It's the thought process you learn by having some financial issues in life. You feel guilty for owning expensive things instead of selling them to buy other things.
I have the same problems with trading cards I own from a long time ago that are now expensive, I can keep them for sentimental reasons or sell them to put it towards some bill
If you think its insane to spend that amount of money on it (essentially: it's not worth that much to you), then you holding onto it instead of having $1300 is pretty much the exact same scenario? By holding onto it you're saying it is worth that much to you.
It sounds like believing you hunted down a 'deal' causes you to wildly change how you perceive value at an emotional level.
I would probably do the same thing. It's just funny to see expressed on HN where everybody complains that advertising and marketing are evil/scams and proclaims loudly how rational they are.
He wants the thing. He does not value the thing at 1300 dollars so he would not buy it for 1300 dollars. He found it for a lower value, he kept it because the point at the start was he wanted the thing.
On the topic of HN users, is it our collective first day on earth?
it could simply be that you value owning the object in terms other than money. sentimental reasons, completionism tendencies, novelty, some other "non-rational"/emotional reason; any of these can have a stronger pull on the mind than $1300 to someone who doesn't immediately need the cash for survival. i have some records like this (not in that price-range but still) along with a few other collectible items (some rare handmade keycaps that were going for over $500 a piece at one point) that I refuse to part with for money because i just... like them :)
The point is it's irrational behavior. And we all do it.
It's burning $5 in gas and $20 in time to go to a store further away and save $25 on a sale item. And then proudly bragging "I'm not like those idiots who pay full price!"
OP didn't find a record...he found a $1300 arbitrage, then decided to spend the proceeds on the record by keeping it.
In other words, this is why selling stuff to consumers is a nightmare.
You have to trick them into believing they "won one over" on everybody else, via discounting and promotions, no matter if ultimately they're the ones losing by spending hours of their time jumping through hoops on a product that they legitimately value at full price.
> On the topic of HN users, is it our collective first day on earth?
The disease of financialization at work. Money is all that matters to people, everything is converted into money. It's only value is what you could get from selling it, and/or what you spent to acquire it.
Like those weird fuckers who buy $200k supercars so they can sit in a damn garage. (She said, having put 30k miles on a Corvette inside of 3 years)
> 10k mi/yr is a nice round "lease" number of miles. Are you sure you don't value the resale value of your car more than the joy value?
I mean it's helped by the fact that I can only realistically drive it like 7-8 months out of each year, and it's my fun car, not a commuter. As much as I'd love to drive for fun every day that's just not feasible, lol. That said it's resale value has never once entered my mind. I'm waiting until the loan is paid off at which point I'm planning several modifications to get more power out of it, and probably a lambo-door-hinge kit.
I don’t see any sign they own the original pressing which is $1300. Instead they own the 1977 remaster which apparently sounds as good as the original pressing though I don’t own the original. The 1977 remaster sells for between $5 and $50 depending on grade. I paid $3 for mine and it might be worth $25 or $30 of if I did a lot of leg work.
You’re making a lot of assumptions here in your thinking. The first one is that you can just randomly turn around and sell that record for $1300. Hitting those peaks usually only happens with in person sales or amongst collectors who know each other well. It’s incredibly expensive to get to that point and requires thousands of hours of work. For a normal person without extensive contacts, it’s still a lot of leg work for a fraction of that price. That might yield maybe $30 an hour.
Some people value their time higher than that; it’s really not that deep.
Emotionally, it feels different. It's fascinating to see downright angry gut reactions!
A few years ago my friend was selling his expensive camera on Kijiji. I asked him to sell it to me for slightly less as a friendly discount. He told me that's the same as just randomly one day giving me a wad of cash, so why would he do that?? I thought he's crazy and was a little bit offended. Actually maybe a fair bit offended!
It took me YEARS to realize that 1. He's absolutely completely Inarguably correct, and 2. People would find me no less crazy if I adopted same perspective.
Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically. But oh boy will people get instantly riled up emotionally :).
If I want a thing gone, for whatever reason I want that to happen, then I want it gone. I never want to see it again.
When I get rid of a thing with eBay or Craigslist or FB Marketplace or whatever this decade's thing is, or with a dumpster, then it is gone from my life. It will never resurface.
But friends have a habit of bringing things back. Whether it's "Hey, remember that camera you gave me?" or "Hey, my old lady is kicking me out -- can I store some shit in your garage [like these four giant rackmount Elo touchscreens that I wouldn't let you bin two years ago]?", things given to friends have a bad habit of coming back 'round.
I'd be inclined to pay more for it getting it from my friend than on a second hand marketplace. It removes the chance I'm going to be scammed, or the product isn't as described, or the seller will leave me a bad review.
On the other hand, I wouldn't ask my friend to pay more if selling, so maybe a par price is fair.
> Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically. But oh boy will people get instantly riled up emotionally :).
Price and value are not the same. The logic of your friend was basically putting a price on how "special" (or not) he saw your relationship versus some rando-buyer online.
That is why people (close to you) get riled up emotionally: they're being treated in a way no different than a complete stranger.
If you ask your friend for $100 for no particular reason, just because you want $100, that's an annoying request and "no" is a reasonable response. It's not putting a price on your relationship. It's technically the same answer they'd give a stranger, but that doesn't mean you're being treated like a stranger.
(I do think a slight discount often makes sense just because a friend is probably quicker and easier to deal with. But anything more substantial turns into asking for free stuff, and yes and no are both perfectly fine answers to that.)
> If you ask your friend for $100 for no particular reason, just because you want $100, that's an annoying request and "no" is a reasonable response.
If a stranger walks up to you and asks for $100, you're unlikely to give it to him. If a friend does, there's a more likely probability that you will consider the request.
And depending on the relationship, you may expect for the money to be paid back (eventually), or you may not (considering it a gift). (Often the advice is to consider "loans" to family and friends as gifts in practice, as otherwise the expectation of repayment may sour the relationship.)
Sure you'll consider it. The point is you could say yes or no without being a bad friend if their reason for the money is "friendship I guess? *shrug*".
I don't know why so many people are acting like I said a "no" is the only acceptable answer.
That's the thing. This was a $3000 camera. A 20% friends discount is 600. We've been best friends for two decades, but most days he doesn't give me $600 on cash. Don't get me wrong, we don't keep track who paid for dinner or cinema ticket or whatever. But there IS a threshold at which it really becomes a random cash gift.
Yes dealing with friends is nicer than strangers - but also when you're selling stuff, sometimes it's better to do strangers. Expectations of long term service and support are clearer and have more defined boundaries.
> But there IS a threshold at which it really becomes a random cash gift.
Not wrong, but it is also possible that the $600 'cash equivalent' discount would be considered a birthday or Christmas present, or a form of 'repayment' for the time he helped you out with the Thing with the Guy in the Place. (“I'd never been to Belize.”)
I guess friendship means different things to different people. I've had friends spot me plenty more than $600 and I've spent thousands on friends in return. I can't imagine having such an indifferent attitude towards someone I care about.
It can imply that, but it can imply other things too and you shouldn't draw conclusions from one interpretation. You've never just paid for a friend's dinner or ticket?
Perhaps this is a cultural thing. I routinely buy gifts for friends, pay for their meals, travel and vice versa. Having more money is not some supreme objective that is more important than the people around you. Money is just a tool for enjoying life. I come from an impoverished and deprived background, spent years homeless since I was a teenager, and I still recognize that putting money before friends is a scarcity mindset.
"deciding not to give someone a gift out of absolutely nowhere" as a matter of course, as a guiding philosophical principle, is categorically putting money before friends.
I'd say I'm reading into them the regular amount. Your entire premise is that you wouldn't just hand money to a friend for no reason. I challenged this mentality and whether or not such a friendship is ideal, offering a perspective into why there are more important things in life than money.
