Why are Adults so busy? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#481

Post by coldtea » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 5:39 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #124

coldtea wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet people in certain European countries and tons of other parts in the world with different work attitudes can have tons of free time, despite having children et al.

Except this post was not about work but rather about everything else.

Well, they have free time for "everything else" too.

E.g. kids can just go out and play or go to afternoon classes themselves, they don't have to be constantly supervised by their parents or be driven everywhere, so they get more freedom, and parents gets more self time, for one example.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#482

Post by knorker » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #72

knorker wrote: post #57

Much of this doesn't apply to me, but mostly because I've been implicitly trying to avoid it. I don't do my taxes because I can buy an accountants time, but I can't buy more "time". It's another reason I don't want a huge collection of "stuff". "Stuff" takes your time. I don't have a car for this reason, and I live in a city that doesn't require one. But the article is motivating me to be more explicit about the thin…

This is my single biggest justification for not doing my own laundry. I've run experiments. If I take my laundry to a laundromat, run it through the washer, move it to the drier, (run it through the drier again because it isn't dry), fold and put it all away, it costs me about $12 in quarters. It also costs me two or three hours of time, where I'm pretty much stuck at the laundromat, unable to do anything really wort…

I rent, but when I moved in I still paid to replace the washer with a washer-dryer. I spend less than 5 minutes a month on washing clothes. (I have multiple laundry baskets so they're pre-sorted)

If something needs ironing I either don't buy it in the first place, or I have it dry cleaned just to get in ironed.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#483

Post by sanderjd » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 8:04 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #470

superuser2 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dedicate my professional life to chipping away at the "drive" required to lead a decent life, and I suspect most software engineers on this forum do too. Our greatest accomplishments as engineers, scientists, etc. are lowering the cost (measured in time and effort) of the things people need. The really deep ones, like food, energy, and medicine, get all the style points. Transportation counts too IMO, but even adve…

Yes, but. We aren't romanticizing poverty, I'm an engineer too and I'm directly involved in the 20k hours of light part, probably my contribution is a very tiny fraction of it but my children have grown up with not only no desire to work but no real desire to put their all into anything. It's not universal but it does seem more polarized than it was forty years ago when I was the age they are now (20-s). Of course th…

Whenever I start to think this way, I remind myself that "a large number" of adults have been lamenting the same exact deterioration of the youth for hundreds of years, but somehow we keep building, inventing, and progressing.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#484

Post by abustamam » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

Retra wrote: post #461

dota_fanatic wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, just because you know something is a lie, doesn't mean that that kills its power, especially if it was a very convincing, detailed, life-like lie. Our wetware isn't so advanced (simple?) as that; the consequences of sensory input on the subconscious are varied and complex.

Find out where you get your advertising from and then stop going there.

Bye Google.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#485

Post by Tenhundfeld » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 8:01 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #479

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it necessarily exploiting people to charge a market rate for a good or service? That makes no sense, unless you just don't believe in private property – which is a different argument and not one I'm super interested in having. And honestly, if you think it's so easy to be a landlord, you should try it. It's not. It can be fairly easy, until you have: - a tenant who won't pay but also refuses to leave, necessit…

Wrong. Here is why most "invest" in exploitation. Banks lend you several times your salary. You are not appreciating the dynamics my dear rentier.

I still don't understand. Just because a bank will lend someone money to buy a home, why is it exploitative to offer someone else the chance of living in that home?

I wish we could sit down over coffee or whatevs and discuss this. I feel like we must have fundamentally different views of the world, and I would like to understand yours better. I rarely meet people whose views I don't understand, even if I disagree – especially people to the "left" of me.

I rented for as long as I've now been a homeowner. I never felt like I was being exploited as a renter. I was essentially paying the same in rent as a mortgage, but as a renter, I got a ton of advantages. For example, I didn't have to pay for maintenance of the home, I got access to nice amenities, and I got the flexibility to easily move somewhere else at the end of the year. For a fee, I got to offload a huge amount of stress onto someone else – the property owner.

I know someone who owns two homes and rents them out. Meanwhile, she lives in a small rented townhouse shared with 2 other housemates. She does this, because she's very handy and can do most of the maintenance herself. And she feels she understands the real estate market better than the stock/bond market. So, these homes are basically her retirement savings. She's not forcing anyone to live in them, and she can't afford to have them sit vacant very long. So, she must price them at a rate that will attract renters. I just don't see the exploitation in that scenario.