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Comment by tsotha | Hacker News Reader

>So here’s the big question. What does she, or you, or any of us do with all this time we’re buying? Binge on Netflix shows? Go for a run? Van Ekert’s answer: “It’s more to dedicate more time to working.”

Meh. It's specialization. It's been happening since everyone figured out Og makes better clubs than everyone else and he'll make you one if you give him food. Most of the people reading this site have a skill that brings in $50+ per hour. Why not pay someone to clean your bathroom and use that time for working?

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There is a big fallacy here that the people who are going to be working more hours will actually make more money. These people are salaried, and may get better performance pay, etc. for more hours; but it is not guaranteed. Unless you're paid hourly, then the (admitted strawman) "I make $100K, which is like $50 an hour, so its like making money to pay someone $25 an hour." really doesn't work out.

The example of Mallon making $1,000 for her company an hour, isn't clear to me that she owns that company. Based on her apartment not having sufficient hot water to wash her hair, I tend to think she is not making the $1,000 an hour herself. I'm also a bit dubious that she would be able to bill out at nearly that rate, but could be wrong.

Many people who work long hours find their work enjoyable and would rather work extra 2 hours than do boring household chores that they hate. I am one of them - cleaning up house is like pulling out teeth for me.

I'm not against paying money to avoid doing things you hate or something you enjoy more. I just often hear something to the effect of, "My salary is more money / hour than I'm paying for the service, so it's a good for me financially." If you're not paid hourly, that's probably not true.

I'm paying an accountant to do my taxes, not because I can't do them; but because I don't want to. I mow my own lawn, because I don't mind doing it. I pay someone to clean my house once a week, not because I think it makes me better off financially, but rather because it is no fun; I would rather do something else (e.g., engage in some kind of home improvement).

Yes, but working every waking hour is a good way to burn out. Cleaning your own toilet might be inefficient but it will remind you that you are human.

> Cleaning your own toilet might be inefficient but it will remind you that you are human.

Woah what? I know you're not being literal here, but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that having a high-paying job automatically makes you feel like you're better than everyone else and doing mundane chores reminds you you're all people?[1]

The problem with that is "thinking you're better than everyone else" in the first place, not "missing out on mundane chores".

[1] Apologies if I'm misinterpreting you here: if so, what did you mean instead?

Why are you so certain that I didn't mean what I wrote?

In case you're talking about "I know you're not being literal here":

Because only a lunatic would think that high-status people think they're literally no longer classified as Homo Sapiens?

In case you're talking about "Apologies if I'm misinterpreting you here":

The word "if" is generally used to indicate conditioning on an event: i.e. "considering only the situation in which this is true". Nothing about the word indicates "certainty" about anything.

Lunatic? Well, I avoid making statements about my own sanity. But people sometimes decide that they are superhuman, or that others are subhuman. The ancient Greeks called it hubris. Nowadays we are more likely to say someone is out of touch, or living in a bubble. It shows up in comments like "Only the little people pay taxes".

Making $50/hour while spending $25/hour (figure thrown out in the article) is breaking even because there is a 50% transaction fee on your earnings. Furthermore, the proceeds are used to fund mayhem and misery both domestically and abroad so you're increasing your responsibility for that as well.

Now you make $50/hour, wait till commoditization hit your profession and see your wage dwindle before your own eyes.

Presumably the people delivering groceries or doing someone elses laundry weren't making $50/hour in the same profession at some earlier point in their career.

but at least they had a tad more job security and weren't being misclassified as contractors (so had less tax burden)

But these jobs just didn't exist(unless you count full time maids for example), so it doesn't make sense to talk about job security or whether they were contractors or not.

I'm not sure we have enough data yet to say whether the people doing these jobs previously did or didn't have better paying or more secure jobs. Anecdotally, there are many people whose income and job security have severely declined, and who been relegated to low payed variable-workforce service jobs. I don't know to what extent people like that are represented among the taskrabbit-type service workers.

If that day comes, who will be better prepared, those that cleaned their own toilets, or those that used that time for something more productive?

Bits can move anywhere in the world. Our jobs could be done from anywhere labor is stupid cheap, as long as the workers have the knowledge.

Someone has to come in person to clean your toilet, and can't be outsourced to the cheapest locale.

Don't underestimate the value in a multitude of skills. When Argentina's economy collapsed in 2001, I'd prefer to know how to write code, do laundry, and wash toilets than only knowing how to write code.

>Don't underestimate the value in a multitude of skills.

I'm sure pretty much everybody who hires a cleaning service knows how to clean a toilet.

I'm sure

I'm not.

I went to university with a girl who didn't know how to operate a dishwasher. At first, I assumed it was because her family had not been wealthy enough to own a dishwasher; later, I found out it was because they were so wealthy they had servants who loaded and ran their dishwasher for them.

The problem I have with people who say things like this is that these things are easily Googlable. I didn't "know" how to do laundry until I went to college (my sister and I had specific chores and laundry was one of hers). During a fight with my sister when I was still in high school, I recall her using that as an insult: "You don't even know how to do LAUNDRY".

I needed to do laundry my first week of school: I couldn't (and to this day can't) even fathom what the phrase "know how to do laundry" meant. Separate whites and colors (or don't), put the clothes in the machine, and press the button.......what kind of mental deficiency is required for someone to think there's an actual gap between "knowing how to do laundry" and "not knowing how".

Loading a dishwasher and cleaning a toilet would seem to be similar. The only gap between "knowing" and "not knowing" is perhaps three seconds of Googling (in case there's some pitfall about what you can and can't put in there).

The only gap between "knowing" and "not knowing" is perhaps three seconds of Googling

Have you ever worked tech support and had to help a lawyer or doctor set up their router?

It's not about mental deficiency.

That example is not relevant in the slightest. Setting up a router quite clearly requires prior knowledge, even if that knowledge is something implicit like "familiarity with navigating Web UIs" or "general familiarity with basic networking concepts".

Neither of those are applicable to doing laundry. There's literally no knowledge required other than "clothes and detergent go into machine". Hell, you don't even have to know WHERE to put detergent because machines are variable enough that they usually just tell you where to put detergent.

So nobody has ever shrunk clothes before? Or ruined whites? Or mixed ammonia and bleach to clean a floor?

So you screw up once and you learn. Why do you have to learn now, when your labor is in demand, rather than later (accepting OP premise) when the value of your labor has been arbitraged away?

Honestly, that stuff is a lot harder to do than you seem to think it is. My gf has never even bothered separating whites and colors and she's never ruined any article of clothing in the laundry. By contrast, setting up a router is not something you can just feel your way through without _any_ prior knowledge (even prior knowledge unrelated to that specific model). Shit, without prior knowledge you couldn't even get to the router config page.

> Or mixed ammonia and bleach to clean a floor?

The first part of your comment was a reasonable point, but what the hell are you talking about here? You do your laundry using bleach and ammonia....on your floor?

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