If this isn't your intent, you should reflect on how you've presented your argument.
"Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically."
Sort of. People are being less irrational than it sounds if you account for transaction costs. There's a lot of stuff I might "sell" if I could point a video-game-like pointer at it and right click and hit "sell", and it just instantly disappeared and money was credited to my bank account. Perhaps even more if buying was just as easy and I didn't need to hang on to something like my drill which I don't use very often and I could trivially "rent" it from the market by buying, using it, and selling in mere minutes.
But in practice one-off selling for anything less than $100 or so is a waste of time because there are significant transaction costs for one-off events like that.
Yes, strictly true, but friendship is worth it, no? Do you spend a couple of hours with a friend and then hand each other bills for the hours? Clearly there was a[n opportunity] cost to both of you, after all. Just spending time together without charging would be like randomly handing over a wad of cash ...
>Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically.
They're not the same.
£20 item to buy, I have £100; buying leaves me £80.
Either, I have £100; not buying/selling leaves me £100
£20 item I own, I have £100; selling leaves me £120.
In the first case maybe I can't make rent now. In the last case I have more cash, but then I need to spend money if I want entertainment/utility that the item had. In the first case I lose 25% of my cash; in the last I gain 20% (this matters when you're sharing your money across different needs).
If you're trying to make rent right now it makes a difference. In the long run it's looking at X income and comparing how much better/worse off you'd be with X-1 and X+1 income, and those two deltas are almost the same. The fluctuation in value of the object will make a bigger difference than the technicalities of buying versus selling.
Why? We know the price was $1300. Doesn't mean anyone would buy it for that much.
So try lowering the number and see what you think?
The value is what someone is willing to pay for it.
> He thinks that way because it's the only correct way to think.
I typed up something, but ended up almost antagonistic. I realize I just feel sad that for some people money is literally the single goal in their life, seemingly nothing else matters.
Even if you think in purely transactional terms like "asset currently worth $1300", what's wrong with holding onto an asset? Especially one that's likely to appreciate, not depreciate, as long as you look after it carefully.
The logic is a little broken for me... If he really wanted the record, and got it for $2, why would he then sell it and then not have it? Replacing it would cost at least $1300.
You're logic is why so much in this world if fucking broken. Everything is a grift, a hustle, an opportunity for profit.
People are getting angry at the math here. I'm Not the OP and have no moral judgement here, but from strict bank account balance perspective it's the same. Persuade me otherwise through addition and subtraction, not moral appeals.
1. I have 10,000 in my bank account.
2. I see a 1,300 record I like
3. I buy it
4. My bank account now has 8700
5. There's 1,300 difference if I choose to buy it or not
1. I have 10,000 in my bank account
2. I have a 1,300 record
3. If I sell it my bank account will have 11,300
4. 1,300 difference if I choose to sell it or not
No "end of the world, this is what's wrong with everybody" gross hyperboles please, I don't care one iota about whether anybody buys or sells expensive records, I don't make any moral judgement whatsoever and would appreciate people in turn not making extreme assumptions about what I think about expensive records. But economically, buying an expensive item or selling expensive item is the same - Prove it wrong with numbers not appeals to emotion please.
> Prove it wrong with numbers not appeals to emotion please
But my point is that I don't care about the numbers. If fact my complaint was that it was made into a financial decision, just because the record happens to be worth $1300.
If it was a $10 record, bought used at $2, then few would argue that you should sell it and make $8. My argument is that it doesn't matter if you could make $8 or $1298, not if you enjoy the record and wish keep it. It's the defaulting to "You could make money" in so many of aspects of life that's starting to annoy me.
It's fine if you want to own and use an expensive thing.
The argument is not "you could make money", the argument is that if you got the expensive thing for free and choose not to sell then you're roughly as "insane" as the person that paid full price. Go ahead and splurge but try not to be a hypocrite about it. It's not lmm that was passing judgement, it was the person that owns the record passing judgement.
