Things You're Allowed to Do | Hacker News Reader

Things You're Allowed to Do

milan.cvitkovic.net

537 pointsthesephist416 comments

One time when I was younger, in my late teens, I was walking through the city around 8pm. I suddenly felt rather cold, and went through the typical 15 seconds of internal grumbling. I then had an epiphany, and walked into a nearby department store to purchase a jacket. Somehow I'd never even considered that as a possibility previously.

As silly as it may seem, I use that singular point in time as the reference for when I commenced adulthood. I've got no idea if others have similar experiences (I grew up very poor, so I was probably primed against the idea of spontaneously buying something to begin with), but the contents of this list seems to be very much in the same vein.

My similar "coming of age" moment was in a hotel in Tokyo.

I had been collecting whisky from a bunch of small liquor stores and had run out of clothes to wrap my bottles in when packing them in my suitcase, so I grabbed a towel from the bathroom.

Being a fancy hotel, I saw they had a price sheet for items that "unexpectedly" went missing, and I think the towel was like $60 or something insane. When I was a kid, I never understood why anyone would pay that much for a towel, but at midnight in my hotel, with a bottle of Japanese whisky worth far more than that potentially on the line, it suddenly clicked why someone might want to do that.

I think I put the towel back and went to the local Don Quixote (open 24/7!) and bought some cheap packing material, but in that moment I definitely understood the prioritization exercise that others I this thread have talked about (how much is my time/how valuable is this thing).

A long time ago I worked on a hotel room booking website and ended up talking to a lot of hotel reception staff during the discovery phase. One of the people I spoke to told me that most of the 'stolen' things are actually just people getting blood/vomit/poop on things and being embarrassed about it so they take them home. It's not really theft in the sense of stealing for personal gain in many cases.

> most of the 'stolen' things are actually just people getting blood/vomit/poop on things and being embarrassed about it so they take them home

How do they know?

Before COVID, when travel was still a thing, I stayed at a hotel in St. Louis. There was a superbly comfortable and stylish bathrobe in the room which I quite enjoyed, and on the hanger was a note saying something like “Excellent robe isn’t it? Feel free to take it with you, we’ll add it to your bill no questions asked.”

I thought it was a fun take one the whole thing and had it not been for me not having any room in my luggage I would’ve taken it. If I recall correctly the note said it was somewhere in the $50-$60 range.

>was a note saying something like “Excellent robe isn’t it? Feel free to take it with you, we’ll add it to your bill no questions asked.”

Now, imagine guests being offended and not coming back to the hotel and leaving negative reviews out of spite, even if they didn't have any intention of stealing the robe.

That would make the hotel staff less snarky and rude, and more mindful about what they write on notes to guests...

Because this is the rude equivalent of the store clerk following around the aisles assuming you're a thief. A high end hotel for the rich would never dream of writing something like this -- at least not in the good days before the race to the bottom.

I’d always assumed they put prices on stuff to try and make it clearer to people they were stealing by taking them, rather than just “taking the free stuff”

I always assumed it was a side source of profit -- rich tourists and businessmen. If there's a price listed, I never thought of it as inappropriate, especially given the markup.

I think if my income was 2x what it was at one point, I would have taken a hotel robe under the listed price. I've had really mixed experiences buying robes at stores and on-line. You can't tell how well they'll work wet. Hotels sometimes have really nice ones, with the upside you can try them out straight out of the shower, and see how they work.

Downside is the markup.

This reminds me of the realisation that you can actually park your car anywhere you want for as long as you want, some places are just more expensive than others.

I’ve heard this generalised to “when you’re poor, rules control you, when you’re rich they just set price tags on different actions.”

Many places will tow your car. Some places will tow it within 20 minutes. That pretty much ruins the point of parking there.

I think we've all had a version of the

"Wait, I'm an adult, I can eat ice cream for dinner if I want to"

as well as the

"I guess I'm an adult, because I don't want to eat ice cream for dinner"

Realizing I was an adult happened to me in two stages. In stage one, I realized that if I wanted a Reeses peanut butter cup, I could just buy one and eat it. Nobody could tell me not to.

In stage two, my wife told me not to.

As I transitioned to full-time WFH from beginning of 2020, it was "I can eat steak for dinner every day if I want to". If you're going out, a decent steak would cost you over $100, so I never considered eating it as everyday food before - but buying decent steak cuts to cook at home can be much more affordable.

Just remember that being an adult is just as much about not doing things that you could do. If you just do everything because you can and it provides gratification, then you are likely still an adolescent.

And this is for things that don't have negative externalities such as the environmental damage, animal cruelty and health downsides of eating steak every day.

> cost you over $100

Wait, what? Is that USD?

Mine was my freshman year in college. I had a craving for chocolate cake one evening. My epiphany was that I could just hop in my car and go buy one. I didn’t have to answer to or explain myself to anyone. So off I went and bought a cake! My dorm roommate seemed just as enlightened at the notion and he helped me eat it.

I’m not sure I mark this as “adulthood,” but it was a strangely significant milestone in my budding independence.

Oh my god, yes. The day I realized "wait, you can just ... buy a cake? yourself? Whenever you want? No party or anything?" was mind-blowing.

Or (being it is convenient here in NJ) just driving to a diner any damn time of the day, and getting a big wedge of chocolate cake and a cup of coffee. And nothing else.

Chocolate cake and coffee for breakfast at 7:00 AM? Hell yeah! At 2:30 after the bars have closed? Why not? At 9:30 PM because you are feeling a bit 'peckish' after dinner? Sure.

One day about age 15, I realized that I like Steely Dan. And for the first time, I didn't care what my friends thought, nor what they themselves liked. I realized I could form my own tastes and preferences completely independently of everyone else.

At some point, I noticed that I can order my second drink at dinner. Previously, I thought I had to mach my drinking speed to my eating speed. That’s the moment I became an adult.

This may not resonate with Americans due to the free refills or British because in UK it’s normal to have tap water served.

In the US I felt it with the opposite: not finishing my drink. When you're young, you'll finish whatever drink is in front of you because alcohol is expensive and you don't want it to go to waste, but I remember the first time I didn't finish a beer and realizing that that was perfectly reasonable (and arguably, the more mature thing to do).

Not just drinks; meals.

Its perfectly fine to go to a restaurant, eat 1/2, 1/3, 3/4 of a meal and still order a dessert.

lol

Reminds me of a time when I was in the city with a friend.

My shoes were broken, so I said to him "I need new shoes" went in the next department store, bought a pair, threw my old ones in a trash can and wore the new shoes.

He was mind-blown.

Both this and OP depend crucially on the hidden assumption that you have enough money to buy new shoes or a jacket on a whim. Depending on where you are, what kind of store it is, and how much money you have, it may be practically impossible to carry this out.

Of course, having a reasonable amount of cash on hand to enable immediate, necessary purchases is also a mark of adulthood (it means you have a decent job), so the story still works.

Its more referring to the concept of realizing there's a solution to the problem and being willing to take it. When I was younger, there was a notable amount of times where I felt cold but didn't bother getting a jacket. Of course, grabbing a jacket from a store may not be an option for a person, but I think you're generalizing every part of what they are saying too much rather than the point they're making.

> Both this and OP depend crucially on the hidden assumption that you have enough money to buy new shoes or a jacket on a whim.

It's hardly hidden:

> I grew up very poor, so I was probably primed against the idea of spontaneously buying something to begin with

Or they suddenly realized that the immediate need for the product tipped over the scale for a purchasing decision that normally would have waited X amount of time.

It's not like it's an item bought for no reason at all. (Not to mention in both instances they could go and return the item the next day)

True.

My next step was not wearing shoes at all.

But I have to admit that's only working in the summer and outside of clubs/restaurants.

Ok, mine is kinda plain - I started a trip to a location, suddenly I didn't feel like it, and then left the bus at the nearest possible location, ate a pastry while waiting for the transport back.

I had such moment when I’ve had been living in my first own apartment for a few months already and listening to music till was really late. I was just about to go to bed, when I realized I can just stay and sleep on the couch. It was really nice and enlightening feeling, thanks for bringing this memory back!

Heh, I've lived through this exact scenario.

In my defence, I did not think I would need a jacket on a sunny day in May in San Francisco.

I suspect that buying a jacket in SF is a rather broadly shared experience.

Totally. I’m from NYC, but my main fall time jacket was “rage-purchased” when I was in SF during a cold “Fog-ust” day!

Exact same epiphany when a coworker proposed buying shoes without holes instead of changing socks after every rainy commute

I identify so much with this. It's extremely freeing to break through these previously unrecognized limitations.

