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Comment by nisa | Hacker News Reader

I'm doing the opposite - doing unpaid work for a local hackspace like caring about the local non-profit mesh network and doing it-stuff for a local university group.

People just don't seem to grasp the concept at all: a lot ask why we run the mesh network and how we finance it - if you explain them it's run for free and there is no profit motive they think you are crazy. It's also surprisingly popular to assume for free = useless - some declined running a node due to this.

On the other hand working for free in uni context is basically self-slaverly - lot's of work, lot's of stuff breaks constantly if you run your typical FOSS stuff and nobody is seeing the work and most don't care or at worst you are blamed and new people advocating their favorite commercial cloud services.

It's still fun and I can learn a lot, run some infrastructure for free where I can test stuff but you really need to be careful to not foul yourself and depending on the org you are in to not just work for free.

The saddest thing about the university thing is: If you advocate to pay that position a lot of - I'm just blunt here: "rich kids" advocate against it because you are at uni anyway and they tell you it's an honour to do this... however if they don't get refund for partly insane travel costs for their university pet project hell breaks loose...

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> If you advocate to pay that position a lot of - I'm just blunt here: "rich kids" advocate against it because you are at uni anyway and they tell you it's an honour to do this... however if they don't get refund for partly insane travel costs for their university pet project hell breaks loose...

I hate this dynamic so much. I was in a cybersecurity club (back before every school had a program) and the school fought tooth and nail for every dime they gave us. We got reimbursed for a rental car and hotel once a year for a particular red team/blue team competition and that was it (and a certain professor was the only reason we got reimbursed). The bus going to take "activists" to protest at occupy wall street (or whatever) was paid for no questions asked.

Funding proper cybersecurity education is hard pretty much everywhere.

I hate the school systems hero worship of sign wielding protesters. I remember the first time few times I went to protests.

Idiot teenagers there to hang out with friends and skip school. NIMBYs there for completely different reasons than they were nominally protesting. Said NIMBYs arming teens with homemade signs which were promptly disposed of after 1 hour. Career protestors without jobs roaming from one protest to another. News crews long jaded to the reality of protests having their eyes roll out of their skulls watching said teenagers screw around. Then I watched the news regarding the same protest and it was like entering a damn reality distortion field where some narrative about the next generation of youth activists were deciding to do all this shit on their own and their NIMBY parents didn't organize the whole thing and coach their kids on what to say.

The one protest that really jaded me was being part of protests for an olympic bid and seeing absolutely nobody. Jack shit people protested. Moment the worlds media showed up to town? Oh all sorts of "activists" concerned about "the government prioritizing a party over X cause" creating a fuss when all the money was already fucking spent. "Activists" telling tourists to stay away that could help us recoup some costs because that would somehow help the poor. "Activists" vandalizing olympic related stuff daily. "Activists" getting piss drunk, overdosing on opiates, and setting up homeless camps. Then the media and school system distorted these people into everyday heroes.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm not sure why you're being downvoted.

Because he's lamenting how disingenuous he believes protests are while presenting them in a totally disingenuous manner.

It seems to me he is just reporting his own observations. Am I incorrect?

That's exactly what I saw though. The more impressive protests I've seen tended to be union picket lines. Which I do not cross.

I'm just jaded by the bullshit I've seen narracistic assholes pull. It gave me a lifelong appreciation for doing good quietly.

I'm sure this happens.

However, real protests mostly full of people that care do happen. I've seen this myself.

Neither type of protest culture represents the entirety of protests.

Campus activism is a strange thing because universities are filled with young people who don't really know what they're doing, what they really care about, what they truly believe, and how they relate to society as a whole.

It's unfortunate that this is many people's first interaction with protests and activism, because it's a very unique portion of it and not at all representative of protest movements in general or of what they could be.

>I hate the school systems hero worship of sign wielding protesters.

The part that really irks me about this is that it incentivizes "activism" in high school as a means to look good on college applications. There's a reason we don't let high-school kids vote. Likewise giving them an incentive to play the "think of the children" card on politicians is just an exercise in manipulating them. Basically nobody at age 18 has a reasonable world view because their life experience is basically limited to childhood, they only know some output of what the adults around them have fed them.

When I was learning photojournalism (as a side skill), for practice, I used to attend lots of demonstrations in Boston, and the demonstrators always seemed to be sincere.

The students (of which Boston has a ton) might have been attending different demonstrations: I mostly saw non-student adults.

