agent008t

He is not hoarding wealth, he is hoarding money. And money is essentially IOUs, claims on the labour of other people and on other resources.

So as I said, if he earned the money, that means he provided for others, and in exchange he got these pieces of paper, which say that later, if he wants to, he can get others to provide for him in return.

Not spending the money means that he never claims anything for himself in return for what he did for others. How is that not virtuous?

Your father in law sounds like a virtuous man. If he has earned his money, he must have provided goods and services for others. If he does not spend the money, that means he asked for nothing in return. Is that not virtuous?

Spend time on social media or don't spend time on social media, you will regret it either way. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.

The point of my example was to draw attention to what actually happens to the real resources, how they get used. They get wasted, which is a terrible outcome.

I believe your focus on money obscures that fact. Money is just a mechanism for a (good, efficient, fair?) way of using the resources available. Money is not real wealth.

What lifts people out of poverty is not money, it is ultimately useful stuff - food, shelter etc. produced so efficiently that people also are able to specialise and spend time on teaching, medicating, investing into producing not just the bare necessities but things that make them even more efficient and productive etc. In the yacht example, such scarce resources are squandered! The 'economy' created is quite literally destructive - it is geared towards consumption (i.e. destruction) of many resources - materials to build the yacht, countless peoples' time - for the mere entertainment of the person who then sinks the yacht.

Yes, the people that were involved in building the yacht now have bigger claims on a shrinking share of resources. They personally win; the person who enjoyed sinking the yacht wins; overall society greatly looses and is now much poorer.

So overall, society would be better off if that person just hoarded the money, buried it in their back yard, and preserved the scarce resources. That outcome is better than personal luxury consumption. Even better, of course, if they used it to get other people to do something productive that benefits wider society.

It is also the norm in parts of Eastern Europe - having the same 20-30 class year between the ages of 6-7 and 16-17.

Could it be that the social life at the 'prestigious college' was just rubbish, e.g. geared towards extraverted mba-types with 'default' social activities being clubbing and drinking?

Let us make the example more extreme. Let's make it spending 100 billion on building a supermassive yacht, that you then proceed to sink for your own entertainment. Which is not dissimilar from 10 million people spending $10k each on luxury consumption for themselves.

Would you still argue that it still does no harm? You have just squandered 100b worth of society's resources - people's time, physical materials, engineering effort etc. for your own entertainment.

They should actually hope they do not ever achieve their dreams. Because they would likely find that the contentment and happiness they were hoping to get does not materialize. In fact, they end up feeling worse. Because not only will they find they do not feel more content or happier, but that they have also lost the illusion that 'if only' they had this or that that their condition would improve. They discover that what they have been experiencing is, in fact, the human condition.

I would like to add that it seems the internet used to be a lot more hobby-centered before around 2009. I do miss that old internet, where people did fun and creative things just for the sake of fun and creativity.

Why have a child? It is completely optional.

Eudaimonia

> Lacking objective, or structure in the day, I found myself playing video games or surfing web pretty much all day.

I think the key is to identify these timesinks and to eliminate them one-by-one. Often these are dopamine-hijacking activities.

So, suppose you decided to yourself that you are not going to be surfing the web at all, or limit it to a strictly scheduled timeslot, or only use the web when you have a specific purpose in mind.

Suppose you did the same with videogames - limit it to a specific timeslot in your week, or eliminate it altogether.

What would you do then? What would you find yourself doing if you found yourself in living conditions where you do not have access to such easy entertainment?

You would probably get very bored at first. That's great! The first step is to stop seeing boredom as something to be avoided at all costs. It is ok to be bored - in fact it is good to be bored. Sit with it and do not allow yourself to fall back onto the easy entertainment options.

You will find that after a while you are actually just going to pick up that physics textbook you meant to study off the shelf - or end up doing whatever interesting project you thought you would be doing. It will be easy, interesting and natural. Just like it was when you were a child on summer holidays and probably didn't have access to unlimited video games, broadband internet or other dopamine-hijacking forms of easy entertainment!

Just eliminate the timesinks from your life one-by-one and allow yourself to become bored.

Exactly. There are not enough hours in the day as it is, how is having children going to help with that?

The statement that "the truths of mathematics would be the same, because they are true by definition" is correct. Mathematics exist independently of biology or perception of reality. It is just a collection of arbitrary abstract definitions and what follows from them. The alien species may come up with different base definitions that they find more useful or interesting. But they would derive the same conclusions as we would if they were starting from the same definitions and applying the same abstract rules.

I have already seen some ATMs that shuffle the numbers on the numberpad around for each PIN entry. It is inconvenient for muscle memory, but prevents this kind of attack.

I find it difficult to imagine a situation where such an app could be useful. If you don't want to do anything in particular but just want to spend time together, you could do nothing together - just make sure to put away all phones, apps and other distractions. What's the problem?