The first step to breaking out of prison is recognizing when you're in one.

Nowadays, you'd probably just order one on your phone, and a drone would deliver it to you, and a taco.

This reminds me of an old video of Steve Jobs. His idea is simple, but it's really powerful. In short: the world is something you can change, not merely participate in.

When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

And the minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however, you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw

while I like the idea expressed by the quote, I don't like the overall judgemental sentiment that "if you don't mold the world around you, you live a poor version of life". It reminds me of something that could be said by a cultist person coach. Nothing wrong or worse I think with living a simple life.

It's hard not to reflect on Steve Job's quotes like that and think about how Apple manufactures it's phones. What a reality they've created for the foxcon workers.

You do know that Foxconn has over 800k employees around the world? And that they manufacture a huge amount of the electronics we all use every day.

For some reason the notion of Foxcon == Apple manufacturer has stuck in the public consciousness, mostly because it brings in the sweet sweet clicks just by having "Apple manufacturer <bad thing>" in there.

The reality that they have created for Foxconn workers is that they have a job that they would die than quit. It's that important to them.

Why do you assume that it has to be Apple's fault that China is fucked up?

One could argue they’re just following local laws. Though it won’t make any difference because their brand carries such weight and status that I find it will be almost impossible to vote it out with our wallets. We’d better shut up and just accept the new truth from our self appointed feudal masters.

I'm not much into Steve Jobs, never been an Apple user, but I get the impression that Steve Jobs was a very judgmental person, also on behalf of others.

Having said that, I personally also think that it would better if the non-molding was a conscious choice, and not due to lack of thought. I personally often see people suffer due to lack of possible molding.

On a fundamental level, living any kind of life, “simple” or not, is a fruitless attempt to discover the ideal way a life should be spent. There is no single, truthful answer to that question. It is entirely possible to live a simple life and adhere to the standard Steve set here - perhaps the simplicity of your lifestyle is the thing that will change the world.

It is unhelpful to most people on two levels - firstly, about half of us are below median intelligence. Secondly, not everyone can change the world all at once. There are too many people and too few things to change for that to be feasible. By the numbers, most people are going to have to be satisfied with having no real impact.

I think you are severely underestimating the local effect an individual can have by influencing life, albeit on a smaller scale. Not everything has to be on a world-scale. In my case, I love watching movies and discussing them, but never applied that in any way to my environment – until I started a small, local film club, which has given me a real sense of having a bit of influence.

I also like the general idea of the quote and I'm against calling someone's way if life "less", but I think the value to be had is from the realization and everyone should have that realization.

> everything around you (...) was made up by people that were no smarter than you

The audacity of this guy! So he starts from the assumption that he's just as smart as everybody else that lives or has ever lived. Then he works from there.

Or equally that we're all just as dumb. O:-)

Everyone around you who has ever lived or will ever lived are just grown up kids like you, muddling their way through life just like you.

That is up to and including (but not limited to) your Mom, your Dad, your Teachers and Professors, the Mayor, Prime Minister or President, and even the Secretary General of the United Nations!

Possibly this might even apply to people like Einstein, The Pope, and Steve Jobs, though the jury is out on that one.

I no longer agree with my previous mentality that "anyone can do it if they try" and "everyone is capable". It was an innocent, non-judgmental, perspective that I'm glad I had because it helped prevent some sort of inflated ego. But, the older I get, the more people I meet, and a mini stroke later that knocked down my IQ some very noticeable points, I've realized that I'm incredibly lucky to be above average intelligence (in certain areas). It has made life relatively easy. Having the somewhat rare perspective of experiencing an instantaneous drop in intelligence, I would never agree with you that we are all like Einstein. I firmly believe that the "obviousness" that a more intelligent mind sees cannot be learned. It's seeing things that aren't there, that others can't see at all, or take much too long to see. For this reason, I believe there is a very real difference in the range of what people are capable of. I think everyone here should be thankful for their roll of the dice.

> Or equally that we're all just as dumb.

Sure, but it depends from where you start your reasoning from. I guess my upbringing was just the opposite as that of arrogant people like Jobs. My parents taught me to assume that most things are the way they are probably because a lot of people smarter than me set them up that way. This leaves you in a perennially grateful, happy state. When you find something that does not work in an optimal way, you become sad and try to fix it for the better, but only after you have thoroughly understood how it works. How is life like for an arrogant asshole? Do they become happy only when they "gotcha" the failings of less smart people? Won't they unconsciously find errors in many things they don't understand? It must be a living hell to be like that.

I think the message to take from that was not one of Jobs’ narcissism, but that the world was shaped by ordinary people, and that you and I (or him for that matter) can do the same.

And that's why the iPhone is an open and hackable platform! Oh, wait..

Well Steve Jobs molded it according to his vision of end to end control.

But... how to learn it? How to truly internalize that you can "change" the world?

You don't have to internalize anything. Just start small with whatever cause is important to you. Try to get people to join your efforts. Set some goals or an end point where you'd feel satisfied with what you've done and can move on to something else without guilt.

Don't forget that Steve Jobs is not an all-knowing oracle. He was human, and in many ways a product of his time. His '60s hippie ideals certainly influenced Apple I's marketing and story (taking on 'the man', IBM). But in his personal life, he denied paternity of his daughter for years, well past the point where he was a multi-millionaire and could have afforded to support her.

The concept is generally known as "agency".

Isn't it essencially Karl Marx XIth thesis? "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways. What is crucial, however, is to change it."

My findings:

Sleep until noon every day.

Work only as much as you need.

Work from home, or anywhere else for that matter.

Have multiple romantic partners in parallel.

Have platonic friends of the opposite sex.

Share multiple flats with multiple people (i.e. live in multiple places, but cheap)

Study 10 years.

Make your own iced tea in the fridge.

Buy food in bulk.

Drink tap water.

Create your own dishes by mixing ingredients.

Cook/fry/bake food you would usually eat raw.

Eat food raw that you would usually cook/fry/bake.

Sleep everywhere in your home.

Learn languages, instruments, or sports after you turned 30.

Drink no alcohol at a party and still have fun.

Start/stop smoking and drinking after 30.

Found a company like you would buy a game console.

Take no VC money.

Take muliple years and tries to create a good product.

Write music/give concerts for yourself or your friends only.

Don't wear shoes outside.

Don't have an opinion on a topic.

Overall:

Don't play pre-defined games in your life, but ask if they make you happy. You only have one life, make the most out of it.

Sometimes you have to play by some rules made up by other people to get into a better place, but look at them closely, it could very well be that they are more open to interpretation than they first seem.

> Have multiple romantic partners in parallel.

Do those "multiple romantic partners" know about each other? If the answer is "no" then yours is a very jerky suggestion (I know "jerky" is a harsh word for this forum, but I can't come up with anything else to describe this).

I agree, that being open about that is completely key. When I was very young (1970s) I had a few female friends that I had no interest in dating, and they had no interest in dating me, but we agreed we were available to each other during times we were single and needed some sexual attention. It went both ways, and we always practiced safe sex. I would say any one of them hit on me out of need, over those few short years, as often as I hit on them. It was always discrete, and polite, and quite frankly, quite fun, because there was no romantic baggage. No expectation. Other than pleasure and release. And it made it clear to me then, that sex was as important for women as it was for men, but more fraught with risk. And if you could be cooperative on the risk (one word, condoms) and open about what the physical needs and desires were (learn how to use your hands, gentlemen) the physical aspect of it could be mutual and joyous.

Those years ended for me a long time ago, but they were important, for me, and for my partners at that time.

Thank you for this story from your life :)

That's not a necessary precondition for being a jerk. The necessary precondition is that they want exclusivity.

I feel this is nitpicky, but considering the GP's point about entering predefined games...

Yes.

Some people don't want exclusivity, but also don't want to know what you're doing with other people.

Yes, my partners know of each other :)

If nothing else, it appears like you'll live an interesting life this way, though perhaps not a long one if you take the 'start' path on the smoking.

Having done a large chunk of this myself, I feel like I have to ask about this one:

> Share multiple flats with multiple people (i.e. live in multiple places, but cheap)

I've never even heard of people doing this. How does it work? What's it like? It sounds fascinating, and like something I should've tried in my 20s.

You can rent a whole flat, which most people do. This is expensive.

You can also rent a room in a shared flat, which is cheaper.

From the money you save, you can rent another room in another flat.

