).

Re: “People simply empty out”

#465

Post by mathgladiator » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 5:33 AM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #393

mattmanser wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people will get married and have kids and actually want to enjoy life a little bit while working 9-5. They want to stay near their close family & friends, because they love them and want to see them and want their kids to grow up around them. Which means spending X per month on a house. They want to have a car that doesn't embarrass them when they drive into work or round their friends, because o…

It's children that are the real financial issue. Even one child, last I heard, is the difference between early retirement as a reward for spending your 20s and 30s on grad-student frugality while earning plenty of money, and just having to work a 9-5 until it kills you.

This is one reason the wife and I will not have a child.

The cost is over a $1,000,000 (with a Dr. Evil pinky). If you look at the costs online, then you will see something between $200K to $400K depending on how good of parent are you. However, this doesn't bring in the opportunity cost of investing. If you just take the 18 year time span, then the first year is insanely expensive. Now, imagine it expanding 30, 40, 50 years out.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#466

Post by kayoone » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 6:20 AM UTC

JVIDEL wrote: post #460

mattmanser wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen in my friends is that certain men will buy an expensive car on a loan, keep it 3-4 years and then swap it for a family friendly car when they have kids. Often they will buy the car 2nd hand. The car retains the majority of its value, they enjoy the car, they're not actually spending massive amounts of money like you seem to think they are. It's essentially a hobby item that they enjoy driving. And it's…

Not only that but leasing an expensive car can actually cost you less than the value of the car you lose for using it. I remember checking how leasing a Porsche for 3 years would cost me less than half of the value the car would lose in that time.

If that was always the case, leasing agencies wouldnt be able to make profit, so you might just have stumpled on some really good offers which popup from time to time. In general, leasing costs hould be equal to or more than the deprecation in value of the car itself.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#467

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 12:28 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #376

scotty79 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not support your "right" to threaten the life of another to compel him to improve your situation. Does that mean that you also don't support kicking renters to the curb during winter months if they don't pay?

If they're not paying, they're trespassers. Out. They're free to pursue their right to life without violating someone else's, and they've got far more ability to provide for themselves than you're giving them credit for. Charity has its place, I advocate and facilitate it, and am not under any delusion that it comes from compelling others to contribute.

That's what I thought. You are not against threatening somebodies life to compel him to improve someones situation in general. You are perfectly fine with that when it's done to protect the right to do whatever you like with the things you own.

There are a lot of people such as you that think that right to own things and do whatever you like with the things you own trumps pretty much every other right. Including the right not to get killed of the people who'd try to steal your stuff. Fortunately lawmakers in lots of first world countries got passed that barbaric notion. In my country for example you can't hurt the thief. You can try to hold him until the police comes, but if you beat the shit out of him or set a booby trap to harm him you will be prosecuted because you endangered his life and health, a value more important than your petty stuff. Same way you can smash the window of a car parked in the sun on a hot day if you see dog left inside. You are violating less important right to protect higher value.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#468

Post by _flag » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 3:59 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #464

_flag wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The socioeconomic world is as good as it is because most people are employed, doing something which contributes to maintenance and advancement of society & technology. Can you justify this? If we use the US as an example and look at the most common jobs, we find that over 4 million people are employed as salespersons, another 3 million as cashiers, followed by 3 million people employed serving food (including fast…

Sure I can justify this. You present 10,000,000 employed people working jobs which could, conceivably, be automated. Do you seriously think that given technology currently applicable, their employers would not replace those people with machines in a heartbeat if the latter were cheaper? Sure, you can hypothesize about how that should be the case, but you would overlook a multitude of realities that indeed render the…

I gave an example of an automated checkout, but my point was not that the jobs I mentioned could all be automated -- my point was that they are not necessary. When I say "necessary", I don't mean that they aren't necessary to increase corporate profits (salesman, which I mentioned, certainly are), I mean they are not necessary to ensure a stable and functioning society. The example I gave with automated checkouts is not to demonstrate that automated checkouts are _better_ than human workers -- human workers are and will likely be far more capable than machines at running checkouts for a long time. My point is that they _could_ be replaced, and that if society decided that increasing human liberty was a more important goal than certain small inconveniences at the checkout, they _would_ be replaced.

So yes, these people are "contributing to the maintenance of society", but there are conceivable alternatives that would give these individuals (and society as a whole) more liberty, and would only require some small inconveniences.

The anecdote you give of your startup which needs advertising to get off the ground is beside the point. Perhaps your startup is revolutionary, and perhaps it needs some advertising to get off the ground, but this doesn't change the fact that most advertising is simply misinformation. Television commercials which make use of lush landscapes and half-naked women to sell cars don't create rational consumers, and without rational consumers you cannot have a functioning market. If advertising was simply a way in which companies communicated well-reasoned facts about products, and came with a balanced analysis of a product and its competitors, then we could argue that advertising was working towards creating a functioning market system. Until then, advertising will simply favour those with the largest advertising budgets and those who are best at disinformation, and so it's difficult to argue it is contributing to society.

> Indication that considering what is and isn't necessary in society could "liberate" half the population? Yeah: every society that tried it, like the Soviet Union (hint: they'd kill people for trying to leave).

This is really cheap rhetoric -- and not even accurate. If I'm arguing for a society where people are liberated from work, why are you using the Soviet Union, a dictatorship where everyone worked all the time, as some kind of counterpoint? Not everything that contradicts the status-quo is totalitarian communism, you know.

Besides, the points I'm trying to make aren't even original. There are serious proposals that have been made for why society should move to a 20-hour work week to address things ranging from rising levels of depression to climate change. [1]

[1] http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours

Re: “People simply empty out”

#469

Post by nilkn » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 5:58 PM UTC

JVIDEL wrote: post #460

mattmanser wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I've seen in my friends is that certain men will buy an expensive car on a loan, keep it 3-4 years and then swap it for a family friendly car when they have kids. Often they will buy the car 2nd hand. The car retains the majority of its value, they enjoy the car, they're not actually spending massive amounts of money like you seem to think they are. It's essentially a hobby item that they enjoy driving. And it's…

Not only that but leasing an expensive car can actually cost you less than the value of the car you lose for using it. I remember checking how leasing a Porsche for 3 years would cost me less than half of the value the car would lose in that time.

I agree with kayoone; it doesn't really seem like this could consistently be true or else it would just be bad business.

In general, though, the best way to combat the depreciation of a car's value is to take out a long-term 0% interest loan, provided of course that you can get it. This works because (1) inflation reduces your effective net expenditure on the car; (2) you can take the cash you would have spent on the car and invest it instead; if you even conservatively get 3% returns a year, you've still come out far ahead.

Regarding (2), if you can't afford the car in cash, then you can't afford the car. That's always been my motto. Financing is a choice; it should never be something you are forced to do, unless this is your first car straight out of school and you just have no money yet.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#470

Post by rfnslyr » Sun, Aug 18, 2013, 11:40 PM UTC

trstowell wrote: post #412

rfnslyr wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. Strong people will pursue their passion and find their ways. Weak people will succumb and be scared. It depends entirely on the person. Most people simply prefer stability, that's all there is to it. Not everybody has this amazing idea they are absolutely passionate about and prioritize above everything else. I just started working in a corporate environment. I'm the best at what I do. I work beyo…

The attitude that came through in your comment is exactly what I try to uphold. I say 'try', because after 21 years of complacency the discipline needed to bring this attitude into the next day has humbled me for how often I fail to do so. I'm in the middle of making monumental changes in my life, and if I had helped ingrain a lesson or mindset into another person as much as your outlook helped me, I would've liked t…

All the best to you!