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In most every discussion I've come across that touches on money advice, I've see a variant of this comment "This world view doesn't incorporate (my) reality of

In most every discussion I've come across that touches on money advice, I've see a variant of this comment "This world view doesn't incorporate (my) reality of the poorest of the Western world and is so in invalid and offensive". I'm not sure what motivates this. If you invert the situation and someone made a list with stuff like "use coupons", would rich people come by and say "this is dumb because it only saves you $0.50 and I (as a rich person) don't care about $0.50"? People have different starting conditions and different current situations, if what's described isn't relevant to yours--why does it bother you so? Let the people who find value in it find value in it.

johnchristopher 5y ago
> People have different starting conditions and different current situations, if what's described isn't relevant to yours--why does it bother you so? Let the people who find value in it find value in it. Those advice are most of the time given as being universal, that's why.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Explicitly denied in the text: > Advice like these are not laws. They are like hats. If one doesn’t fit, try another.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    I am referring to this, not the article: > In most every discussion I've come across that touches on money advice, I've see a variant of this comment "This world view doesn't incorporate (my) reality of the poorest of the Western world and is so in invalid and offensive".
andi999 5y ago
Rich people might just follow your advice.. Warren Buffet bought Bill Gates lunch at McD with coupons. https://www.pinterest.de/pin/837880705644592185/?amp_client_id=CLIENT_ID(_)&mweb_unauth_id=%7B%7Bdefault.session%7D%7D&from_amp_pin_page=true https://www.pinterest.de/pin/837880705644592185/?amp_client_...
monkeydreams 5y ago
> I'm not sure what motivates this. Privilege and meta-privilege, mainly, and the underlying assumption this privilege engenders that the poor are morally or mentally deficient. An example: there was an article posted on hn recently titled (and I'm paraphrasing here) "How to be rich". To utilise this advice one had to be already financially comfortable, with safety nets and backups and whatever to begin with, and, from this position of comfort, to rationally accept and take large risks. The article carried with it the implication that, now that you have the advice in your hands, only the willfully stupid or lazy will remain poor. So, in the end, a) one feels judged, b) one has wasted one's time on an article/video/etc that c) promised and failed to relieve the crushing stress burden and mental load that poverty brings. Being poor, particularly during your formative years, carries with it a debt that is never paid. If you are poor and have issues with health (physical and mental) you are very, very unlikely to ever be rich in any objective sense. Being poor affects your patterns of thought, your behaviours, your language, and your culture. But the worst of it is that poverty robs you of the opportunity to do things like "move fast and break things" that folk on hn seem to think is so simple and easy. If you are poor, you only get one roll of the die.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > Being poor affects your patterns of thought, your behaviours, your language, and your culture. Yes, and being an adult gives the opportunity to change your patterns, behavior, language, and culture. I've had a lot of destructive attitudes and behaviors formed young that I've discarded because they don't work. It's not easy, but it can be done. I still have a number of bad habits to work on :-/ > If you are poor, you only get one roll of the die. In America, there are more rolls. For example, migrants walk a thousand miles to get in, have nothing, then they start businesses. Oprah went from welfare to billionaire, for example.
- googillionaire 5y ago
  If "how to be rich" requires you to be comfortable, find an article on "how to be financially comfortable" and act on that advice first. Then come back to the "how to be rich" advice. It isn't rocket science. And your ramblings about having no opportunities when poor are simply not true anymore. Even poor people can get a cheap computer and internet and have access to all the information in the world. Running a web site only costs 1$/month. Many startup founders famously slept on the floor in cramped offices while starting up. And if you really live in such a shitty place, you can still sell drugs and become rich that way. I sympathize with the poor, but I am tired of these "poor people are such victims, there is nothing they can do to change their condition, ever. They are just victims" type of comments that pop up in every discussion about wealth.
Baeocystin 5y ago
Because downplaying the absolute reality that is the importance of money to survival is terrible advice, no matter what a person's current financial status.
- biren34 5y ago
  I have no particular beef with you, so please don't take it that way--but "the absolute reality that is the importance of money to survival" is a subjective assessment that does not have to be (and is not) shared by 100% of the population. Again, in extremis: Buddhist monks. And if Buddhist monks exist (and don't care about money), then surely there can be a spectrum of what money means to different people? Maybe there's even a more successful attitude for earning money than maintaining a singular focus on monotonically-increasing your inventory of it? Maybe past a certain point, the best thing to do with money is to risk it? (Which doesn't even imply forgetting or debating its importance?) You would be fair to say "this advice doesn't apply to me" or "this advice only applies when conditions X, Y, and Z have been met" or even "this advice is wrong". However, the statement that this advice is "insulting" creates a toxic environment. No one will ever be able to anticipate all the ways they might cross/deny/fail to recognize someone else's experience or what they "know to be true". Nor is that anyone's job. After all, we're all just stumbling through this thing-called-life trying to do our best. If people persist in taking offense to comments made by strangers on the internet who have never heard of them, the only logical outcome is to exclude those people from the discussion. Is this what you would choose for yourself? At best, this makes it harder to for me to find like-minded people to have the discussions I want to have--and at worst, it deprives people from being exposed to things that they might find valuable in those discussions, because those discussions are no longer being had in the open where they could be stumbled upon. Whatever you choose to do from this point forward is no skin off my back. My point is that, in the face of such reactions, my response is to take my very important (to me), real-world discussions about maximizing my life-given-my-circumstances away from the people who would comment in this way. Anyway, this is not a debate I need to win. Maybe you want to hear this stuff, maybe you don't.
  - andi999 5y ago
    Exactly. Would the advice 'listen to a beautiful peace of music' insulting to deaf people?
guerrilla 5y ago
I think you missed the point which wasn't to express offense but to disagree based on differential priorities. It's a Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing: if lower needs are not meet, some of the advice would be detrimental if followed. I think it's a fair criticism when the audience is not delinieated like it isn't in the OP.
- Baeocystin 5y ago
  For what it's worth, yours is the interpretation I was going for.
- biren34 5y ago
  The comment was that the points about money "are, frankly, insulting". I'd call yours a radical interpretation of the text.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Well, it's apparently the correct interpretation according to the author (see sibling comment.) I don't think expressing sentiment in addition to the point makes that sentiment the point.
    - biren34 5y ago
      Fair enough.