Some of my friends even let their rooms to other people while they were out of city to save money.

it's like if Airbnb had a membership program

Nice! Here's some more from me:

Carry a pad and pencil and do sketches of strangers.

Walk or take public transport in random directions.

Put a chair outside and spend all day there.

Sleep on the balcony.

Draw graffiti.

Experiment with clothes, hair color, face paint.

Work out outdoors.

Tell people funny lies.

Go hungry just to feel hungry.

Bake cookies and give them away.

Talk to people nonverbally and see how much you can express.

Modify/deface objects to make them look funnier.

> Draw graffiti.

Just not in my city please...

These are good ones, and many overlap with my own.

You can go further though: sleep when you're tired. wake up when you're done sleeping.

> You can go further though: sleep when you're tired. wake up when you're done sleeping

It literally makes me sad how few people actually can experience this.

I've tried it, but probably I don't have that "you are done sleeping" signal. When I'm awake from "long enough" sleep (10-12hr), I'm tired and lazy. When I sleep 8 hours flat, I'm still sleepy when I get up, but I'm functioning normally after morning routines (washing, breakfast etc).

thanks.

for me sleeping until well rested led to sleeping till noon.

Author here. Thanks! I added a couple of these.

An astonishing amount of this list amounts to “spend money”, so while these things may play well here I think it’s worth pointing out that a large majority of the population is not allowed to do those things because they can’t afford to.

If you see this list only as "spend money" I think it's the perfect article for you.

The overarching point of the author is that most of his target audience (and those reading HN) are used to being thrifty and not spend money at all, even when they get older. They fail to realize that at some point, it's worth your time to spend the X amount either because the value of investing X down the line is so great, or because the time saved by spending X is now so much greater than before, because of something changing in your life (career has progressed, valuation of free time has changed).

I definitely see this myself daily, ending up wasting few minutes each day on trivial things that add up, while it could be fixed by paying a small amount.

Or for example trying to wade through a free course to learn something, but ultimately just dropping it out of no motivation. Compared to paying for a course, which makes you more responsible s you paid for it and usually also offers more effective training.

I agree, and the spin that I would put on it is that I find the framing of this article to be particularly helpful. The sense of "wait, you can do that?" For me, it has often been the case that b I've encountered new concepts that I've never clearly thought about in my own head before, but that once I hear stated openly, are as clear as day.

For the longest time, I had not encountered a concept of "self-care" but then I started seeing that term pop up around the internet and it seemed quite obvious that it was an important thing. That might seem silly, but if your timeline for these things reaches back to the '90s, like mine does, a notion like self-care is relatively recent on the historical timeline as a familiar concept.

I've also seen this in writing, with how you handle plot and character development. Or even some things that are silly but obvious like the fact that you can just go out and go on hikes if you want, and there are tons and tons of places to do that.

I feel like there's all kinds of hidden mental blocks that you can go your whole life not knowing that you have, and I appreciate this idea of elevating the concept to its own genre and targeting it with articles such as the one posted here.

Yes, definitely. Unfortunately this all is usually buried behind heaps and heaps of people trying to sell you something that won't work (either because it just doesn't work for you or because it's a scam! Or maybe both!)

Quite a few in the list amount to "Hire someone to do some optional service for you." I mean, I know I can do all these things. Who doesn't know this? It's not that we don't know we can do these things, it just seems so wasteful to hire someone to do some thing that you (assuming you are able-bodied) can do yourself. Hire someone to "stand in line for you" or "run errands"? Are you kidding me? It's like the Anti-Frugal.

I'm a bit of a DIY obsessive, so maybe I'm just all the way on the other side of the spectrum, but I don't hire someone to do something unless I feel the task is so far outside of my comfort zone that it poses a danger to me. I usually only do it after I've tried the task myself and utterly failed. You'd be surprised what you can do yourself with just a few YouTube tutorials and a decent collection of tools. As a side effect, I've gotten pretty good at being handy around the house, managing the family's finances, repairing our cars, doing major home improvement projects including building barns and sheds, building furniture, lawn care, tree trimming, electrical, plumbing, etc. I consider developing these skills a better investment than the alternative which is perpetually needing to pay someone to do them.

And all it costs is my time, which is free.

DIY for its own sake is often a "penny wise, pound foolish" approach. I recently needed a new TV stand, but I didn't feel like paying even what a cheap ikea version would cost. thinking myself quite clever, I bought a bunch of cinder blocks and a piece of particle board from home depot instead. the total cost was about $12, mostly for the board. it makes a very stable platform for the TV, but it weighs at least five times as much as the cheap ikea stand. it takes four trips to move the damn thing and it leaves cinderblock dust everywhere. I regret that decision every time I move or even rearrange my room.

I also like to DIY so what you are saying makes sense to me. However I also realize that there are things I don't know how to make and I have no interest in (for me it's taxes, administrivia and co). Those things I am gladly paying somebody to do that for me as I am effectively buying free time. And someone who is not into DIY is also buying free time if they hire someone for trimming their trees.

Author here. This is a great point. I'll add the non-obvious DIY options to the list. They're just as important.

> And all it costs is my time, which is free.

Well my time is definitely not free; people pay lots of money for access to it.

The problem with "muh welcome to upper middle class prosperity" lists like this is it doesn't account for the management time and mental load involved in something like "Hire a researcher or expert consultant." For that matter "Cleaning services" or "Hire a graphic designer to turn your appalling sketches into ..." require significant cognitive overhead and time to hire and manage unless you or your spouse or close friends are already doing such things for your day job. If you're already doing such things for your day job you probably already thought of these things.

Some of them are pretty insane: people who need a maid to chuck their clothes into the washer and dryer, then put them away: if it takes you longer than 15 minutes a week to do this ... I have to wonder at your wardrobe. I mean, I understand some people deeply resent performing such menial tasks, or maybe they have large families, but it's not that big a job compared to feeding yourself and getting some exercise.

For myself, hiring experts to assist with my day to day life has been a fairly mixed bag, and my education, hobbies and lifestyle is such that DiY is usually the win.

Definitely noticed that, and it is certainly a privilege to be able to trade time for money; but it is also something that many people don't stop to consider. It makes sense to be thrifty when you're younger and poorer but it can become a blind spot when things change and your time starts becoming more valuable.

Especially when it gets tangled up with moral judgments or self-image: "why order something at restaurant that you can make at home?" "what kind of cyclist can't change a flat" "only a loser has to pay to get dates" etc...

None of those things are absolute right or wrong, but it should be based on a honest assessment of the tradeoffs, not emotional associations or ingrained assumptions.

regarding: 'trading time and money'. My simple rule has always been, if I can hire someone to do something by the hour less than what I get paid by the hour then I should do that. This is 'trading money for time'. To offset the money spent, I should then reverse and 'trade time for money' either by increased work or training and education for an increased pay rate.

In my own experience, I've found that reasoning that way has some real downsides:

- Just because my hourly rate is $X, it doesn't follow that I can always work an additional hour to make an additional $X.

- After working 40+ hours/week doing paid work, working an additional hour at my day job to avoid doing something else does not make for a happy life. In fact, it makes life quite dull, and made me a very narrow person.

This is clearly directed at people with some amount of disposable income. Also many may value their time and money differently. I used fancyhands for a bit when I was on a grad student salary and I thought it was worth my time even then. Last year I saw a C level exec in a mid size startup spend 20 min on hold with a credit card company to dispute some booking. I was wondering why they would not offload that.

More specifically, I think it's directed at people (like me and apparently the author) who grew up, and maybe even spent a while as an adult, without much or any disposable income, but now are lucky enough to have some. It is taking me years to unlearn habits that no longer make sense for my situation, simply because when you're poor, so much of your life revolves around optimizing for money that it takes many, many reminders that it's ok to place value on time as well.

I have a bunch of friends that grew up working class, and they still, consistently, value their own time at 0. Regardless of their actual adult income. Which means they often spend ridiculous amounts of time and effort to save tiny amounts of money.

I grew up lower middle class instead, so I have other stupid frugal habits. Growing up, my parents never, ever, ever replaced a thing that was working. The only time you were allowed to replace a thing was when it was irredeemably broken.

Took me a while to get rid of that habit.

just curious, but (how) would it be possible to offload this with a financial service like a bank or credit card company? don’t they check your identity? can you really authorize someone else to do it without sharing sensitive details with them??

(I guess the super rich can have very trusted employees with such access, or banks provide white glove service at some point, but that’s clearly different)

If you have a net worth of a few hundred thousand dollars you can engage in "private banking" services with many major banks. You will be paired with a banker who can work as your advocate, bend internal rules, and cut down the amount of time required to deal with disputes. If your card happens to be issued by that bank, I would imagine they could assist with aspects of that.

