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Comment by klochner | Hacker News Reader

It strikes me that choosing to rent over owning is the antithesis to the theme of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (recommended book).

The driving metaphor comes from the contrast between (effectively) renting a BMW motorcycle (since they are hard to repair), and owning a simpler model that can be maintained by oneself.

The stated benefit is greater autonomy and satisfaction derived through taking ownership and solving one's own problems - a more classical approach to life. Rather than taking a "fix this for me" attitude, you see the world as something that you have control over.

Personally, I've found it very satisfying every time I'm able to repair something in my car, which I've owned for 8 years.

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The parts are sourced from a retailer. You're just pushing the "fix this for me" up one level and ignoring the entire inextricable chains of production.

The sense of control is a false one. Is there control in the availability of parts, or their manufacture?

That's a false dilemma - the choice isn't between full-service rentals and forging my own steel from ore I dig out of the ground.

Increasing one's autonomy has value, whether or not you ever reach full autonomy.

Oh, it does, definitely. But it's more along the lines of being able to deal with increasingly large daily emergencies. Being able to forge steel would be an apocalypse-sized emergency.

As an ego-booster, I'm not so sure. Since everything is so connected, why gloat? As someone who has actually built a car from scrap metal and a loose engine, I feel that there isn't much difference between putting a pre-made part in a car yourself, or having someone else do it. Everything's a tinkertoy.

Pushing things one level up is still a valid control metaphor. You're not a worse programmer because you use a 4th level abstraction instead of a 3rd level.

Or, to put it another way, C programmers aren't "Better" at programming then I am just because they're C programmers and I use C# / Ruby / Others.

(They're better because they're grumpier and they'll hit me with their beards if I don't please them)

The better programmer is aware of the system are multiple abstraction levels and can determine where his/her priorities are and choose the right abstraction. Not everything is a nail, sometimes you should be in assembly, sometimes you should be in javascript. (Sometimes both)

As someone who owns and maintains and older car in the face of 'why don't you just trade it' opinions from others, I also gain a lot of satisfaction in being able to be in tune with a vehicle, to understand when it is happy, when it is looking for service, to understand the history of the roads it's been on and history of the use it's had.

A lot of people with a 'vehicle is an appliance' mindset would never understand that, but vehicles are like houses in that they create and are intrinsically involved with memories. Some happy, some sad, all baked into our lives. That's why many women have to apologise and say sorry to a car they are disposing from their lives, as if it's anything but a inanimate lump of metal, plastic, glass and rubber. They're not saying goodbye to the object, they are saying goodbye to the memories.

I absolutely agree with the satisfaction of repairing something yourself. In fact, I think even having the choice of either repairing it myself or hiring someone I deem competent to repair it is a worthwhile difference.

When I was an apartment dweller, I signed a 1 year contract and they kept telling me that if anything breaks call them. That included windows, pipes, stoves, refrigerators, and light bulbs. I wasn't even supposed to change a light bulb if it burned out on me. Admittedly this is only one experience with what I hope was a very poor renting operation, but they owned all the buildings in the vicinity.

I was so happy when I replaced my kitchen sink faucet on my own and in a way that satisfied what I wanted.

Wait until you've done it enough times. As someone who's owned his own home for about 16 years, I'd be quite happy if I never had to replace a faucet, fix hail damaged siding, clean a gutter, etc. again. I look at it as one of the "necessary" evils of home ownership.

Perhaps, right now I'm in a condo so I still don't have to worry about most of those things. But I still think just having a choice between hiring someone competent and doing it myself is a nice one.

I stress competent because my previous landlord(s) were less than able to fix things beyond the superficial problems. Their goal is to strike a balance somewhere between quality and ability to stop complaints. Usually the choice fell one one side of the ability to stop complaints side. (Fix it so it works, not so it works well, i.e. replace broken washing machine with cheap almost broken washing machine.)

8 years?

I still own my 88 Toyota Landcruiser. 170K original miles.

And yes, I do all the work on it myself.

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