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At 9 months, he had completed his goal, and a family member fell ill. Wait, what was this? He got faced with a situation he couldn't handle with wise decision

by j_baker 15y ago

At 9 months, he had completed his goal, and a family member fell ill. Wait, what was this? He got faced with a situation he couldn't handle with wise decision-making, saving, and elbow grease and had to tap into his riches to get himself out? You know, the real problem is that he got a nice apartment and car. If he lived in a shack and walked everywhere, I bet he'd have been able to help his family member out. Was he just not trying, or was he trying and making bad decisions?

mapgrep 15y ago
This is an excellent point: Unexpected and unavoidable costs are precisely the sort of problem that have repeatedly been shown to thwart the accumulation of wealth among the poor. Ironically, the referenced book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Beginnings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Beginnings) was specifically written to rebut Barbara Ehrenreich's first person book on poverty, Nickel and Dimed. A major theme of that book is the debilitating impact of catastrophic costs, health care in particular, on the poor. "Without health insurance you risk a small cut becoming infected because you can afford neither a visit to the doctor nor antibiotics... [an] impacted wisdom tooth requir[ed] frantic calls to find a free dental clinic" was the NYTimes summary (http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/13/reviews/010513.13gallagt.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/13/reviews/010513.13galla...) So the book referenced by the grandparent comment was derailed exactly as predicted in the very book it was trying to rebut. It is not only the poor who like "things that make life less boring." We all do, and I'd argue we all need these things for sanity. That's why I don't beat myself up too hard for occasionally wasting time doing things like, say, posting comments on Hackers News.
burgerbrain 15y ago
The only reason he had to help his relative when they fell ill is because although he was playing poor, he technically still had the money. Refusing to help the family member for the sake of making a point would be highly unethical. Had he actually been that poor (only 5k in his name at the time), then he would have been under no real obligation to drop everything and support that family member.
- mapgrep 15y ago
  If you are right, and money is "the only reason he had to help his relative," that would actually prove his experiment failed -- that for all his pluck, his savings of $5,000 were not sufficient to help a sick relative. The fact that his relatives tend to be better off than those of the genuine poor would only reinforce this. As it happens, his experiment might not actually be a failure, because what you're saying seems dubious -- people help sick relatives for all kinds of reasons beyond possessing money. If he quit the experiment to contribute love or support, for example, that does not conclusively prove it wrong (although it does raise the issue that it would be much harder for a poor person to contribute such support to a sick relative -- time is not free and quitting a job has more dire consequences when you're poor).
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    In absence of money, he would be unable to help the relative. The reason why he helped is because it's human to do so. The reason why that was an option is because he had money.
- j_baker 15y ago
  I see. So you're saying if he did really only have 5k to his name, that family member wouldn't have gotten any help from him and could have died. But hey, he'd have been in the right though, wouldn't he have? That's what's important after all. The family member's concerns are only secondary.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    He certainly wouldn't be in the wrong. 5k won't get you anything as far as medical care in the US goes. If he were unable to do anything, how could he possibly be in the wrong for not doing anything? He could have continued to pretend like he only had 5k, and like someone with only that much money been unable to do a thing, but then he would be wrong. What he did was not, and what anyone else would have had to do wouldn't be either.
    - 15y ago

by j_baker 15y ago

mapgrep 15y ago

This is an excellent point: Unexpected and unavoidable costs are precisely the sort of problem that have repeatedly been shown to thwart the accumulation of wealth among the poor. Ironically, the referenced book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Beginnings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Beginnings) was specifically written to rebut Barbara Ehrenreich's first person book on poverty, Nickel and Dimed. A major theme of that book is the debilitating impact of catastrophic costs, health care in particular, on the poor. "Without health insurance you risk a small cut becoming infected because you can afford neither a visit to the doctor nor antibiotics... [an] impacted wisdom tooth requir[ed] frantic calls to find a free dental clinic" was the NYTimes summary (http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/13/reviews/010513.13gallagt.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/13/reviews/010513.13galla...) So the book referenced by the grandparent comment was derailed exactly as predicted in the very book it was trying to rebut. It is not only the poor who like "things that make life less boring." We all do, and I'd argue we all need these things for sanity. That's why I don't beat myself up too hard for occasionally wasting time doing things like, say, posting comments on Hackers News.

burgerbrain 15y ago

The only reason he had to help his relative when they fell ill is because although he was playing poor, he technically still had the money. Refusing to help the family member for the sake of making a point would be highly unethical. Had he actually been that poor (only 5k in his name at the time), then he would have been under no real obligation to drop everything and support that family member.

mapgrep 15y ago
If you are right, and money is "the only reason he had to help his relative," that would actually prove his experiment failed -- that for all his pluck, his savings of $5,000 were not sufficient to help a sick relative. The fact that his relatives tend to be better off than those of the genuine poor would only reinforce this. As it happens, his experiment might not actually be a failure, because what you're saying seems dubious -- people help sick relatives for all kinds of reasons beyond possessing money. If he quit the experiment to contribute love or support, for example, that does not conclusively prove it wrong (although it does raise the issue that it would be much harder for a poor person to contribute such support to a sick relative -- time is not free and quitting a job has more dire consequences when you're poor).
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  In absence of money, he would be unable to help the relative. The reason why he helped is because it's human to do so. The reason why that was an option is because he had money.
j_baker 15y ago
I see. So you're saying if he did really only have 5k to his name, that family member wouldn't have gotten any help from him and could have died. But hey, he'd have been in the right though, wouldn't he have? That's what's important after all. The family member's concerns are only secondary.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  He certainly wouldn't be in the wrong. 5k won't get you anything as far as medical care in the US goes. If he were unable to do anything, how could he possibly be in the wrong for not doing anything? He could have continued to pretend like he only had 5k, and like someone with only that much money been unable to do a thing, but then he would be wrong. What he did was not, and what anyone else would have had to do wouldn't be either.
  - 15y ago