If you have substantially more money than that then you can enlist financial professionals to legally act on your behalf and settle disputes for you.

In theory the owner should have a better relationship with their bank so they don't deal with that sort of thing.

You can add a signatory to a bank account (and I'm guessing to a credit card as well). I don't know of any services that specialize in nit-picking through the use of an authorized signer however part of said hypothetical service could be to bond / insure that the secondary signer doesn't take some sort of negative action that leaves the account/owner in bad standing.

But again you're running into the ultimate question of why isn't your bank / credit card taking care of you...maybe it's because the bank / CC just make money off of the fiduciary mishaps of the owner when they don't have 20 minutes to wait on hold.

You can authorize other people to use your credit cards. Totally legit. Merchants can accept it or request verification.

Most of the virtual assistant services have you store your spending details for this exact scenario.

Yep. Rich people can hire experts to validate and spot check their ideas, even write articles and what not about it. I wonder how much money do I need to be able to do that. A few things in the list that cost money are worth it if done at the right time. Tutoring with the the right resource can be the best investment sometimes and of course rich people will afford more of that.

Na, rich people use other peoples money to buy shit.

Cool! I'm rich and I've never heard of that trick. Tell me how we do it, please.

I grew up not poor by world standards, but somewhat poor by Western standards. What really resonated with me was the point about buying a comfortable mattress. It wasn't the mattress in my case, but the bed I slept on. I bought it used 8 years ago. I fixed it twice. It was creaking again. It's not that I couldn't buy a new one, it's just that I was used to not buying furniture. After all it's only comfort.

Last year I bought a new bed and it improved a lot of things for me. It's simple, but if you grow up thinking about every penny you spend you get weird habits.

Too many people downplay or underestimate the quality of life that a good nights sleep brings.

The average human spends (or should spend) 8h in bed every single day of their life. The next 8h is the place you work, the ergonomics should fit you.

Spend money to have quality sleep. Spend money to work comfortably.

I relate to 100% of this. I guess I should clarify that I’m not saying it’s bad advice to people with means to say “you’re allowed to spend money to [achieve some life comfort or progress]”. And owning a nice bed is definitely one I can relate to (and when I have the disposable income again I intend to get a better mattress than the one I currently have).

I guess my objection to the article, as presented, is it’s kind of tone deaf particularly at a time when many people are financially struggling to just assert that you’re “allowed” to hire people for a long list of tasks, at a cost that many people wouldn’t even dream of being able to afford or justify.

Yes, there are certainly a few core areas where spending money can greatly improve quality of life. A solid bed and chair (if you work a desk job) are two of them.

There is an absolutely massive marketing industry out there contending for discretionary income. It is worth pointing out options which may have high utility for the buyer, but where the sell side doesn't spend billions on pumping awareness into the culture.

Okay? Still worth pointing out that most people don’t have anything resembling that kind of discretionary income.

Most people don't speak English. 89.5% of Americans live above the poverty line.

But encouraging rich people to hire grad students will probably help spread the money around more!

I don't think it's worth pointing that out. It's pretty obvious just like it's pretty obvious who the target audience is.

You're allowed to save money for a future goal.

I have. I’m also allowed to recognize that most people don’t have that luxury.

Median household income in US is $68K (2019)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-census-idUSKB...

Median mortgage payment is $1550/mo. 40% of US homes are free of mortgage.

https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-mor...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nea...

There are a lot of folks in the US that are just scraping by.

There are a lot more folks with enough disposable income to pursue one of these strategies. Not everybody.

[And this doesn’t include wealth and savings.]

TFA says up front:

> I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).

It's true money can buy a lot of them, but you can barter too. E.g. make a deal with your housemate to clean the house if they'll do a few hours research for you.

So you have to spend/trade something, but (for me) it's harder to think of what's worth spending/trading for. Hence the post.

I saw this list as one that lists many examples where I can trade money for time that I don't have to spend doing something worthwhile.

This is specially important to me now that I have children and very little time for stuff that I care about besides my family.

Psst - you are also allowed to make more money.

So they can just ignore the advice in the article if it doesn't apply to them. What's your point? People should only write articles from the perspective of extreme poverty?

A large majority? Of what population?

This list links to another one in the same spirit: "How to Trade Money and Time."[1]

To be totally honest, all lists like these make me think of young male friends who went through a distinctive weird phase in their early 20s. For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable."

Of course, it is naive to think that just because many things can be bought, all things can be bought, at least reasonably. And as my friends got older and acquired adult responsibilities, families, roles in the local community, they dropped their philosophical regimen and just tuned into typical affluent suburbanites.

But it's that glimmering realization that still strikes me as kind of fascinating to watch: "I can buy... things!... with money! That means I can buy... anything!"

In particular, I'd love to know what exactly the person in the post I linked to was thinking when writing this sentence:

  > Spend more to go to events where you will meet exactly the people you want.

Everything that comes to my mind feels either niche or unreliable. An expensive professional conference? You're either already part of that professional community, or going to an event like that is kind of a mixed bag. Paid dating services? Maybe I don't understand that world. A fancy party where you get to mingle with VCs? That's very specific. Are there meetups where the cost of attendance is a significant filter?

My experience in this arena has been that you need serendipity, and it's hard to buy serendipity.

[1] https://meteuphoric.com/2014/03/25/how-to-trade-money-and-ti...

>For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable."

I went through this too. It,s a result of pressure to Do More, Faster, which comes with that engineer salary and long work weeks.

You have 1-2 hours free per day, max, and feel an enormous pressure to do something worthwhile with that time. It,s chasing meaning while already having given away most of your time to build someone else,s meaning.

I think this is true. I'm not an engineer anymore, and I more or less have the whole day free. Time became much cheaper, and that changed my habits.

I love your European apostrophes!

Thanks! They,re commas, which are easier to type on this keyboard.

I interpreted that "Spend more to go to events" quote as being with regards to travel, rather than exorbitantly expensive meet-and-greets. If I have some kind of hobbyist interest and there's a convention for it in another country, I'd probably enjoy travelling for that and meeting people I'd never meet otherwise.

Of course that might not be the greatest advice right this moment... But generally speaking I think it's fairly sound.

> I interpreted that "Spend more to go to events" quote as being with regards to travel, rather than exorbitantly expensive meet-and-greets

On that note:

- While on vacation, buying event tickets short-notice on auction sites (if you care more about going to the event than the inflated price)

- After attending a theater performance, realizing that you can still almost make it in time to $other_event if you grab a taxi right now, grabbing the taxi, then calling the venue ahead to ask if its okay that you'll be late by 5 minutes (it was no issue, they didn't exactly start on the minute anyway).

What kinds of activities have international events, though?

- academic conferences, but these are generally not relevant to the public, and if they are relevant to you, you're already attending them because you're an academic for the sake of your career

- premier fan events like San Diego Comic Con, but most people don't go there to make friends

- trade events like the Milan Fashion Week, but, again, you already know if you belong there

- international sports competitions, if you're a world-class athlete

- technical conferences for programmers, but in my experience these have been an extraordinarily poor value for the money as a normal attendee

The ones that sort of make some sense to me are:

- if you're a bird-watcher, you could pay to go on an international bird-watching trip to the Galapagos or something

- if you're a young and rowdy party-goer, you could travel to one of those mega beach parties in the tropics

Doesn't have to be international. It's enough if it's in the language you know. Can even be in the same country.

My little moment of enlightenment here came when I realized that I really can attend that event I was really interested in that's happening on the other side of the country. All I need is to travel. Oh, other side of the country is far and travel time will take as much as the two-day event itself? I can always fly there. Domestic air travel is a thing, and isn't that expensive (which may be obvious for people in the US; it's less obvious in Europe).

I ultimately ended up not going to that event for personal reasons, but planning it made me re-evaluate the possibilities I have, and how many of them appear once I reframe the question as "how much money am I willing to spend to get there?".

> Treat fines like payments > e.g. park illegally and let yourself think of the (expected value of the) fine as a parking fee

This doesn't seem like something you're "allowed" to do. Maybe more like "able" to do, in the sense that you can violate other laws, and maybe the payoff or the risk/reward ratio makes it worthwhile. My understanding of "allow" is that it means people will accept you doing something. The existence and enforcement (like fines) of rules that prohibit doing things seems exclusive to something being "allowed".

In this context "you're allowed to" means "this didn't necessarily occur to you as part of the solution space, but it is."

