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In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of w

In this job market, in this political environment, with Luigi Mangione a Bonnie-and-Clyde-tier folk hero, the bit you quoted was perhaps a clue to the lack of wisdom in humblebragging that you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin. I imagine that I will be the bad guy for pointing this out. (Perhaps even to myself, considering that there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is.)

walletdrainer 11mo ago
This feels like Reddit leaking over a little bit. Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental. Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money. News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism. FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)
- ok_dad 11mo ago
  It's not reddit leaking, it's normal people leaking into your weird millionaire world. I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants. I'm not going to sit here and preach and make you bored, but consider what good you could do with that money, if only your ass and thighs were slightly more uncomfortable than they are today. Especially now when people around the world are dealing with 2x the food costs of a year or a few ago. Also, HN is a fine place to complain about capitalism, maybe a few of you capitalists will have it click in your brains that other people are struggling and you can do something about it other than sitting on a cloud.
  - walletdrainer 11mo ago
    I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough? (And yes, taxes are a voluntary donation in my case. I could move less than a mile across the border to Monaco and incorporate elsewhere if I wanted to pay ~0%) Of course, when I spend 10000 euros in the Loro Piana boutique or anywhere really, 20% of that goes to the government too. Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much? Figuring that out seems like another full time job, and the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
    - robocat 11mo ago
      Everybody seems to have an opinion on what someone more wealthy than they are should spend their money on. Unfortunately we don't get to look at what the commenter earns or spend... A normal car weekly payment in the US is ridiculously wasteful. If you live in the US its almost a given that you are ridiculously wealthy in comparison to many in the world. A normal overseas trip is ridiculously wasteful. It's hard to consider what an average person in the world would think is wasteful, because with our common developed country expenses we don't feel like millionaires. We couldn't even ask a person with an average world income to comment, since do they even have the free time to waste? (edits)
      - ok_dad 11mo ago
        Whataboutism isn’t going to solve the problem of inequality. Compare me to many others and you can say the same things as I said to GP, however there’s a clear difference that isn’t very subtle between me buying a compact car and GP buying a few pairs of those pants for the same cost. There’s this argument that people make that goes something like, “the wealthy give their fair share why sour they pay more than a lot income person and get called out for not giving more?” I don’t believe that’s their fair share, is why I ask them to give way more. Do you think a person who starts 100 businesses is working harder than a single mom with a few kids? Why did they deserve the lions share of the profits over their employees? These are some of the questions I have they could be relevant. Like I said, I don’t want to bore anyone, it’s not like the wealthy have ever been in touch with the common man, for millennia. I’m certainly not going to convince anyone, I’m no good at arguing and my arguments tend to be rough and full of holes, but at least I’m not a millionaire claiming I couldn’t or shouldn’t do more because I’m a special hard worker who deserves every penny.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- botanrice 11mo ago
  Sorry for jumping on this off-topic but I'm a junior engineer hoping to build out some of those small online businesses but I've been a bit unsure of how to go about it. When you say small online businesses do you mean like micro-SaaS kind of things? Or like tangible items? Sorry, just curious :)
  - walletdrainer 11mo ago
    Micro-SaaS and digital products. Just figure out a good stack to work with for billing and try to crank out one little thing a week that will be useful to someone. One of my best projects just sells some pdf files you can submit to the government to achieve a thing you would usually unnecessarily hire a lawyer for. Another in a similar vein simply offers an easy-to-fill PDF version of a government form that does not exist online, and a nice HTML interface that will help you mostly automatically fill it. Most of these took less than a day to build and take next to no maintenance. Both of the above earn more than $100k annually. Just make sure your customers can get in touch with you very easily so you don’t end up with broken websites running on autopilot charging customers for broken stuff, I made that mistake once and ended up having to call a bunch of people to apologise when I discovered what had been happening.
basisword 11mo ago
He wasn't 'humblebragging'. He was answering a question on an anonymous forum honestly.
- boston_clone 11mo ago
  > at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial this is probably just regular bragging, right? now, discussing how donating $100 versus $10k to a cause or community being negligible to their economic security would at least front-load some humility, but capitalists gon' capitalist. oops! thank god this is Hacker News though, and not some safe-haven for boring rich people!
  - walletdrainer 11mo ago
    Can you describe a way of communicating that same point without it being bragging in your eyes? I guess I could’ve engaged in the gymnastics of saying SWIM like they used to do on some drug forums :)
    - boston_clone 11mo ago
      Sure, you could just omit that entire sentence, no? Retains readability but avoids unnecessary specifics.
      - walletdrainer 11mo ago
        I think without that sentence it fails to communicate the absurdity of trying to figure out a generic answer to whether or not something is worth it. With a total rewrite I could certainly have communicated that point in a much more clinical manner. I just don’t see the point.
      - marknutter 11mo ago
        No it doesn't. He's establishing the fact that he can afford very expensive clothes and why, from personal experience, he believes them to be worth it if you can afford it. If you omit the entire sentence the whole meaning of the post changes. I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.
jazzyjackson 11mo ago
Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.
awakeasleep 11mo ago
I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him
- Teever 11mo ago
  I agree. It's interesting how in Norway, Sweden, and Finland people's tax returns are public information and it seems to work out just fine.
tavavex 11mo ago
> you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin Maybe they're obscenely rich, or perhaps they're just living up to their username?
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  Thankfully this username was related to a post I created this account to comment on, not me personally :)
basisword 11mo ago
>> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is. Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.