Occasionally, a demonstration coordinated by a particular activism group would seem transactional: people show up and assemble, media comes out to get what might air as a few seconds of video, people leave. But even those ones, the people seemed to be sincere.

Regarding schools incentivizing "activism": that's frustrating, but not entirely new. Added to the widely-gamed college application checklist, long after "volunteering"? (I could never review college admissions applications. You can't even get mad at even the most insincere-seeming students for playing the game, since that was the game the schools put in front of them. The solution might be to not have it be a competition for scarce resources, since it no longer has to be.)

> Basically nobody at age 18 has a reasonable world view because their life experience is basically limited to childhood

It's fair to criticize teens for limited experience. It's fair to assume a some portion of what they think they know is a reflection of the common wisdom of adults in their circle. It's fair to start from the assumption that this will often result in opinions that aren't very nuanced, systematic, and balanced.

It's risky to assume this means teens have no meaningful experience, knowledge, or even expertise.

And I'm at least a little surprised to see an opinion approaching that on a forum where no small number of participants started playing/working at creating software before they reached an age expressed in double-digits.

>> "rich kids" advocate against it

Of course they do. That's their direct leverage against those who actually need money to live on. You don't need to be smarter - you just need to work for free. At the end of their degree they'll be the ones with an interesting portfolio and poorer won't.

Same as the Olympics in the amateur only days.

This isn't quite true. Many olympic athletes from the U.S.A. have day jobs.

[edit] Don't believe me? Here, read this: http://mentalfloss.com/article/84182/day-jobs-15-olympic-ath... [/edit]

I certainly believe you that it is not possible to make a living in most sports. My point was that an amateur-only rule is a big advantage for athletes who don't need to work and excludes many who might be able to earn money in an Olympic sport.

Told that on Reddit few days ago. 70yo neighbor asked me to fix her laptop antivirus[0]. The thing was sluggish. I came back the following day (unsollicited) to show her a live linux so she can see her laptop full speed (no hdd or os cruft). When i left she asked me how much i wanted.

Social tissue is an odd beast. Friendliness is fragile and people dont like freebies. Also i suspect some Stockholm syndrom, since every aftersales ask a lot, they assume anything must cost a ton.

[0] which she paid for when things were back in order.

My experience from teenage/early adulthood as well. Neighbours knew I was the local "computer whiz", so they'd come to me and ask to fix / "devirus" their computers. They always tried to give me money, no matter how much I opposed.

They know they'd spend a small fortune at Best Buy or other retail service. And they don't want to be seen as a charity case or perhaps worse, a dummy.

I feel like a simple barter might be appropriate in this case. IT services for brownies. Or something like that. You still get the satisfaction of helping a neighbor and they get the satisfaction of paying you something, anything, for your time and knowledge.

In my case what was odd is that I came on my own, she sollicited my help for the antivirus and paid me. I came back without her asking, just so she knows her machine is fine and there's no reason to worry or buy a new one.

Business shark me should have ride her fear and give her paid advice for a new machine while giving her a free 'recycling' service on her current laptop.

Remind your business shark that in the accounting world, "good will" is an acknowledged asset class that exists. It's not always a good idea to "monetize" all of it, even from a strictly homo econimus business shark point of view.

> in the accounting world, "good will" is an acknowledged asset class that exists. It's not always a good idea to "monetize" all of it, even from a strictly homo econ[omic]us business shark point of view.

Is this true? I'm familiar with an accounting concept called "goodwill", but as far as I ever learned "goodwill" is just the label given to prices that are higher than the fundamentals appear to justify. By that definition, in order for goodwill to exist, it must already have been monetized.

Another approach is to ask the person you're helping what they're good at.

As long as it's something reasonable, let them know if/when you need a hand with that later on, then they can expect a call in return. :)

I think this is a really important thing to realise, socially. People feel happy doing things for you. In a misguided attempt to be polite I used to turn down things people offered me even though I wanted them: drinks when I visited, lifts in a car, etc. Eventually I realised I was just making them more uncomfortable and that everyone wins if you accept.

That's a very important life lesson. Many people live unconsciously by a code of mutual obligation -- they will do something for you, motivated by feelings they would identify as generosity, expecting nothing immediately in return. It's rude to turn them down. They'll be hurt and feel rejected. At the same time you need to be aware that it's incumbent on you to return the favor eventually, in some form. I've seen a lot of, on the one hand, resentful feelings and on the other, baffled incomprehension, result when people who live by this code interact with people who don't.