For example many programmers have it in their heads that their only two activities are writing production code and staring at/thinking about log output. Sometimes it's helpful to be reminded that you are "allowed" to write scripts to analyze log output. No one is worried that they will be punished for this. But a surprising number of programmers will stare down a programming-shaped problem and fail to put two and two together.

I did something like that in college a couple times. $10 fine for parking in the wrong spot on campus, only risk was being unable to register for a parking permit the next term if you didn't pay it off. It (on the few occasions I did it) beat the alternative of a 20- to 30-minute walk due to conflicting schedules (like having a medical appointment that got me to campus after most others had arrived). They'd only ticket once as long as the car was only there for 2-3 hours. Perfect for a class, drive to lunch, park properly after. Certainly not something to do frequently, and it wasn't illegal parking, it was just not permitted parking.

It's insane that any college would be set up in such a fashion that you'd have to drive to class. (Unless I'm misunderstanding this, and you're talking about driving to school?)

I lived at home because it was cheaper (free other than yard work, housework, and doing my own laundry), campus was 3 or 4 miles away depending on which end I needed (and roads were just dangerous enough I wasn't going to cycle, tried it, didn't like the assholes throwing shit at me). Most students lived on campus, but many (including locals like me) lived off campus.

But even those who lived on campus, the furthest dorms were where I'd have had to park on those mentioned days. I did that sometimes, but it really was a 20- to 30-minute walk depending on where I was going on campus because they decided a mile long parking lot made more sense than a parking deck (later built, after I graduated).

Also it had a bus service, but it really only covered connecting the business school, psychology school, and main campus. The massive parking lot was not covered by the bus service, which didn't make sense.

I would assume they lived off campus...

> only risk was being unable to register for a parking permit the next term if you didn't pay it off

That surprises me. I would have thought that most colleges had a rule saying that they wouldn't give you a diploma until you had settled all arrears.

Well, that may also have been a penalty but it wasn't one I faced. The only one I knew was the risk of being unable to register your vehicle in the next term.

But some people just never registered their vehicles, which was also an option. There was no electronic tool for the ticket givers (fellow students working for the school) to look up a vehicle. So instead of towing every violation, they just gave up. I knew a guy who had accrued a couple hundred tickets by the time he graduated, car wasn't under his name (his parents) so no penalties for him (from the school) if they'd tried to find the owner, and the school never pursued his parents for it.

It was not an effective system. The only people who actually had to pay for a parking permit were those who lived on campus because their cars would be there overnight, that's when cars would be towed if they lacked a current parking sticker. (I worked or studied on campus until 10 or 11pm most nights so I was paying for a permit.)

This is actually a well known thing in psychology.

Instituting a fine can actually cause the undesired behavior to increase.

E.g. daycare adds a late pickup fee, then it becomes, "Oh well, I can <get thing done> for $20" instead of something the parent feels really guilty about, thus actually INCREASING late pickups.

I worked at the college radio station located in the on campus student center, which also had a hotel attached. It was, like all campuses, annoying to find parking / work out transportation.

Then one day I just needed to run get something, so I parked in the hotel loading zone. I ran into someone and chatted for about close to an hour and then, remembering where I parked, freaked out and ran outside.

Car was still there, no problems.

In true hacker fashion, I went and sat in the car and waited to see when someone would a campus metermaid would come along.

They never did!

And so for the next 2 years I parked there every day.

In the end I did receive 6 $25 tickets and, ingloriously, I was towed once which cost me $250.

Compared to a parking pass it was an absolute steal, and in true "things you're allowed to do" form, it helped me realize the risks of transgression are lower than you think.

Some more that are free(ish):

Pick from your spices at random when cooking and resolve to use whatever you get

Schedule working sessions with remote coworkers where you share a zoom room but just work

Shave your head and donate your hair

Volunteer to speak with elderly (maybe by phone for now) and collect their life stories

Learn who is building what in your neighbor hood (e.g. https://dbiweb02.sfgov.org/dbipts/)

Picket things by yourself

Find a big mud puddle and jump in it until you look like a monster

Climb trees as an adult

Play music on street corners

Go to church and ask questions until you're asked to leave

Knock on people's doors and introduce yourself

Troll craigslist for free ceramics (plates dishes etc) and smash the heck out of them

Take apart your toaster and put it back together again, don't stop until it works again

Or watch videos on how awesome the toasters of yesteryear were!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y

He's entertaining,but a little more research would have shown that radiant toasters are still common in catering. Those conveyor-toasters in hotel restaurants are an example.

Get Schwifty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ctK1aoWuqY

> Take apart your toaster and put it back together again, don't stop until it works again

I find entry interesting. But what happens if it short circuits.

Are there any tests which we can do on things to know that before turning them on?

If it short circuits, the circuit breaker on that circuit will open up and cut power within a couple of milliseconds, before anything has had a chance to catch fire. Though I definitely second the sibling comment about the multimeter.

I’m not so worried about a short circuit as much as putting a voltage on the case.

> Are there any tests which we can do on things to know that before turning them on?

Yes. Buy a cheap multimeter and test current flow on cables.

There's also nothing stopping you from buying a circuit breaker, fuse-holders and fuses if you want a little extra safety.

(When you google for those, combine with the term "DIN" or "Rail Mount")

  > don't stop until it works again

> Picket things by yourself

Sounds too risky to do on your own, without any activist structure behind you that can come to your help if things go south. At least prepare a lawyer contact.

> Knock on people's doors and introduce yourself

Haha, maybe in about 6 months from now...

These might make more sense with a justification

> Buy goods/services from your friends

Certainly you are _allowed_ -- but if it's for an economically meaningful service, like renting an apartment, the follow-on suggestion that it's "only weird if you make it weird" really fails to capture how likely it is that it _will_ change the nature of your relationship as soon as someone decides not to pay, or whatever other irreconcilable issue comes up. Just be careful when going into business in any way with people you otherwise like.

someone once summed his experiece that he should have followed the advice to make friends through business but don't make business with friends.

given All This Shit (2020), I've been going out of my way to buy goods and services from friends who are feeling the economic impact

Author here: great point, I updated the post

If you're procrastinating a lot I can highly recommend hiring someone to sit beside you and watch you. For me ROI was insane. 33%-50% more billable hours (currently at 5h/day), income after expenses rose by 50-66%. Nothing worked for me, to do lists, apps, pomodoro, organizers, calendars. But when someone watches me I just work. Every day I connect with that person at 9:00 AM sharp through Hangouts, share my screen and his webcam (I need to see the other person, I don't need to share mine for it to work on me) and we spend like this 8 hours a day. Unfortunately, focusmate didn't worked for me either, I'm such a good procrastinator that I was putting off making appointments ;).

How do you find someone like this? It’a exactly what I’m looking for.

It's a family member, stay at home dad with kids still young enough that need to be watched over, but old enough that you just need to be there most of the time.

I wanted to do this for a long time, but always thought that it might be expensive. Until one time my brother in law was on non-paid leave for two weeks and he was looking for anything to do. We decided to give it a go. Everyday he would sit beside me, watch Netflix for all day and just look at my screen from time to time. Productivity rose _instantly_. After a single day I was thrilled, after a week I was absolutely sure that I need to hire someone after he gets back to his old job.

Some tips: the person you're going to hire must be somewhat cheeky. They must cut through your bs, force you to explain why you're on youtube, ask you if you really need that for your work etc. Furthermore, working side by side works better than through Hangouts, Skype and others. I have multiple displays and I've started to cheat the system as vast majority of screen share apps allow you to share single screen only. We're in process on finding an app that allows one to share all displays (you might need couple extra CPU cores if you have 4-5 displays).

Maybe consider streaming your work online? Of course it depends on what you do, your clients could not like that xD

Did this person agree to do this for free or are you paying to have an accountability partner?

I'm paying close to national minimum wage for it. I'm willing to pay more if that person becomes my personal assistant. I think you can find someone just like me (and possibly you) and have an agreement to connect every day for a whole work day and do it for free. But then there're two procrastinators quite happy to not connect for whatever silly reason, so watch out ;-)

Thumbs up for personal trainer.

For this community especially, there will come a time when sedentary starts to take its toll. For me, 35+. It is a royal pain in the rear to try to start a fitness program on your own and stick to it. Too many excuses and too likely to overdo it and either injure yourself or lose motivation.

Enter the personal trainer. It took me 6 months of training to get over the hump and into a self-sustaining mode. 3 days/week for 26 weeks. You don’t need elite training. If you skip on a day, you are skipping on a person. They will ensure you stay safe and motivated. Worth every penny and pays dividends for decades. Split it with a friend and get the semiprivate rate.