walletdrainer 11mo ago

This feels like Reddit leaking over a little bit. Let me remind you that this is a forum operated by a VC fund looking for people to give lots of money to so they can build billion dollar businesses. Those who succeed are routinely celebrated here, but actually discussing that money being spent rapidly becomes judgmental. Hard to reconcile it being super cool to build an unicorn (a cute term we’ve come up with to describe billion dollar startups which have made their founders tremendously wealthy), but somewhat disgusting to actually have or spend that money. News.ycombinator.com seems like the wrong place to complain about capitalism. FWIW I don’t even get a Silicon Valley salary, am not in any way extraordinary, but have spent 10+ years building 100+ small online businesses out of which none have been particularly successful (but in total the little streams add up)

ok_dad 11mo ago
It's not reddit leaking, it's normal people leaking into your weird millionaire world. I say weird because 99.9% of people in the world would consider it on a range of weird all the way to unethical that you spend tens of thousands on pants. I'm not going to sit here and preach and make you bored, but consider what good you could do with that money, if only your ass and thighs were slightly more uncomfortable than they are today. Especially now when people around the world are dealing with 2x the food costs of a year or a few ago. Also, HN is a fine place to complain about capitalism, maybe a few of you capitalists will have it click in your brains that other people are struggling and you can do something about it other than sitting on a cloud.
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  I donate approximately 47.5% of everything I earn to the French government, is that not enough? (And yes, taxes are a voluntary donation in my case. I could move less than a mile across the border to Monaco and incorporate elsewhere if I wanted to pay ~0%) Of course, when I spend 10000 euros in the Loro Piana boutique or anywhere really, 20% of that goes to the government too. Could I afford give more? Sure! To whom? How much? Figuring that out seems like another full time job, and the track record of the effective altruism folks doesn’t seem all that great.
  - robocat 11mo ago
    Everybody seems to have an opinion on what someone more wealthy than they are should spend their money on. Unfortunately we don't get to look at what the commenter earns or spend... A normal car weekly payment in the US is ridiculously wasteful. If you live in the US its almost a given that you are ridiculously wealthy in comparison to many in the world. A normal overseas trip is ridiculously wasteful. It's hard to consider what an average person in the world would think is wasteful, because with our common developed country expenses we don't feel like millionaires. We couldn't even ask a person with an average world income to comment, since do they even have the free time to waste? (edits)
    - ok_dad 11mo ago
      Whataboutism isn’t going to solve the problem of inequality. Compare me to many others and you can say the same things as I said to GP, however there’s a clear difference that isn’t very subtle between me buying a compact car and GP buying a few pairs of those pants for the same cost. There’s this argument that people make that goes something like, “the wealthy give their fair share why sour they pay more than a lot income person and get called out for not giving more?” I don’t believe that’s their fair share, is why I ask them to give way more. Do you think a person who starts 100 businesses is working harder than a single mom with a few kids? Why did they deserve the lions share of the profits over their employees? These are some of the questions I have they could be relevant. Like I said, I don’t want to bore anyone, it’s not like the wealthy have ever been in touch with the common man, for millennia. I’m certainly not going to convince anyone, I’m no good at arguing and my arguments tend to be rough and full of holes, but at least I’m not a millionaire claiming I couldn’t or shouldn’t do more because I’m a special hard worker who deserves every penny.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
botanrice 11mo ago
Sorry for jumping on this off-topic but I'm a junior engineer hoping to build out some of those small online businesses but I've been a bit unsure of how to go about it. When you say small online businesses do you mean like micro-SaaS kind of things? Or like tangible items? Sorry, just curious :)
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  Micro-SaaS and digital products. Just figure out a good stack to work with for billing and try to crank out one little thing a week that will be useful to someone. One of my best projects just sells some pdf files you can submit to the government to achieve a thing you would usually unnecessarily hire a lawyer for. Another in a similar vein simply offers an easy-to-fill PDF version of a government form that does not exist online, and a nice HTML interface that will help you mostly automatically fill it. Most of these took less than a day to build and take next to no maintenance. Both of the above earn more than $100k annually. Just make sure your customers can get in touch with you very easily so you don’t end up with broken websites running on autopilot charging customers for broken stuff, I made that mistake once and ended up having to call a bunch of people to apologise when I discovered what had been happening.