In the real world, when someone offers something, they've already in their mind given you that.

If you turn it down, it causes an internal conflict.

And it's part of their growth learn to let go of the rejection.

This is culture-specific! I know a couple of cultures where it's polite to offer (without actual intention of following through), and the expectation is that the person being asked also declines - out of politeness. Think of it as the equivalent of the American "How are you?" scripted exchange.

I think India has (or had) a three level rules where the first 3 queries were just polite to show some kind of friendliness. After that your in honest/genuine interactions.

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. The very same real world also contains offers that are customary given on the assumption that the other side says "thank you very much I will surely come back to you about this" as part of a politeness protocol but never even considers taking the offer seriously. "Please stay as long as you like" is how the last guests of a party thrown out.

I find that highlighting how asking for help meets the need of community and support, while providing it meets the need of contributing to life.

Both sides got their needs met. Everything else is extra. People aren't learning how to be grateful for themselves and their own vulnerability. I'm not going to take away that learning opportunity, especially by accepting things from them I don't want or need.

I basically eventually set a rate for this, mostly because people kept asking. And because I both wanted to address people trying to give me as much as a Best Buy, and those who somehow still thought five dollars was useful in this day and age.

as long as it doesn’t spiral out of control into dependency, my normal response to someone demanding to pay me for some kindness i’ve done them is either a request for payment in kind (“you know, those pies you bake sometimes always smell delicious from next door...”, “hey, you’re an IPA guy right?”, etc.) or a request to pass it on and report back what they helped someone else with.

I don’t need to take money from neighbors, but i known how itchy it is to feel like you owe someone a debt, and there’s a barter/trade solution that works nicely here and is somehow fundamentally more human.

Someone suggested the pie trick too. This kind of idea is quite neat indeed.

> I don’t need to take money from neighbors, but i known how itchy it is to feel like you owe someone a debt, and there’s a barter/trade solution that works nicely here and is somehow fundamentally more human.

This perfectly sums it up. There a human component we almost completely lost. Kindness has been made obsolete by money, or so it feels. But that's also a part of humanness that was traded away.

It also prevents careless tech support requests. Win-win.

mutual aid is a wonderful thing

IIRC Graeber wrote quite a bit about how a kind of fuzzily-accounted, low-level, shifting, mutual debt can be a big part of close human relationships (relatives, friends) in his Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I recall in particular his using the example of a child "paying off" all perceived debt to a parent as a way of severing ties with them.

There are parts of the world in which paying off everything you owe to, say, a business partner, is a polite way of saying "i am about to cease doing business with you".

I had this experience in the early 00s. I helped quite a few (of my parents) neighbors with PC and Windows-related problems. It didn't bother me to do it for free, I offered everything for free. One of their neighbors was, at the time, a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. His power supply was on it's last leg and he was dealing with his machine randomly crashing. I swapped in an unused PSU that I had at the house and he couldn't believe that I didn't want to charge him $200 or something.

These days I'm lucky to even see my neighbors or get a friendly "Hello" back from them.

"These days I'm lucky to even see my neighbors or get a friendly "Hello" back from them."

this is why i very very reluctantly accept anything for free. Even if the person claims to "just being nice" there's an implied debt just like you state here.

I would much rather barter or pay cash up front and square the deal than breed resentment or the awkward "hey I need you to do something for me because you owe me.." conversation.

This is exactly the root of the problem, it's so ingrained in our culture that everything has to be done "for something" that you can't even grasp that someone might want to do or give something without asking anything in return. I do a lot of things or give without expecting even thankfulness.

I don’t know if it’s “our culture”, it’s part of it but personality also comes into play.

If you spend time and effort doing something for someone and expect nothing in return it’s only natural that many people will feel uncomfortable unless they believe they understand why you’re doing it. It’s not necessarily transactional; understanding the motives of others is how people make sense of human interaction. Their understanding doesn’t have to be correct! It just has to make sense to them somehow.

Some possible reasons a person is doing a thing for me:

* They like me, we’re friends

* They like doing the thing or keeping busy

* They have a religion (Christianity, GNU/Linux)

* They like to feel helpful or useful, to teach or to demonstrate expertise

* We have a group bond (church, neighbourhood, club, etc)

* They’re doing me a favour. I’m a useful person and I’ll be able to do them a good turn in future.