"Engage a human productivity monitor - I know two people who have hired people to sit next to them or frequently contact them to keep them on-task"

Shameless plug: if you're looking for a productivity monitor I can (personally) help: https://coding-pal.com/

Or for simple human presence as forcing function https://focusmate.com

Author here: thanks! Added these.

> Follow up many times | You won’t make people mad if you’re polite.

I am getting lots of emails from outsourcing companies. I ignore them. I find their follow up emails extremely frustrating.

"Thanks for taking the time to read this email. After I sent my previous email (See below) I had put a reminder in to check-in with you to see how things were going with the need of a Data Engineering."

Why should I care about your reminder?

Presumably it would be less annoying if it was a highly specific request for something you are uniquely able to provide.

The first one is less annoying, but the follow-up nagging is infuriating.

Same thing with automated SEO outreach. It's getting really annoying.

"Say “I don’t know” or “I don’t have an opinion” when you don’t"

My father drove this into us as kids. It always made sense to be, and then I grew up, and realized how many times adults just make shit up to avoid looking like they don't have the answer. My in-laws are pros at this, and playing Balderdash against them is impossible as a result.

To this day, as some one that has been an engineer for 36 years, if someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer, I say "I don't know", generally followed by, "let's see where we would find that answer".

And I am raising my kids with the same advice.

From my observations, people that don't act certain are not necessarily respectable among other people. I mean, I agree that saying "I don't know" is morally correct, but in practice, in real life, it's not the best strategy.

It’s a low key signal I look for when interviewing candidates: when it’s clear they don’t know something do they say so? Or pretend they do

This looks like an almost exact rehash of most of the advice from Tim Ferris' four hour work week.

Basically: Outsource your personal life to accomplish things that you want to do. Ferris was using Brickwork India at the time if I recall.

[1] https://www.brickworkindia.com/

I think it's in that genre, but also has some fresh ideas. I actually really like this line of thinking. It seems "wrong" on the surface but really is just non-normative. If you can buy dinner for 2, you can also hire somone for a small job off fiver. One is seen as normal and the other as elitist and out of reach. I hired a genealogist once and absolutely got my money's worth and they were a world expert on records in that particular geography.

> Treat fines like payments. e.g. park illegally and let yourself think of the (expected value of the) fine as a parking fee

This is why all fine-based penalties should scale progressively with income.

I remember I got a new job just outside of the city, my first day I got 3 fines for parking within 3 meters of a postbox, There was no yellow lines to say you could not nor was it signed. they fined me every 2 hours. cost me $1400 AUD. I never even knew this was a thing. I lived the next 3 weeks on soup. welcome to the city.

This is another entry for the “things you can do” list...

Contest unjust fines.

I’ve received 4 parking fines in my life, all were for parking somewhere that had no signage or had signage that permitted my behaviour.

All 4 were successfully contested with photo evidence and a minimum of fuss.

You can also contest just fines. In the US fines are used as an undemocratic, regressive tax to raise extra revenue for the government. Everyone should contest every fine so they are unprofitable.

It definitely never hurts to ask. I recently, very absent mindedly, parked in a disabled parking spot and got a $250 fine. Wrote in with my sob story and that I truly do care about this kind of thing, was only there for ten minutes during which time several of the adjacent spots were open, and of course I’m willing to pay the fine as those are the rules... they forgive the whole amount.

Not something I’d abuse, but second chances can be had.

More importantly: parking illegally often endangers or harms other people (e.g. by blocking fire hydrants that might be needed in an emergency, or by impeding the flow of traffic).

Considering that, then the fine should be the monetary equivalent to the worst thing that happened or could happen because of the infraction.

Parking illegally in a specific spot could result in the death of 8 people? then the fine should be 8 * value of life. the value of life is ~ $9M in the US, so the fine should be 72 million dollars.

Haha, the obviously absurd conclusion should tell you that something is wrong with at least one premise.

How much compensation would you says is fair for being killed? It'd say there's no such number, given that the dead can't spend.

If the firefighters need to get to a hydrant, they will get to it, car or no car. I think we should do away with fines and just let people assume the risk that if there's a fire, your car windows might be smashed to run a hose through it.

Likewise, if the car is impeding traffic, tow it out of there. The fine does nothing to fix the problem.

I’ve never understood this. The number of parking spaces that can’t be used because of fire hydrants is enormous, most of those hydrants will never be used, and it seems like a car in front of a hydrant would only be a very small delay for firefighters.

Depends on if the fine is punitive vs compensatory. If the fine is just to offset an inconvenience you’ve caused, there is no reason for it to go up with income.

This is one I struggle with.

Specifically, parking. If I park in an illegal place, get a fine, and mentally consider it a fee, that feels alright by me. But if I park in an illegal place with the same intention as above, and don't get a fine, I'm a jerk. It's tough to decouple those two.

With income and the size of your bank account and your assets.

Well things are way worse about this in europe than in the US. US justice system is selectively varied compared to others. Europe you just pay the flat fee. In the US you can get a little popular/street justice into it.

Finland, Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

I appreciate how nordic countries have a somewhat income balanced fines and practices and they still have decent amount of wealth inequality (much less than US however)

In the Czech Republic, most fines (for traffic offenses but also pretty much anything else) are defined by range, with the span 2x to 10x.

No it shouldn’t. It’s just two different prices for variations of the same commodity.

The real alternative is jacking up the cost of parking to the point where there’s always an empty spot.

Ah yes, we should ensure the poors can’t park!

Abundant free parking as a transportation strategy has not been especially wonderful for low-income people, who among other things:

- Often don't have cars at all, and have to walk that much longer to get across all the parking between places they want to be

- Spend a large portion of their incomes on cars, maintenance, fuel, insurance etc. when they even can

- Are required to live further away from productive places by the high cost of e.g. minimum parking requirements and low density ceilings "because traffic"

- Suffer the brunt of air pollution

Parking in a central business district should probably be as much of a luxury as living in one is today, and vice versa.

As opposed to making the poor who do drive play a reverse lottery with stupid fines?

And somehow making that number scale with income makes that better?

Ah no, we should ensure no one is poor!

It’s not a market. It’s incentives.

But why? The true cost of an action is usually independent of personal wealth.

If I keep my car parked in a space and the street sweep needs to miss that spot, the trash that remains has the same negative societal impact whether I'm rich or poor.

If that trash "cost" society $100, why would society subsidize a poor person to park illegally who could only afford to pay $20?

Maybe the average amount of the fine needs to be more than the value of the societal impact.

The purpose of a fine can be seen in at least two ways:

1. Provide recompense to society for the production of a negative externality.

2. Create a disincentive against the production of a negative externality.

If fines could be levied perfectly, automatically and without administration cost, then perhaps you can see the fine as #1, and set the fine at the societal cost.

But, because it costs money to enforce regulations, there's usually some sampling done: if you park illegally, you might not be caught. Because the chance of getting caught is not 100%, and because those who are not caught do not contribute their share of enforcement costs, the fines for a single infraction must be a multiple of the actual harm caused. (Assuming that can even be measured.)

Let's say the harm caused is $20 per infraction, and this is normally enough to disincentive a poor person from parking illegally. If they make a mistake and are subsequently caught, is it better for them to pay $100 (for the harm caused, plus paying for those who weren't caught), even though this may be equivalent to their family's monthly food budget?

As long as $20 fine is enough to:

- provide a strong disincentive, and

- provide recompense

... then that should be enough, no?

The rich person, for whom a $20 fine is not enough of a disincentive, should pay more ($200?). And the money raised can be used to cover negative externalities for those who weren't caught, and overall enforcement costs.

Because the fine is punitive, not cost-based.

Because it’s a behavior modification tool and not a compensation.

This is little more than a proposal to indirectly subsidize rideshare services and traffic lawyers, and perhaps the weird news beat reporters.

If interested in actually keeping access open, parking kiosks and aggressive towing make up the effective solution.

depends on what the fine is for. I'd guess most parking fines are simply for parking in legal paid parking without actually paying. in this case the purpose of the fine is the same as the fee itself: to increase the availability of parking. I don't see any reason to scale the fine here unless you just hate rich people.

in more serious cases (eg, blocking a fire hydrant or alley) simply towing the vehicle seems like penalty enough.

It's challenging to prove who is driving the car at the time of the fine (i.e., parking fine). Therefore, it would be difficult to tie fines to income.

Except the fine is for the car (and hence the owner), so it still works out.