Where is the fun in that? We are alienated enough from the stuff we consume as it is.

Rich refers to wealth, not income. Having a high income does not mean that one is rich, and it will take a very long time to get rich on 150'000 in London - assuming you live modestly and are able to sustain that level of income for a long time.

First of all, high income does not mean 'rich'. 45% tax bracket started at £150'000 income - that is not 'rich' in London.

Secondly, all else being equal, lower taxes certainly would attract talent and business to the UK and overall make people better off. As a simple example, let us consider an extreme case where the UK has a 20% flat tax while maintaining macro/political stability, and that rate is expected to persist. For starters, there will be a huge move in tech from SF and NY to the UK. It will become a very desirable destination for top talent; startups and unicorns will follow. With clever tax incentives, it would not be just London either, but cities all around the country. That influx of talent and capital would benefit the middle class and the poor too. The one bottleneck, as is usually the case, would be housing - if that is also resolved (say, making it really easy to build in/near currently depressing-looking cities), there could be a real boom to the UK economy.

As things are going now, this is unlikely to play out in the UK, unfortunately.

My point is that of course once they are here you care for them, would miss them if they are gone, etc. etc. They are living beings, so of course ROI calculations no longer apply - you just want to do what's in your power for them to be happy, reduce their suffering etc.

However, before you are in that situation, ROI calculations absolutely do apply. To give you an example - most people on HN that have children probably have 1-3 of them - and that's about as many as they wanted to have. But if you somehow happened to already have 10 children, would you then be selling 7-9 of them (or indeed any) to the circus? Of course not. You would love them, care for them and do the best you can, and you would miss each of them dearly if they were gone.

And yet, given any degree of control over the situation, you would probably try not to have so many. Why not? Because of some calculation - let's call it the ROI calculation. It is precisely the same calculation that keeps you from having 10 children that keeps others from having any children at all.

It sounds like this is not something you planned on, are prepared for, or currently want. I am seriously surprised that nobody has mentioned it so far, as surely this should be the top comment: have you considered abortion? That sounds like the most responsible option to me.

Read Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus.

Why were they "done"? How did you decide to have them?

Did you enjoy spending time with other toddlers so much, that you thought you would enjoy it more than all your other hobbies (which you may have to give up), that you wanted to be doing it during the majority of your downtime, have sleepless nights etc.?

> "Economic growth" relies on always increasing consumption

That cannot possibly be true. A single person can consume a huge amount of resources - far more than any of us currently does. For example, by setting a building on fire, you have consumed that building. We already have a near-infinite capacity for consumption.

Or did you mean something different? If so, could you please explain it better? How can economic growth rely on increasing consumption? Because I would love to consume a yacht - where do I sign up to help economic growth by consuming one?

Thank you. Looking at the dissertation, it does seem though like the author was attempting to summarize of Plato and his contemporaries.

You mean this quote by Socrates, which was written as Athens was entering a period of (terminal) decline?

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Maybe it is not so universal, but an actual predictor of civilizational decline?

Suppose your wife did get a job. Would the money she earns also go into the same collective pot? Would that not be somewhat demotivating / mess up the incentives for her?

Also, it seems in your kind of a scenario it would be difficult to avoid the 'unlimited vacation policy'-type problem, where ultimately it is still at the final discretion of one party. So realistically, there is still some portion of the pot that she is free to spend at her discretion, but it is implicit. Would it not be better for everyone to just make it explicit? Is that not a red flag, since by not explicitly designating some funds as hers / not transferring them into her account to use as she sees fit you are maintaining more control of it and how it is spent?

To be clear, I am not talking about your situation in particular of which I know very little, but presenting more of a general hypothetical argument.

This is an interesting question. In my experience, Tripadvisor used to be 'the review' place. It seemed impossible to overtake them, since a review aggregator needs some critical mass of reviews to even get started. However, in the last few years, I have found Google Maps more useful for reviews - looks like the critical mass has shifted. They were able to take advantage of the fact that it is easy and natural to check out the reviews of a place while looking it up on the map.

Now, however, I worry that Google will try to monetize the maps more and more in ways that are hostile to the user. They have already started showing ad-sponsored restaurants/locations on the maps, last I checked. Reviews are so critical to many businesses (particularly restaurants), it seems important for maps and reviews to be run by a user-friendly entity, ideally something like OSM.

Providing such a service is expensive, however. The fact that OSM does not have a decent Android app even is telling (Osmand is laggy and barely usable; Organic maps is nice, but is not a replacement for Google maps).

So we are stuck in the situation we are in, and I am not sure what a good solution would be.

It is amazing how rapidly the quality of the discussion on HN goes down the more political the topic is.

> I don’t have to work for a while

Surely you would have no need to do anything for money ever anymore? That sounds like an amazing freedom to have. Although, used incorrectly, it could make one feel rather useless too I suppose.

It does exist, but it is not at all like what we think it is.