The thread started with calling those who buy a record at 1300, and I quote, insane. Argument was made that keeping a 1300 record is equally insane or not. That is the discussion here. It started about whether 1300 was sane or not. It was not turned into that discussion by people who hussle.
It is a massive massive massive privilege of us here to even ponder keeping a record we bought for 2 which could be sold for 1300. For a lot of other population this would be not even an argument.
Again, I don't actually care, but I do believe that mathematically, if one starts with assumption / claim that buying a 1300 record is insane, not selling it is equally insane (or not;). Crux of my argument is that two sides of that equation are equal, not whether we should consider that equation or not. I find it dishonest to make one side of the claim, but go all "modern culture is all about hussle!" When pointing the equivalence of the other side of the claim.
You are assuming symmetries where there are none. I want a thing, discover it's readily available for $1300, that seems insane, so I don't buy it. By chance I acquire the thing from a source that was unaware of its fair market value for $2, amazing deal. I have the thing without having to pay an insane price, I am happy. Now here comes an insane person who wants it enough to offer me $1300. Both parties must benefit from an exchange for there to be a transaction, but the benefit is always subjective to them, depends on public and private information, there's no symmetry in buying/selling, and the equations have inequalities rather than equal signs. Now if the offer is sufficiently higher than $1300, or I know I can find the thing again for sufficiently less, or I find myself in need of the $1298 unrealized gain for other things, then sure, it becomes insane to not sell, but absent such factors refusing a fair market offer at a price you wouldn't ever entertain paying yourself is not insane. Additionally, prices aren't static, platonic things. If someone is insane enough to offer $1300, perhaps they are insane enough to offer $2600 in a year, I will be enjoying the thing in the meantime.
>> You are assuming symmetries where there are none
That's the Crux of the conversation here, with two differing perspectives. I'm not assuming it, I'm putting my perspective forward. and asking either clear disproof or acknowledgement of two perspectives.
My perspective to be clear :
If I buy a thing for $2, somebody offers me $1,300 for it, and it is not worth $1,300 to me, I will likely sell it; or I will acknowledge that it's clearly worth 1,300 to me and not call others who buy it for 1,300 insane :).
(This is the opposite of claiming there is no sentimental value. This is acknowledging that somethings absolutely have sentimental value to me and others are more utility based).
friction and transaction costs exists in our world which are absolutely factors that would delineate the economic utility of purchasing a new luxury item from selling an already owned luxury item.
Spend $2.
Receive album worth $1000.
Make $300 an hour at job.
Have no immediate use case for $1000 in cash.
Have somewhat immediate want for music on that album.
Time to sell album with high quality images/ description, deal with questions from discerning buyers (tire-kickers), post the album: 4 hours
Opportunity cost- $1,200
Sale value - $1000
Replacement album cost - $20
Deciding to sell would put this hypothetical guy down $220 vs just listening to his cool, potential appreciating album and working for the same amount of time.
I don't think it's useful to account for time spent outside of work by the same hourly income as a way to measure how much something costs. By that logic, spending an hour listening would also "cost" $300.
This calculation is faulty because neglects all of the intangible value.
The reason anyone buys anything other than the minimum clothing, food, and shelter for mere survival is because of intangible value.
Any time you see someone who is not opting to optimize tangible value, it is likely that you are simply failing to observe some intangible value.
> Prove it wrong with numbers not appeals to emotion please.
This is a false dichotomy. Intangible value is not some fallacious appeal to emotion -- it is a real thing that economists overwhelmingly agree exists, but also recognize is difficult to put a number on.
Why do you want those commits though? In my experience people only look at history a) to see who wrote the code / when it was last changed, which works equally well with any approach, b) to see which feature it was part of, for which you will click through to the PR anyway, or c) to bisect for when a bug was introduced, in which case unedited/unrebased "noise" commits are more useful because you have more guarantee that each commit compiles and the original train of thought is more useful than the fictional history when you're looking for something unintentional.
