9 ms·

"Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this

"Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this reevaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your knowledge of it."

mmaunder 9y ago
Every carb I've rebuilt has benefited from those words.
- Neliquat 9y ago
  Indeed. For extra goodness, buy a few packs of stainless allen head screws to replace the cadnium plated steel ones that always strip. They always strip, because they are not phillips, but JIS screws. The dot on the head gives it away.
  - mmaunder 9y ago
    Funny. I learned that about 8 months ago. Wondering if we watched the same YouTube video.
dap 9y ago
Solid gold. I just commented elsewhere about the gumption trap chapter, but the whole chapter this passage comes from is similarly insightful -- maybe more so.
mtempm 9y ago
I read this in high school and years later in university learned economists named this concept 'marginal utility.' It's an important concept to understand in many aspects of life. In social and economic policy, it's important to remember resources are allocated per marginal utility, not by what they're worth. I.E. water is worth more to me than music, but I spend more money on music than water, and the music industry makes more than public water utilities. Seems obvious when stated like that, but it's often forgotten I find.
- udkl 9y ago
  Ivestopedia has a different definition - "Marginal utility is the additional satisfaction a consumer gains from consuming one more unit of a good or service. Marginal utility is an important economic concept because economists use it to determine how much of an item a consumer will buy." http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalutility.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalutility.asp
- rubyn00bie 9y ago
  He's not talking about marginal utility. At least not unless he's talking about an extremely unusual utility function. Maybe my Econ background is getting in the way but... Marginal utility, would be the increasing/decreasing value at the margins, for each additional screw. Here I believe the point is in process engineering that more or less, something big may be disguised as something small. That you must thoroughly know your process to understand the problem(s) at hand. It seems more analogous to "the straw that broke the camels back."
  - mtempm 9y ago
    It is about marginal utility. You and others here are constraining yourself to thinking about the concept by thinking about it only as a utility function for one type of product or service. After all, that is how it is taught. You can also think about the marginal utility of one glass of water, or one screw in a more complex utility function (as is always the case in life) than for just one widget, as you would say a factory manufacturing screws until cost > utility. After all, it's nothing more than the utility you gain, on the margin (holding all else constant), of that one additional screw or glass of water. In the author's example, he is discussing this exact phenomenon. The utility at the margin of that one additional screw.
    - rubyn00bie 9y ago
      I politely disagree. This example feels like a piece wise function which isn't a utility function (or at least not one I have ever seen and I've seen a lot). Having utility decrease from its maximum to zero, or negative, at the next value is odd to say the least.
holri 9y ago
It is a common error in modern capitalist thinking that the unit of value is price. That is fundamentally wrong.
- dnautics 9y ago
  Strange, I find that it's anti-capitalists that make that error. The few who do not in my experience , if from anywhere, come from the Austrian economics camp.
wiredfool 9y ago
I had exactly this paragraph running through my mind as I was taking a cross threaded bottom bracket out of a cheap bike. The crank extractor had munged the threads of the axle, and the bb cups were frozen tight to the frame. So this crappy loose bottom bracket was exactly as valuable as the bike. And I was out of tools and ideas. Thankfully, I had an option at he didn't have, which was punt to the bike shop and pay them 12 bucks to get the thing out and chase the threads.
philh 9y ago
> Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. If I read the situation correctly, the motorcycle with this screw is certainly not valueless. It can be turned into a working motorcycle far more easily than most other things can be turned into a working motorcycle. If it would take a competent technician an hour to remove the screw, then the screw shouldn't affect the selling price of the motorcycle by more than a couple of hundred dollars. It's important to remember that small, trivial-seeming things can actually be important, which I think is what he's pointing at. But it's also important to remember that a thing's potential has value beyond its current abilities.
- lsd5you 9y ago
  I would say, surely the author realises this and has decided to go for 'valueless' for dramatic effect. As a fellow somewhat pedant I totally agree, it's not intellectually consistent and would probably change me into a more disagreeable mode whilst reading it. That said I wonder how many flawed but worthwhile things would not come to be if such consistency was universally applied...
  - evilDagmar 9y ago
    Get stranded on the side of the road (something riders are almost pathologically averse to, with good reason) and your opinion will change dramatically.
  - ngvrnd 9y ago
    When the guy's whole point is quality and intellectual consistency it's a bit wearing to read things like this though -- terrible, tedious book. If you wonder what interacting with a person with borderline personality disorder is like, I recommend it.
    - fipar 9y ago
      I understand both you and I (probably, I'm sorry if I am wrong in my assumption and you actually work in mental health) have strong experiences that, in the big scheme of things, are just anecdotic evidence on this subject. With that in mind, I read the book (a few times), and have someone diagnosed with borderline disorder in the family, and don't find many coincidence points between Robert/Phaedrus as described there, and my experiences. Perhaps a bit with Chris, though, and maybe that is what you meant. Back to the 'whole selling point' I think he was being overly dramatic, it's a novel after all. I think his point comes across better when he goes through the value traps part of the book, and interpret his point the following way: Sometimes you are working on some machine (physical, like his motorcycle, or abstract, like software), and you get stuck on a problem due to a seemingly very meaningless part of said machine. I think his 'whole selling point' message is: when this happens, you need to reassess the value you give this part, as, until you get to resolve what it is causing it to get you stuck, its value to you is pretty much the value of the whole machine. Like how a crashing bug means that specific software is useless, in the specific use case that triggers the bug, until that is fixed. If it's some weird edge case, the software may be perfectly usable for most people, but if you are one of the few affected by it, the most likely few lines of code causing the defect render the whole thing useless, they're the selling point of the software to you individually. Now, obviously, speaking of the actual physical motorcycle, it's not that he can't sell it without resolving the problem that particular screw is causing him. There are probably skilled mechanics with the right training and tools for which the screw would cause little to no problem. But to him: he can't ride it until that is resolved, so the screw is as important as the entire machine until he gets that resolved. I faced this specific problem just a couple of days ago and remembering the book (which I read years ago) helped me step away from the problem and come back to it with a fresh angle. But the reality was the same: it's not that I would have lost my physical entity (a window, in this case). Surely, I could have called a professional carpenter to help me with it. But to me, without getting someone else involved, that little piece (it was also a screw, a rusty one) was worth the whole window.
dean 9y ago
My kingdom for a horse?