johnchristopher 5y ago

> People have different starting conditions and different current situations, if what's described isn't relevant to yours--why does it bother you so? Let the people who find value in it find value in it. Those advice are most of the time given as being universal, that's why.

nine_k 5y ago
Explicitly denied in the text: > Advice like these are not laws. They are like hats. If one doesn’t fit, try another.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  I am referring to this, not the article: > In most every discussion I've come across that touches on money advice, I've see a variant of this comment "This world view doesn't incorporate (my) reality of the poorest of the Western world and is so in invalid and offensive".

andi999 5y ago

Rich people might just follow your advice.. Warren Buffet bought Bill Gates lunch at McD with coupons. https://www.pinterest.de/pin/837880705644592185/?amp_client_id=CLIENT_ID(_)&mweb_unauth_id=%7B%7Bdefault.session%7D%7D&from_amp_pin_page=true https://www.pinterest.de/pin/837880705644592185/?amp_client_...

monkeydreams 5y ago

> I'm not sure what motivates this. Privilege and meta-privilege, mainly, and the underlying assumption this privilege engenders that the poor are morally or mentally deficient. An example: there was an article posted on hn recently titled (and I'm paraphrasing here) "How to be rich". To utilise this advice one had to be already financially comfortable, with safety nets and backups and whatever to begin with, and, from this position of comfort, to rationally accept and take large risks. The article carried with it the implication that, now that you have the advice in your hands, only the willfully stupid or lazy will remain poor. So, in the end, a) one feels judged, b) one has wasted one's time on an article/video/etc that c) promised and failed to relieve the crushing stress burden and mental load that poverty brings. Being poor, particularly during your formative years, carries with it a debt that is never paid. If you are poor and have issues with health (physical and mental) you are very, very unlikely to ever be rich in any objective sense. Being poor affects your patterns of thought, your behaviours, your language, and your culture. But the worst of it is that poverty robs you of the opportunity to do things like "move fast and break things" that folk on hn seem to think is so simple and easy. If you are poor, you only get one roll of the die.