> I live here, I think I'd notice if events like the current Belfast riots happened on a more regular basis.
The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration (not to mention not even having open borders in the sense usually meant by "Europe has open borders", other than between a pair of neighbouring countries with very strong cultural ties), if that's where you mean by "here" you may have been insulated from it. Where I was, while it didn't spill out into rioting (mostly) there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into the EU, and another with the 2015 migrant crisis (which ultimately lead to many of those open borders being closed, temporarily or "temporarily").
> I'm from there, so I'd be interested to know what time period that would be?
Pre-1902; one could haggle over the exact date depending on what one considers an open border.
> The island of Ireland has had pretty low immigration
Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe.
> if that's where you mean by "here"
It's not, I live in Switzerland, which has one of the highest rates of migration in the EU
> there was a palpable uptick in xenophobia when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted into the EU
I'd be curious to know what this looked like at the time. Regardless, even if we accept it as an example, that doesn't set the rule or show a general causation between open borders and xenophobia
> Pre-1902; one could haggle over the exact date depending on what one considers an open border.
Omegalol - you might want to look up what modern day xenophobia in SA looks like (as well as the current socioeconomic situation) so you can see why that probably wasn't a concern pre-20th century
> Seems like you just validated my point - a place without open borders is where a major outbreak of xenophobic violence is occurring, as opposed to mainland Europe.
We know exactly what caused this outbreak of xenophobic violence, it's in direct response to a dramatically brutal attempted murder by an immigrant caught on video (one who had been granted a refugee visa, on legitimate grounds or otherwise). That's hardly an argument for open borders - if anything it's an argument for stricter screening of asylum seekers.
> I'd be curious to know what this looked like at the time.
A shift in sentiment, certain kinds of comments being heard more and more, ultimately Brexit.
> even if we accept it as an example, that doesn't set the rule or show a general causation between open borders and xenophobia
At a certain point you experience enough correlations that you have to trust the evidence of your own eyes.
> That's hardly an argument for open borders - if anything it's an argument for stricter screening of asylum seekers.
If you follow this thread from the top, you'll see I didn't make the claim that open borders make things better; rather, the burden is for the opposing side to show that they make things worse. I would argue this hasn't been accomplished.
> A shift in sentiment, certain kinds of comments being heard more and more, ultimately Brexit.
Ah, you meant specifically in the UK (I thought across Europe in general, upon their entry). In that case, whether British people were already somewhat racist towards Eastern Europeans or became so as a result of freedom of movement sort of depends on who you ask. I suspect it was the former. And ofc now the UK is mourning the loss of said (white) Eastern Europeans as it's having to bring in an increased number of people from (non-white) Africa and India as a result of Brexit, especially in the care industry. For sure nothing will go wrong from here.
> At a certain point you experience enough correlations that you have to trust the evidence of your own eyes.
From my observation, the real underlying problems are economics and integration - when you have a ridiculously high unemployment rate (think 30%+) like in South Africa, the black South Africans direct that towards the the other Africans. When people from other cultures aren't integrated properly (think the UK, France, as opposed to Switzerland, Denmark maybe), you can get the same (i.e. what's happening in Belfast now).
> the claim that something by itself is enough has to explain why most companies are able to be destroyed, even though they have really good leadership
I think most of us are happy to believe that most companies simply have bad leadership, that leadership quality really is the axis on which Costco differs from others. If you want us to believe that other (destroyed) companies' leadership is just as good as Costco's, you need to make that case.
> Costco is protected by a very distinctive thing I call a "governance fortress." This fortress (and not merely their leadership) is the reason why they have been able to endure for forty years.
Can you sketch out your actual argument here (I think doing so would help rather than hinder your book sales, though of course that's a biased judgement)? What is this "governance fortress", and why should we believe that that, rather than the personal qualities of this one guy, is the reason they kept the hot dog?
