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Why? Do you really believe that driving a fancy car and buying expensive wine actually makes you happier? This is the illusion. It seems better to me to be abl

Why? Do you really believe that driving a fancy car and buying expensive wine actually makes you happier? This is the illusion. It seems better to me to be able to buy a fancy car and know that you don't want one, than it is to live in a fantasy world were buying stuff makes you happy.

timcederman 16y ago
I certainly derive a lot of pleasure out of driving a nice car and drinking a good wine.
- matwood 16y ago
  I've driven very nice cars, drank super expensive wine, and done other things that cost lots of money. They were fun for a short period of time, but were not lasting. Time is what I want. I want to be able to do what I want when I want to do it. If the waves are good I want to surf, if I find a cool OSS project I want to work on it. IMHO, that is where real pleasure comes from.
  - timcederman 16y ago
    Enjoy things because you enjoy them. Not because they're "super expensive". I don't see why I have to buy a $10 wine when I don't derive enjoyment from them nearly as much as I do out of $30 bottles. Going out to a nice restaurant with friends, travelling the world and enjoying good food and fun activities all costs a decent amount of money, yet make me happy. As someone else in the comments said - you should want to acquire money to use towards the things you want, not for the sake of acquiring money. You like to do free stuff that just involves time. That's great. Other people enjoy restoring cars, going on vacations, building new companies, or food and travel like I do, and these require money as well as time. Ostentatious and pointless displays of money, or purchases which adversely affect your monetary base should be avoided, but not "just because".
gyardley 16y ago
Buying expensive wine - no, that doesn't make me happy. Drinking high-quality wine, which sometimes happens to be expensive - absolutely. I enjoy that very much. Claiming that my enjoyment of high-quality wine is an illusion because you can't see a difference is just arrogance. The same goes for the consumption of any other luxury good you might not have a taste for yourself.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I do think that there are high-quality things that are expensive, but I think people buy by price rather than by blind quality tests relatively frequently. There are good expensive wines, but the wine price/quality correlation is not very strong at all. If you actually know what you're buying and how to judge it, though, by all means buy whatever you want! I've personally been something of a beer aficionado for 5-6 years now, and I've seen this creeping into craft brewing quite a bit lately. Especially after the explosion in the last 1-2 years of mainstream popularity, there's now a very weak relationship between the quality of beer you get and whether you pay $3 or $30 for a 22-oz bottle. Tons of good stuff and crap across the spectrum, and increasingly manufacturers are pricing as a way of status-signaling rather than based on either cost or quality. There have even been cases of brewers rebadging the same recipe from a middle-range beer as high-end premium stuff with a fancy label, and it sells and gets good reviews! (But it doesn't do any better in blind taste tests.)

timcederman 16y ago

I certainly derive a lot of pleasure out of driving a nice car and drinking a good wine.

matwood 16y ago
I've driven very nice cars, drank super expensive wine, and done other things that cost lots of money. They were fun for a short period of time, but were not lasting. Time is what I want. I want to be able to do what I want when I want to do it. If the waves are good I want to surf, if I find a cool OSS project I want to work on it. IMHO, that is where real pleasure comes from.
- timcederman 16y ago
  Enjoy things because you enjoy them. Not because they're "super expensive". I don't see why I have to buy a $10 wine when I don't derive enjoyment from them nearly as much as I do out of $30 bottles. Going out to a nice restaurant with friends, travelling the world and enjoying good food and fun activities all costs a decent amount of money, yet make me happy. As someone else in the comments said - you should want to acquire money to use towards the things you want, not for the sake of acquiring money. You like to do free stuff that just involves time. That's great. Other people enjoy restoring cars, going on vacations, building new companies, or food and travel like I do, and these require money as well as time. Ostentatious and pointless displays of money, or purchases which adversely affect your monetary base should be avoided, but not "just because".

gyardley 16y ago

Buying expensive wine - no, that doesn't make me happy. Drinking high-quality wine, which sometimes happens to be expensive - absolutely. I enjoy that very much. Claiming that my enjoyment of high-quality wine is an illusion because you can't see a difference is just arrogance. The same goes for the consumption of any other luxury good you might not have a taste for yourself.

_delirium 16y ago
I do think that there are high-quality things that are expensive, but I think people buy by price rather than by blind quality tests relatively frequently. There are good expensive wines, but the wine price/quality correlation is not very strong at all. If you actually know what you're buying and how to judge it, though, by all means buy whatever you want! I've personally been something of a beer aficionado for 5-6 years now, and I've seen this creeping into craft brewing quite a bit lately. Especially after the explosion in the last 1-2 years of mainstream popularity, there's now a very weak relationship between the quality of beer you get and whether you pay $3 or $30 for a 22-oz bottle. Tons of good stuff and crap across the spectrum, and increasingly manufacturers are pricing as a way of status-signaling rather than based on either cost or quality. There have even been cases of brewers rebadging the same recipe from a middle-range beer as high-end premium stuff with a fancy label, and it sells and gets good reviews! (But it doesn't do any better in blind taste tests.)