* They owe me something (loyalty, money) and they’re paying me back by doing this

* They’re trying to rip me off somehow or get something out of me

* I’m incapable and they judge that I’m clearly in need of help (charity)

More self-reliant people are the ones who seem reluctant to accept free help. I think it actually hurts their pride a little to have to rely on you and not be able to give something in return. Accepting some jars of jam or a bit of money in return seems like a kindness.

You have a point and I forgot to add that above.

I had many motives. I'm annoyed at society race for new and shiney when you don't have to. It was part of the reason the interaction wasn't super neat because it was a bit of a foggy subtext. Now it wasn't all, I wanted to show her what was possible with her machine, and relieve her of stress. But it's true that when we spend time with people, the faster you make sure there's no hidden agenda from your side, the better. I believe if your mind and heart is clear, people will follow rapidly. It's a trust issue.

> Even if the person claims to "just being nice" there's an implied debt just like you state here.

If someone gives me something for free, I have no problem accepting it on those terms and feel no implied debt. Probably because when I do/give things to others for free, I never feel that person owes me anything more than a "thank you."

I have encountered people who've done things for me with an expectation that I somehow owe them something, but I consider them as subverting basic social interactions, and will reduce my interactions with them.

I read that as a separate thought. When he was younger he knew his neighbors and helped them freely. Now neighbors don't introduce themselves. I could be wrong.

The thoughts were were loosely connected, but I wouldn't read too much into anything that I write (especially that early in the morning).

Mostly, I think it's that I'm sentimental and nostalgic for the period of time that I grew up in. It felt like, back then, in that time and that place, that people were genuinely neighborly and helpful for a sense of the greater good. I could rattle off hundreds of instances of personally helping neighbors out, as my parents did, and as other neighbors and family friends did to us in kind, and at least for my piece, I didn't expect a debt to be repaid and I never felt that coming from others.

Maybe it's just my own naivety speaking. Maybe people genuinely did implicitly create a debt in their heads for those favors or deeds. I don't think they did, but I don't really know. I do know that, by the time that computers were a household commodity, and I was able to help folks with theirs, that they absolutely expected to have to pay for _that_ sort of service.

More recently, I've only had the opportunity to help 2 or 3 people through all of the 2010s. Each of them were friends, or people that I was trying to cultivate a friendship with (it wasn't reciprocated, but that's fine, too). I've known the names of exactly 3 families that I've lived literally next door to since moving to California in 2008.

I suppose that I'm just longing for the loss of something that I can't quite explain nor properly articulate on a work day.

You know it took me a long time to understand this part of human nature and social interactions. And I believe it's one of the deepest force behind all the technological change and society evolution. We want to be able to do more without feeling indebted to someone. Today it's reached the point where we almost don't want to owe a hello to a cashier at McDonald's. We want to deal less and less with the potential randomness of people.

I believe we're doing away with the art of trust and replace it with a computerized world.

I think we're wired to want to reciprocate. By paying you for the favor she avoids having to think about ways she can pay you back in the future.

I think the part that's thought of as 'crazy', isn't that it's all done as charity, it's that it's the only thing supporting it. Having an idea or project that can do some social good or meet some demand is great, but it's even better when that thing can sustain itself. It might,for a time, work on charity, but akin to the 'teach a man to fish' proverb - it's better something can meet it's own requirements than expecting to feed that fire for x years or Eg. to feed / find someone to feed a person for the next x years.

Don't get me wrong - All power to you, donating your time effort and other resources to things you believe to be a worthy cause is what people should be doing. But some of that effort may be wisely spent on finding ways to monetize those actions and set it up to carry its own weight.

we take donations for the mesh-network and organize events with the money and stuff like that - it's not totally without money - some do consulting if asked but we want to keep network non-profit because most users don't have much money.

> "Monetize to carry its own weight"

So instead of being dependent on good will, you wish to be dependent on paying customers? (This is a strategy where customers carry the weight, not the project, as you've described)

I, personally, would rather my humanitarian efforts incentivize the cultivation of good will, as opposed to the cultivation of money.

I, personally, would rather my humanitarian efforts incentivize the cultivation of good will, as opposed to the cultivation of money.

Good relations with customers often involve the cultivation of good will. That used to be an article of faith in the SV startup community and on this site. The cultivation of good will (not fanboy/fangirl-ism) is a sign that a group is doing real good in the world, where the money is a strong validation.

Inexpensive every-person pastimes and products also used to fit this pattern. The ready availability of those used to elevate most everyone in American society to a certain level of dignity. It seems like there's fewer of those as time goes on.