mmaunder 9y ago

Every carb I've rebuilt has benefited from those words.

Neliquat 9y ago
Indeed. For extra goodness, buy a few packs of stainless allen head screws to replace the cadnium plated steel ones that always strip. They always strip, because they are not phillips, but JIS screws. The dot on the head gives it away.
- mmaunder 9y ago
  Funny. I learned that about 8 months ago. Wondering if we watched the same YouTube video.

dap 9y ago

Solid gold. I just commented elsewhere about the gumption trap chapter, but the whole chapter this passage comes from is similarly insightful -- maybe more so.

mtempm 9y ago

I read this in high school and years later in university learned economists named this concept 'marginal utility.' It's an important concept to understand in many aspects of life. In social and economic policy, it's important to remember resources are allocated per marginal utility, not by what they're worth. I.E. water is worth more to me than music, but I spend more money on music than water, and the music industry makes more than public water utilities. Seems obvious when stated like that, but it's often forgotten I find.

udkl 9y ago
Ivestopedia has a different definition - "Marginal utility is the additional satisfaction a consumer gains from consuming one more unit of a good or service. Marginal utility is an important economic concept because economists use it to determine how much of an item a consumer will buy." http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalutility.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalutility.asp
rubyn00bie 9y ago
He's not talking about marginal utility. At least not unless he's talking about an extremely unusual utility function. Maybe my Econ background is getting in the way but... Marginal utility, would be the increasing/decreasing value at the margins, for each additional screw. Here I believe the point is in process engineering that more or less, something big may be disguised as something small. That you must thoroughly know your process to understand the problem(s) at hand. It seems more analogous to "the straw that broke the camels back."
- mtempm 9y ago
  It is about marginal utility. You and others here are constraining yourself to thinking about the concept by thinking about it only as a utility function for one type of product or service. After all, that is how it is taught. You can also think about the marginal utility of one glass of water, or one screw in a more complex utility function (as is always the case in life) than for just one widget, as you would say a factory manufacturing screws until cost > utility. After all, it's nothing more than the utility you gain, on the margin (holding all else constant), of that one additional screw or glass of water. In the author's example, he is discussing this exact phenomenon. The utility at the margin of that one additional screw.
  - rubyn00bie 9y ago
    I politely disagree. This example feels like a piece wise function which isn't a utility function (or at least not one I have ever seen and I've seen a lot). Having utility decrease from its maximum to zero, or negative, at the next value is odd to say the least.