WalterBright 5y ago
> Being poor affects your patterns of thought, your behaviours, your language, and your culture. Yes, and being an adult gives the opportunity to change your patterns, behavior, language, and culture. I've had a lot of destructive attitudes and behaviors formed young that I've discarded because they don't work. It's not easy, but it can be done. I still have a number of bad habits to work on :-/ > If you are poor, you only get one roll of the die. In America, there are more rolls. For example, migrants walk a thousand miles to get in, have nothing, then they start businesses. Oprah went from welfare to billionaire, for example.
googillionaire 5y ago
If "how to be rich" requires you to be comfortable, find an article on "how to be financially comfortable" and act on that advice first. Then come back to the "how to be rich" advice. It isn't rocket science. And your ramblings about having no opportunities when poor are simply not true anymore. Even poor people can get a cheap computer and internet and have access to all the information in the world. Running a web site only costs 1$/month. Many startup founders famously slept on the floor in cramped offices while starting up. And if you really live in such a shitty place, you can still sell drugs and become rich that way. I sympathize with the poor, but I am tired of these "poor people are such victims, there is nothing they can do to change their condition, ever. They are just victims" type of comments that pop up in every discussion about wealth.

Baeocystin 5y ago

Because downplaying the absolute reality that is the importance of money to survival is terrible advice, no matter what a person's current financial status.

biren34 5y ago
I have no particular beef with you, so please don't take it that way--but "the absolute reality that is the importance of money to survival" is a subjective assessment that does not have to be (and is not) shared by 100% of the population. Again, in extremis: Buddhist monks. And if Buddhist monks exist (and don't care about money), then surely there can be a spectrum of what money means to different people? Maybe there's even a more successful attitude for earning money than maintaining a singular focus on monotonically-increasing your inventory of it? Maybe past a certain point, the best thing to do with money is to risk it? (Which doesn't even imply forgetting or debating its importance?) You would be fair to say "this advice doesn't apply to me" or "this advice only applies when conditions X, Y, and Z have been met" or even "this advice is wrong". However, the statement that this advice is "insulting" creates a toxic environment. No one will ever be able to anticipate all the ways they might cross/deny/fail to recognize someone else's experience or what they "know to be true". Nor is that anyone's job. After all, we're all just stumbling through this thing-called-life trying to do our best. If people persist in taking offense to comments made by strangers on the internet who have never heard of them, the only logical outcome is to exclude those people from the discussion. Is this what you would choose for yourself? At best, this makes it harder to for me to find like-minded people to have the discussions I want to have--and at worst, it deprives people from being exposed to things that they might find valuable in those discussions, because those discussions are no longer being had in the open where they could be stumbled upon. Whatever you choose to do from this point forward is no skin off my back. My point is that, in the face of such reactions, my response is to take my very important (to me), real-world discussions about maximizing my life-given-my-circumstances away from the people who would comment in this way. Anyway, this is not a debate I need to win. Maybe you want to hear this stuff, maybe you don't.
- andi999 5y ago
  Exactly. Would the advice 'listen to a beautiful peace of music' insulting to deaf people?

guerrilla 5y ago

I think you missed the point which wasn't to express offense but to disagree based on differential priorities. It's a Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing: if lower needs are not meet, some of the advice would be detrimental if followed. I think it's a fair criticism when the audience is not delinieated like it isn't in the OP.

Baeocystin 5y ago
For what it's worth, yours is the interpretation I was going for.
biren34 5y ago
The comment was that the points about money "are, frankly, insulting". I'd call yours a radical interpretation of the text.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Well, it's apparently the correct interpretation according to the author (see sibling comment.) I don't think expressing sentiment in addition to the point makes that sentiment the point.
  - biren34 5y ago
    Fair enough.