I think this might be an american phenomenon. I live in Germany and almost everyone I know is doing some non-profit work on the side, it's pretty common here.

This is what happens when the state pays you to study.

I'm German as well, also did a ton of 'free' work on the side, and am very thankful for the opportunity I had.

Americans are expected to do unpaid internships as well, but instead of being supplemented by government-paid tuition and a stipend, we have to get financing from a college fund (if our parents are well-off) and/or student loans (which we'll be paying off well into middle age).

It's because germans love to work. Take pride in their work. Work is a payment of its own if it's honest work

This puritan ethic can be taken to some pretty extravagant extremes. Careful, or else you’ll start to believe that work justifies your existence.

i have a pretty calvinist background, so i may be poorly calibrated.

whats wrong with that? i create therefore i am. what else would you live for - consumption? comfort? to be there so no one else marks your territory? genuinely curious.

i have a pretty anti-calvinist, though thoroughly religious, background.

What's wrong with that is that Work is not God, and therefore cannot be that which justifies you (and in fact, you justify it!). Taken to extremes, work-as-that-which-i-live-for is a not very subtle idolatry, and that usually winds us up in boot-stomping-on-face-forever territory in more or less short order.

I mean this in the least greeting-card-glurgey way possible: The thing we live for isn't work, it is love.

...This circumstance constitutes in itself the most eloquent "Gospel of work", showing that the basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person. The sources of the dignity of work are to be sought primarily in the subjective dimension, not in the objective one.

Such a concept practically does away with the very basis of the ancient differentiation of people into classes according to the kind of work done. This does not mean that, from the objective point of view, human work cannot and must not be rated and qualified in any way. It only means that the primary basis of tbe value of work is man himself, who is its subject. This leads immediately to a very important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man "for work". Through this conclusion one rightly comes to recognize the pre-eminence of the subjective meaning of work over the objective one. Given this way of understanding things, and presupposing that different sorts of work that people do can have greater or lesser objective value, let us try nevertheless to show that each sort is judged above all by the measure of the dignity of the subject of work, that is to say the person, the individual who carries it out. On the other hand: independently of the work that every man does, and presupposing that this work constitutes a purpose-at times a very demanding one-of his activity, this purpose does not possess a definitive meaning in itself. In fact, in the final analysis it is always man who is the purpose of the work, whatever work it is that is done by man-even if the common scale of values rates it as the merest "service", as the most monotonous even the most alienating work.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/doc...

> what else would you live for

What do you need to live "for" something? I haven't yet reached retirement so it's pure speculation, but I suspect having no obligations and just hanging is pretty good. Maybe not great, but to me it looks better than the world of work for pay.

BTW I looks to me that my view is in the majority - I don't have the data, but I think that the majority of people just stop working after they reach retirement - i.e. they stop paid work as soon as they can (which means that doing nothing is better than work for them).

It is not. The people of the United States give not only the most money to charity in the world per capita, but also score very highly on World Giving Index (we are #2), which accounts for time spent helping others and working for charitable organizations. We are a very charity oriented country.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s counting what religious Americans give to their church as “charity” though.

You mean the churches that, in turn, use that money to help their communities in a charitable way? I doubt that would surprise anyone anywhere in the world, since it happens everywhere.

This is a thing I've seen said a lot, but I'm curious if it's been studied. And I don't mean this as snark, but has anyone looked at what kind of "good works" churches do for their local communities?

I'm very curious to know whether our government (state, local, etc) is getting a fair exchange for the tax benefits of being a church.

> And I don't mean this as snark, but has anyone looked at what kind of "good works" churches do for their local communities?

Well - some of them provide political platforms to inform their members who to vote for. I think the IRS looked into this at one point, though it didn't go that well [1].

[1]: To this day, it's claimed that it was partisan and targeted only one party, when in fact all non-profits were looked into; it was just that certain non-profits, which attracted members of mainly one party, were the ones mostly engaging in such practices. That party, of course, made sure the IRS didn't have somebody (by not confirming anyone to the position - which is still the same today) to look into this issue; without that person, the law has no teeth, and they can continue to (illegally) promote their own politicians, in violation of the law for non-profit organizations. But they claim "free speech" rights and "religious freedom" rights...

And some of that goes out to support their surrounding communities by feeding/clothing homeless, supporting foster children, cleaning up yards for the elderly, paying people's rent, etc. A lot of churches don't require people to members in order to receive this help.