holri 9y ago

It is a common error in modern capitalist thinking that the unit of value is price. That is fundamentally wrong.

dnautics 9y ago
Strange, I find that it's anti-capitalists that make that error. The few who do not in my experience , if from anywhere, come from the Austrian economics camp.

wiredfool 9y ago

I had exactly this paragraph running through my mind as I was taking a cross threaded bottom bracket out of a cheap bike. The crank extractor had munged the threads of the axle, and the bb cups were frozen tight to the frame. So this crappy loose bottom bracket was exactly as valuable as the bike. And I was out of tools and ideas. Thankfully, I had an option at he didn't have, which was punt to the bike shop and pay them 12 bucks to get the thing out and chase the threads.

philh 9y ago

> Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. If I read the situation correctly, the motorcycle with this screw is certainly not valueless. It can be turned into a working motorcycle far more easily than most other things can be turned into a working motorcycle. If it would take a competent technician an hour to remove the screw, then the screw shouldn't affect the selling price of the motorcycle by more than a couple of hundred dollars. It's important to remember that small, trivial-seeming things can actually be important, which I think is what he's pointing at. But it's also important to remember that a thing's potential has value beyond its current abilities.

lsd5you 9y ago
I would say, surely the author realises this and has decided to go for 'valueless' for dramatic effect. As a fellow somewhat pedant I totally agree, it's not intellectually consistent and would probably change me into a more disagreeable mode whilst reading it. That said I wonder how many flawed but worthwhile things would not come to be if such consistency was universally applied...
- evilDagmar 9y ago
  Get stranded on the side of the road (something riders are almost pathologically averse to, with good reason) and your opinion will change dramatically.
- ngvrnd 9y ago
  When the guy's whole point is quality and intellectual consistency it's a bit wearing to read things like this though -- terrible, tedious book. If you wonder what interacting with a person with borderline personality disorder is like, I recommend it.
  - fipar 9y ago
    I understand both you and I (probably, I'm sorry if I am wrong in my assumption and you actually work in mental health) have strong experiences that, in the big scheme of things, are just anecdotic evidence on this subject. With that in mind, I read the book (a few times), and have someone diagnosed with borderline disorder in the family, and don't find many coincidence points between Robert/Phaedrus as described there, and my experiences. Perhaps a bit with Chris, though, and maybe that is what you meant. Back to the 'whole selling point' I think he was being overly dramatic, it's a novel after all. I think his point comes across better when he goes through the value traps part of the book, and interpret his point the following way: Sometimes you are working on some machine (physical, like his motorcycle, or abstract, like software), and you get stuck on a problem due to a seemingly very meaningless part of said machine. I think his 'whole selling point' message is: when this happens, you need to reassess the value you give this part, as, until you get to resolve what it is causing it to get you stuck, its value to you is pretty much the value of the whole machine. Like how a crashing bug means that specific software is useless, in the specific use case that triggers the bug, until that is fixed. If it's some weird edge case, the software may be perfectly usable for most people, but if you are one of the few affected by it, the most likely few lines of code causing the defect render the whole thing useless, they're the selling point of the software to you individually. Now, obviously, speaking of the actual physical motorcycle, it's not that he can't sell it without resolving the problem that particular screw is causing him. There are probably skilled mechanics with the right training and tools for which the screw would cause little to no problem. But to him: he can't ride it until that is resolved, so the screw is as important as the entire machine until he gets that resolved. I faced this specific problem just a couple of days ago and remembering the book (which I read years ago) helped me step away from the problem and come back to it with a fresh angle. But the reality was the same: it's not that I would have lost my physical entity (a window, in this case). Surely, I could have called a professional carpenter to help me with it. But to me, without getting someone else involved, that little piece (it was also a screw, a rusty one) was worth the whole window.

dean 9y ago

My kingdom for a horse?