basisword 11mo ago

He wasn't 'humblebragging'. He was answering a question on an anonymous forum honestly.

boston_clone 11mo ago
> at my income level the price difference between that and Zara is pretty much immaterial this is probably just regular bragging, right? now, discussing how donating $100 versus $10k to a cause or community being negligible to their economic security would at least front-load some humility, but capitalists gon' capitalist. oops! thank god this is Hacker News though, and not some safe-haven for boring rich people!
- walletdrainer 11mo ago
  Can you describe a way of communicating that same point without it being bragging in your eyes? I guess I could’ve engaged in the gymnastics of saying SWIM like they used to do on some drug forums :)
  - boston_clone 11mo ago
    Sure, you could just omit that entire sentence, no? Retains readability but avoids unnecessary specifics.
    - walletdrainer 11mo ago
      I think without that sentence it fails to communicate the absurdity of trying to figure out a generic answer to whether or not something is worth it. With a total rewrite I could certainly have communicated that point in a much more clinical manner. I just don’t see the point.
    - marknutter 11mo ago
      No it doesn't. He's establishing the fact that he can afford very expensive clothes and why, from personal experience, he believes them to be worth it if you can afford it. If you omit the entire sentence the whole meaning of the post changes. I think you may just be upset because he's wealthier than you.

jazzyjackson 11mo ago

Luigi wouldn't have been famous if he offed a guy for wearing tailored pants and a rolex, he's famous because the CEO was a scapegoat of everything wrong with health insurance.

awakeasleep 11mo ago

I don’t make nearly that kind of money, but I don’t think people who do should keep it a secret like you’re trying to enforce some norm of secrecy on him

Teever 11mo ago
I agree. It's interesting how in Norway, Sweden, and Finland people's tax returns are public information and it seems to work out just fine.

tavavex 11mo ago

> you spend a family's annual food budget on 5 pounds of spun sheep keratin Maybe they're obscenely rich, or perhaps they're just living up to their username?

walletdrainer 11mo ago
Thankfully this username was related to a post I created this account to comment on, not me personally :)

basisword 11mo ago

>> there's certainly utility in rich people yapping incautiously about the reasons others might want to turn on an Enes Yilmazer video and figure out where the panic room is. Can you explain what you mean by this? I hope I'm misunderstanding it.