So, if it is included, possibly this is why.

You know that churches help people, right? In fact, they’re pretty good at it.

They're even better at taking money from people.

There are estimates that the Catholic Church spends around 3% of turnover on charity - which is far less than most charitable organisations do, and certainly far less than it could afford to.

Given the age slant of its members a lot of donations are collected from the elderly, many of whom can realistically be considered poor themselves.

Many replies are vouching for churches, but while religious community work is certainly beneficial to selected parties, it's only a little better than other forms of private philanthropy in that the services are selected by a limited number of participants, to benefit a limited number of participants, rather than democratically as a government would do. [-1]

For example, in cases like the Salvation Army, a portion of donated money goes toward lobbying against certain types of free speech. And they have been caught many times discriminating against LGBTQ. [0]

[-1] Not that governments are uniformly perfect. They are at least beholden to the majority at numerous pressure points, unlike churches.

[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-salvation-armys-histo_b_4...

I've always heard that that's predominantly religious giving, but never actually looked to see whether that's true til now.

It turns out, it is:

> Historically, Religious groups have received the largest share of charitable donations. This remained true in 2016. With the 2.9% increase in donations this year, 31% of all donations, or $127.37 billion, went to Religious organizations. Much of these contributions can be attributed to people giving to their local place of worship.

> In 2016, the majority of charitable dollars went to religion (32%), education (16%), human services (12%), grantmaking foundations (11%), and health (9%).

So Americans technically give a lot to charity, but it's mostly to tax-advantaged local religious institutions, who may or may not be doing anything with that; I'm sure some churches do something for their local community to merit that tax advantage, but I'm sure others don't. There's a lot of big buildings out there with crosses on them.

Numbers from: https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/ (it says "online giving" at the top of the page, but the data itself seems to be about all charitable giving.)

If you add church to charity giving then Germans give a lot to charity through the “Kirchensteuer” (church tax)

Sounds like a tithe.

FWIW, many churches (and members of congregations) separate tithes and gifts.

The difference to the US is that in Germany you have to explicitly opt out.

Only if you opted in before (e.g. by your legal guardian at the time)

Which pretty much everybody when I grow up. I wonder if that has changed.

It is a tithe because it is a percentage of income that goes to the church. But it’s implemented through a tax collected by the government and withheld from paychecks. It would be unconstitutional in the U.S., but it’s a thing in Germany and some Scandinavian countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax

The UK too - it can destroy the value of a property.

The church tax occurs on property or on income?

Per capita meaning you take how much money was donated and divided by the number of people? That would just mean that some Americans donate a lot.

Non Profit work does not mean charity. It can be working on a hobby you do for fun

> That would just mean that some Americans donate a lot.

Are you saying this doesn't also occur in other nations, like Germany?

The US has the highest level of wealth inequality in the world, so assuming that the ultra-rich donate more, their impact should be higher in the US than anywhere else.

>assuming that the ultra-rich donate more

That's a terrible assumption:

https://www.fool.com/taxes/2018/07/02/heres-how-much-the-ave...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_...

As you see you are wrong. As well you are wrong about statistics - see this https://www.britannica.com/science/law-of-large-numbers

That's income inequality. You want wealth inequality.

http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/

Admittedly they only surveyed 55 countries, which I will openly admit to missing.

In addition, I'm not sure how the law of large numbers applies to wealth, which roughly follows a power law instead of being randomly distributed.

I think I want income inequality. Wealth inequality might be totally meaningless as wealth is guesstimate not exact value usually, e.g. look here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribut..., is hard to say anything at all from Gini Wealth. Zimbabwe and Denmark can be compared by Gini index but that's completely nonsensical result: one corrupt and one happiest country in the world.

I have mentioned law of large numbers because of population size, however rich ultra-rich might be that can't skew results in USA.

I'm from Germany - it depends a lot where you are and what kind of poeple are there.

> It's also surprisingly popular to assume for free = useless - some declined running a node due to this.

Well you probably shouldn't have an SLA for this. (not disagreeing with the rest of the stuff here.)

> It's also surprisingly popular to assume for free = useless

> I can test stuff but you really need to be careful to not foul yourself

Everything has a cost, even free ones. The cost isn't always money, it can be time, trouble, lost opportunities, lack of support, reselling of semi-private data, advertising, lack of maintenance, etc...

You say it yourself, you test stuff on it...

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