An acceptable middle ground is for fines to scale with the value of a car at registration. And if you can't afford the fines, then don't lend your expensive car to people who don't know how to park.

They need to pay it right? Just require everyone to either show their income or look up their tax info while processing the ticket. They could also off set the cost of processing the info onto the ticket it's self.

Charge it to the owner just like a regular parking fine.

Still seems like a good idea, even so.

Interesting opinion: Fixed fines are inherently unfair to the poor. But prison sentences are inherently unfair to the rich. After all, if you already live in a crowded slum much like a prison cell, and your life is prison-level boring and oppressive already, then going to prison barely costs you anything. But if you live in a mansion and spend all day indulging in the finest luxuries on offer, going to prison is a massive decrease in your quality of life. (source: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/30/legal-systems-very-dif...)

So that college students can freely break the rules? I like that idea.

Live largely without using money.

Minimalism, abstention, freganism, hand me downs, barter, begging, and luck.

Make websites which work in any browser, including 25yo classics, in the spirit of the open web.

Sleep without a schedule.

Ditto kay on multiple parallel romantic partners, with a whole larger than the sum of the pieces.

Travel somewhere without any lodging plans, only a sleeping bag.

Think for yourself and don,t do unhealthy things even if they are normalized. This is a whole other list.

Maintain your health and sanity as top priority over anything else.

Abandon materialism and attachment.

Harm no living being on purpose.

Make friends with mammals, plants, insects.

Meditate any time of day for any length of time as many times as see fit.

Be effective and happy while doing all this.

Tailor your own reality based on your intent.

Not eat for 72 hours comfortably and be better off for it.

Sadly, I am seemingly not allowed to have a reasonable Web browser with a view source button and unstupid address bar on a small form factor device. I,m looking, though...

Not sure if you're joking, but this seems a bit idealistic and somewhat bad advice.

Especially the "not eating" part.

Fasting is a well established practice with ample backing, both traditional and scientific.

Have you looked into it at all before commenting?

Fasting actually has health benefits in general, but may not be advisable under some circumstances (specially fasting for as long as 72h)

no, fasting is great, i really recommend it. it boost your energy, but it won't make you thinner :)

OP you could have just said

" Imagine there's no countries , It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too,

Imagine all the people living life in peace, you"

A lot of these sound a bit naive and even harmful.

I,m not talking about the world, just my world. Which bits sound harmful, I,m curious?

>Ditto kay on multiple parallel romantic partners

What does ditto kay mean?

"I agree with this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25514331 "

> Ditto kay on multiple parallel romantic partners, with a whole larger than the sum of the pieces.

That's pretty much in the same category as "win the lottery and live off the interest"

Many people struggle and fail to achieve one romantic relationship, let alone several simultaneously.

It,s kind of like launching a successful startup. It used to be a struggle for me as well, but having more open time has given me more opportunities to work on it.

It,s still a shitton of effort, not a walk in the park, but it,s also fun and rewarding.

I know it's supposed to sound whimsical and bohemian, but this advice sounds like the worst kind of hobo-Karen.

Actually I started living pretty much like this after my startup sold four years ago. I saw a dramatic increase in my happiness and life satisfaction. All my friends back home complain about how everyone seems so increasingly unhappy. Karen as I understand her is a prototypical suburban soccer mom. By definition she couldn't be bohemian. I'm not sure quite what is being said here.

Thanks for your feedback. Do you spend much time on ruddit?

A few of these things tend to empower. Most of them don't.

What reliably empowers is: choose a skill and practice it constantly. So few people do this, it's a practically guaranteed route to financial, social, and intellectual security. Taking the time to do your own grocery shopping, or not, is a gating factor exactly never.

Almost all other types of human activity are weak compared to the compounding action of just doing something all the time. In the short term, activities like complaining or optimizing random chores may seem stronger. But on timescales of years they're just noise.

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1331256688998051844

" A few of these things tend to empower. Most of them don't."

I agree, but empowerment is for poor people. Just poor people have to learn a trade and have the skill in order to sell their workforce on the labor market.

I have seen many rich entrepreneurs, that just buy those skills and set up successful business. Of course, they have some skill too: being able to buy they right resources is a skill, sort off.

I once missed an overnight bus in a developing country, which was going to result in the loss of a day at my destination. After sulking for a few minutes, I posed the idea that we offer to pay someone to drive us overnight, under the suspicion that this would be surprisingly affordable.

Turns out, it was affordable, and we did it. It was, however, the scariest night of my life. I don't recommend doing this, but it was a lesson in what is possible, if I think outside the box.

Did you pay a weird person or an exceptionally bad driver? I'm curious.

Normal guy, but he didn't have the papers to drive out of his district, and so he was flooring it down the highway with lights off. We had to bribe several guards at checkpoints, and at one point, we were commandeered by paramilitary who wanted to hitch a ride to a different destination. The driver eventually managed to give them the boot, after much heated argument. We also had no common language with the driver, which added another layer to everything.

It was an adventure!

> park illegally and let yourself think of the (expected value of the) fine as a parking fee

It seems that (in San Francisco) it can be cheaper to pay the ticket fines than pay for the parking upfront like one is supposed to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24796412

Genius. :D

Details aside, I think it’s good the point that you can (if you’re lucky) proactively engage with the world on your own terms. Anecdotally, as a new first time home owner I’ve been recently rediscovering this fact and it has been so immensely positive for my psyche. It’s like I was playing a game where the world was 99.9% closed off and now I’m part of reality again.

Side note: this experience has also really opened my eyes to the importance and power of affordable home ownership.

When a checkout clerk asks if you have a coupon, you can reply "No, but you can give me a discount if you want". That works maybe 5 or 10% of the time. To me, that's worth the 10 seconds to say it.

Research says you might have more success with a "because" in there like "No, but you can give me a discount if you want because would appreciate to pay less."

I doubt the marginal gains from sending followups on cold emails can make or break any business, it's rude, and it's mildly illegal.

Maybe I'm just grumpy, but... if you send me a cold email, I'll either respond or delete it. Then, if the original didn't have an "unsubscribe" link, plus you follow up on it, I'll tell gmail to block you.

I did think cold email wasn’t the best example, as that tactic is overused. Though if it is extremely well targeted and personal it could make sense.

However, one thing people don’t do often enough is follow up when the other person has expressed interest. This kind of followup is usually welcome, as inertia and distraction lead to things not happening. This is especially true in commercial context. Eg someone may express strong interest in buying, get busy, drift off, then enthusiastically buy when you ping them a bit later.

Agreed, I'll treat any followup where I've actually responded in any way like the person sending it is a real human with feelings.

I think it depends on the content.

I gave advice to many people who cold emailed me.

But in my personal experience, most cold emails I wrote wouldn't lead to much, because my inquiries were too specific.

> Surgery for appearance or comfort

Be very careful about this. Surgery in the modern age is safe, but there is always a risk, whether from the surgery itself, the anesthesia, or from infection.

Be sure that you are really sure that the benefits outweigh the risks.

Is there any service which allows you to share a personal assistant among many people? I would love to offload many of my menial tasks but I don't have enough to cover the time of a decent assistant. And anyone who is okay with sitting with their twiddling thumbs turns out to be not that good!

While I agree with the sentiment, most of the tasks I want to offload involve PII that I would not want to give to some random person. I would love a personal assistant who is able to do things like that, but I haven't seen a good model for a trustworthy one that would be cheap enough that it would still be worth hiring out for.

Definitely not gonna hand over my tax returns but other than that, I'm not generally worried about it - granted they will still know reasonable amount of detail about me, that's the price you pay I suppose. Which is why I wasn't comfortable with fancyhands and other such services- I still want ONE person to handle my stuff, and have some ability to screen them for trustworthiness.

Yeah I've tried to work on this before and it falls apart on the PII part and also the need to explain the context of everything.

Upwork lets you hire people for stuff like this. Some people may have 2-5 clients.

Something missing on the list that I found out a few years ago: Hire a personal stylist to help you find what kind of clothing works for you. This is especially helpful to the stereotypical geeky male nerd like me. It helped me a lot to go to a clothing store with this person and learn what works. Friends work too but it was an epiphany for me to hire a pro for this. Money well spent that is still paying off in my ability to dress nicely.

It is still substantially true that the Internet is an autodidact's delight.

There is so much excellent online content that, given a public library (beside the library itself) one can gather as much knowledge as one wants.