Sure, happy to. This is a very common source of confusion, so definitely worth clarifying. We agree that Costco's difference is due to its superior leadership. The question is why has the company been able to maintain this leadership advantage over multiple generations of managers, when other companies have not.
In the book, I give dozens of examples of companies that were well-lead and then suddenly destroyed, often by outside actors who found a way to profit from their destruction. This often happened at the governance layer, while leadership watched helplessly from the sidelines.
So why hasn't this happened to Costco? I don't think it's a coincidence that Costco has a variety of "bad governance" provisions, such as a super-majority (of all shares, not just votes) provision threshold for shareholder votes, as just one example. When activists, analysts and other Wall Street actors have tried over the years to force Costco to change, its leadership has been insulated from this pressure. I think that is a structural factor that is important.
Again, structure does not _cause_ ethos. It protects it. My argument in the book is you need both.
> ... Costco has a variety of "bad governance" provisions, such as a super-majority (of all shares, not just votes) provision threshold for shareholder votes
Do you believe there's a fundamental tradeoff between structural constraints (i.e. the 'democratic' model, where dispersed shareholders and markets have a voice) vs. insulated leadership (i.e. the 'benevolent dictator' model, where competent leaders are shielded from short-term shareholder pressure)?
From my perspective, there is such a thing as "too much democracy." I don't know how to quantify the exact right amount for a given situation.
In the case of companies, a benevolent dictatorship is fine because employees, customers and investors can all exit and find other companies. It's at the nation state level where you need more structural veto points. (Arguably true for towns/counties/states too, but you still have the right to exit so...)
"I think most of us are happy to believe that most companies simply have bad leadership"
I don't believe this for a second.
I don't know if this makes me the minority or not though!
It trivializes forces influencing large public companies.
Yes - there can be good and bad leadership - and bad leadership is just bad.
But good leadership can be totally helpless in a public company.
Not recognizing this is a huge gap.
The other forces that incluence a company:
- Board
- Shareholders (via board)
- Banks. Lots of companies have loans. The banks generally have the companies by the balls and can dictate many things when things go south - either due to leaderhip or just prevailing market winds
As an example of shareholder/board direct and rapid influence: an activist purchases shares. Installs board member. Causes rapid change in one or more aspects of business structure or strategy to support _their_ portfolio strategy (of course aligned with interests of other shareholders).
I think you’re right, however, I think the person you’re replying to may also.
And is shorthanding “everyone without direct experience of the influential power of market forces” into “most of us.”
I think it’s fair to say that the fact that more or most people _don’t_ understand that and _do_ think it’s “all just leadership” explains much of the sentiment about capitalism generally.
And government in general. Populist demagogues capitalize on the misperception that one man can just make all the "easy" fixes. DOGE was a good example of that.
It all makes sense once you realise the purpose is to maximise the amount of car storage. You're allowed to build car storage in every zone. Many zones even have a minimum amount of car storage required to accompany anything else you want to build.
Friedrichstraße was famously like that during the Cold War (West Berliners riding the lines were not permitted to exit into East Berlin), although of course the stairs physically existed. I think it's unusual for an underground station to be built without digging from the surface, so there's normally at least a fire escape.
I'm upset that we allow people like you to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, possibly indefinitely, so anything that makes that harder even "accidentally" is ok by me.
I would rather capital gains be taxed at income rates but indexed to inflation. I am fine with that being a fair bit more.
But ripping off pension funds so you can tax me more, as a side effect of enriching people that engage in these shennanigans, doesn’t seem like a great move.
Holy shit, all that and then they paid? Worse, decided to use this product on an ongoing basis? I'm not sure who I hate more, Blacksmith for doing this or OP for being such a doormat about it.
How is holding onto it instead of selling it for $1300 any less insane than buying it for $1300 in the first place?
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