Three other recommendations I give all youngsters:

- stay sober

- minimize debt

- remain married

> remain married

Is this such good advice? Relationships are hard work, and can be made (or mended) given sufficient effort. But sometimes, it just doesn't work and can't be made to.

Yeah I think a better bullet would be “choose your SO carefully”.

Most people seem to choose their SO for bad reasons and then stay in it due to sunk costs.

Can you explain a bit why you view marriage as so important?

The universality of marriage across time and cultures seems an empirical affirmation of the institution.

It supports propagation of the species, sure.

In the individual context of this thread, anecdotally, marriage is a forcing function that drives maturation.

Or not. Punt on the SO, and let one's humanity stay stunted.

Note that I am stipulating a non-abusive relationship here. Merely kids gaffing adulthood off.

> Tape over annoying LED lights

Also yet another use for BluTac

I have specifically taken devices apart to disable the LED inside. I also either put gaffer tape or black tape over the logos or use an angle grinder to clean them off.

I also remove logos and go out of my way to avoid buying things that have obnoxious not-obviously removable logos. My home is not a billboard for your products, thank you very much.

“Things you’re allowed to do if you’re rich.”

This point is explicitly addressed in the post:

I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).

There certainly is something weird about the relation of the title of the blog post to its content: the content is mostly about services, a lot of which seem quite costly. I'm not saying the post doesn't make sense, but it would be good if the author added a background/motivation to it. Or maybe just if they didn't use the word "allowed".

Maybe if you try to do all those things, but a lot of these are options for the upper middle class. It'd be rich people if it said "fly in a private jet."

Private jets can be surprisingly cheap if you are sharing it with 200 other people and fly to the same destination.

I did a lot of those in my first couple years of business when I had almost no money. Most of them aren’t especially expensive.

> Actually turn the heat/AC on

I live in Texas, a good chunk of the year, it would be nuts to try to live without A/C (We're not quite Death Valley, but it can get pretty hot here ...). So, I'd amend that one to:

"Open the windows and turn off the A/C"

I really like the few months a year where I can do this and not get cooked!

Only in the last couple years did I realize you could buy t shirts you like instead of just wearing giveaways you have accumulated.

In aggregate, paying for all those things might chip at your disposable income and tie you to a certain lifestyle. You are only good at two things: earning money at your job, and spending it. The whole system is based on how much money you make, and that variable can change unexpectedly.

There is also a time cost to orchestrating all those services. Aligning schedules is not nearly as efficient as doing thr work yourself.

I prefer the idea of working less, spending less, and learning to do things yourself. Getting your hands dirty gives you a better appreciation for the result. It makes life more interesting and leaves you with a more diversified skillset.

Is HVAC duct cleaning necessary? The intake air ducts pre-filter can accumulate dust but that is what the filter is for. Post-filter ducts are filled with cleaned air flowing through them. What am I missing?

My neighbor owns his own HVAC company, and has told me straight out that it's a waste of money. FWIW.

Floor mounted egress ducts are often covered with vents that have quarter inch gaps between each vent slot. All sorts of crap can fall in there, especially if you have children and pets.

Something that happened recently! (I am 35 :-o) : I was a frequent (~3-4 times a day , 5 mins each time) visitor to coupon sites [0] hoping to snag that elusive discount. It hit me that over the course of 1 year I might save ~$500 but I'd have to spend 30mins each day (so potentially 200 hours a year in time alone not to mention the context switching) to save ~$500. My time is worth >$2.5/hour isn't it? So, I now have consciously decided to save up the extra $500 for these sort of purchases. Totally worth it!

[0] www.ozbargain.com.au

Oh, this speaks to me as well!

Just like Mr. Cvitkovic, I grew up in a very frugal environment - out of necessity. But it took me a lot of time to realize, in my adulthood, that I can now afford some tradeoffs.

Grocery delivery is big on my list. I hated, hated, hated going into malls to shop. So did my wife. So we switched to grocery delivery five or six years ago, and never looked back. And in Covid times, it is a double blessing.

Of course, it is easy to "overcorrect" and start spending too much. That is part of the process of learning, after all.

I would also add:

- You are allowed to buy lunch/dinner as much as you want and not feel bad for not wanting to cook.

I mean, fair if you are already a millionaire, but otherwise it seems good to at least be aware of how powerful saving $20 a day in the long run can be before making this choice

As with everything, do it within reason. If you can't afford to buy lunch/dinner daily, obviously don't do it. But I think the point that the parent was trying to make was that if you don't feel like cooking one day, it's totally OK to go out for food.

During my holiday this month, I've made it a point to go for a nice lunch every few days. Yes, it costs me money, money that I could save for my future (although I don't know what I would do with the extra money), but it's enjoyable, relaxing and the food is great.

Just be aware that it's rather expensive in the long run. Getting to the restaurant and ordering also costs time. Cooking is useful, rewarding and attractive. Eating out is better enjoyed occasionally.

>Cooking is useful, rewarding and attractive.

Not so much if you don't enjoy it.

I love cooking occasionally. For example, I will spend a week trying to perfect a dish I just learned. I do it over and over everyday, trying different ways and failing until I make it great.

But for most of the time, I'd rather not have to do it.

>Just be aware that it's rather expensive in the long run.

True. But if your time is valuable, it's much more expensive to have to spend all that time in the kitchen.

Basically a "rich people's guide to life". A bit depressing for those of us that cannot afford most of the things described here. No, I'm not actually allowed to do any of this because I don't have enough money; thanks.

> park illegally and let yourself think of the (expected value of the) fine as a parking fee

That one made me laugh out loud. Is it a serious document or a parody of sorts? Is it mocking a "rich" people's lifestyle?

No wait, I understand the instinct, but I feel this list is less about its specific items. To me it felt helpful as an encouragement to think different or anew about things. The naive "why?" Attitude is all over it. Let your mind wander. Try to look past the authors personal perspective and you might find something for yourself. I did.

"Choose your own adventure" :)

> Give to charity

It's really worth properly doing due diligence before you commit to the donation. And if you don't have a good cushion yourself, rationally speaking, chances are you should save it. Just earmark that amount to be willed to charity upon death or extraordinary loss.

I would like to hire a physicist (probably particle physicist) to write a paper about an idea I have for a battery. It would be really great to have a verdict on it with an in depth reason of "why" and "how".

I have considered studying physics myself to answer the question (free education FTW), but won't have the time for another 3-4 years (unless I happen upon a hundred thousand euros or so to pay my living expenses during the 3-5 years of study). Paying an expert to do it seems reasonable.

Do free lance researchers exist?

>Sure you could proofread your own document.

No you can't. You can't tickle yourself and you can't proof read stuff that you wrote. You will just read what you thought you wrote.

You can but you have to use various tricks to make it work:

- Play back what you've written with text-to-speech software. On a Mac, you can do this with the option-escape keyboard shortcut.

- Read it out loud yourself, slowly.

- Leave at least 24 hours between drafting and proofreading, longer if possible.

- Print the text in a different font and proofread on paper, marking errors with a pen.

- Use a "focus mode" that dims everything but the sentence you're proofreading. Read through each sentence slowly and deliberately. iA Writer can do this, as can a few other text editors.

- Use tools like Grammarly, but consider what they say guidance rather than hard-and-fast rules. They are often wrong or have an overly narrow definition of correctness, but they will help you to catch typos and and errors such as repeated words.

However, depending on time and money constraints, it's often more efficient to pay someone to do it for you.

You can, if you wait long enough.

Here's mine: You're allowed to be productive in a sub-optimal programming language or library. Something my perfectionist self needs to hear.

Asking obvious questions is one I’ve thought about. You learn a lot and make progress faster that way.

I agree with most of the stuff in this list - they’re at least things to consider.

https://zalberico.com/essay/2017/02/21/asking-questions.html

* Modify your stuff * * Rotate your monitor to portrait

...and write a script to do this, along with rotating your drawing tablet to match (which may actually involve rotating it the other way depending on where the cable is and what works with your desk. Because poking around in the prefs with just one of monitor/tablet rotated is a major pain in the ass.

I learned to use computers to automate things instead of having to talk to people to get them to do menial tasks for me!

More seriously, some good suggestions there that aren't too obvious, like hiring article authors as consultants instead of googling for professionals.

It's funny. His conclusion with the "life is cheap to save" was that he could save lives. Mine was that I don't care that much about the arbitrary life.

This is basically the book "The four hour workweek" by Thimothy Ferriss in a blog post

Some of these tips may backfire.

Parking illegally may trigger a $25 fine. Or a $1,000 tow.

Lol I shared an office with this guy in grad school. Yo Milan!

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