6 ms·

I observe this at the grocery store. The ones I visit have people from a wide range of economic status. When I go in, I grab what I need and don't think about p

by scott_s 13y ago

I observe this at the grocery store. The ones I visit have people from a wide range of economic status. When I go in, I grab what I need and don't think about price - it's almost always just the staples like bread, milk, fruit and eggs, and I know with certainty that I can afford it. And that I don't think about price is literally true until I'm told how much it costs, then I pay it, then I promptly stop thinking about it. I know my eating habits, I know my income, and I know that my eating habits are well within my budget, so it's not worth spending any more cycles on it. Contrast this with the people who, upon learning that some item in their basket is not actually on sale, put a different item back. Or split the cost of the groceries across a WIC card and cash. Or use five coupons for a small basket. For me, going to get groceries is an afterthought - I'm out of certain food, I'm out of my place, so I'll pick them up. But for some other people, it's clear to me that visiting the grocery store is an exercise in risk management and weighing priorities. In other words, being poor is hard work.

angersock 13y ago
One of the most interesting domestic exercises is to think about how much different items cost in terms of other items. A steak dinner (say, $50) is worth just a bit more than 3 double-meat Chipotle burritos with drink and chips and guac (say, $14). Each of those burrito meals is worth a bit more than 4 dozen eggs (say, fancy-pants eggs at $3/dz.) Each of those dozen eggs is worth 20 packs of shitty ramen ($.15/pack). It's an exercise worth practicing, lest you find yourself one day needing to use that calculus. EDIT: This is also why buying Mississippi Mud ($4/qt. of passable black & tan) or Arizona RX energy drinks (~$1/can) is a good investment, as is rolling your own cigarettes or smoking pipes.
- pfisch 13y ago
  I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say smoking tobacco is most certainly not a good investment.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    We all have our addictions. Being automatically prejudiced against one that happens to shorten your life isn't as useful as realizing you may be addicted to something far worse, e.g. spending most of your time thinking about dating or worrying how to shape yourself to fit the die that some institution has cast for your life, like college or work.
    - ramchip 13y ago
      To be honest, I don't think these are worse than smoking at all. They sound more like phases in a normal person's life.
      - sillysaurus2 13y ago
        Take the idea of evolution. As pg points out in his essay, the reason evolution was so difficult for people to accept is that species seem to be unchanging, static fixtures. It would be absurd to suggest that a dolphin used to walk around on land, yet evidence shows that they did, a couple million years ago. It turns out that the idea of evolution is useful in other contexts. Most of the best software was written by following a procedure strikingly similar to how a creature evolves. The idea of "release early, release often" is the idea of evolution applied to the process of writing software. In fact, this idea is so valuable that we probably wouldn't be having this conversation without it, because neither Viaweb nor Arc nor YC would exist. It was normal for society to be unaware of evolution the same way we're unaware of the spin of the Earth. And when people started to look at the evidence, it was normal for society to reject it. It wasn't until Darwin, an established scientist near the end of his life, that society allowed the idea to take hold. The consequence is that those who live a life that society lays out for them are almost universally denied access to the best ideas, because the best ideas are the ones you haven't thought of yet. It's tempting to believe that you're resistant to the effects of society laying out a normal path for you to follow. Aren't we free to think whatever we want? After all, no one can prevent us from thinking, right? Actually, that's exactly what happens. "Here is where you live. Here is where you play. Here is where you learn. Here is where you work. These are the hours you may relax." That cycle is too powerful to resist unless you actively try to break it. It stamps its seal onto your brain. For 16 hours a day, your thoughts are not your own -- they are owned by whomever pays you. The reason is because even though you are technically free to think whatever you want whenever you want, most people never do. At work, people think about work, or about coworkers. At school, you think about school or (more commonly) about other students. That sounds quite a lot like an addiction. In the same way a drug user becomes obsessed with acquiring their fix, most people are obsessed with living whatever life society tells them to be living. And in practice that means most people are limiting themselves to a small fraction of their potential, because your potential stems from your ideas, and your ideas come from your thoughts, and your thoughts are mostly not your own. I believe those addictions are the real ones to be avoided. And avoiding smoking is good while you're at it, but probably doesn't matter as much.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Each of those dozen eggs is worth 20 packs of shitty ramen Careful: at a point, qualitative aspects matter. Your eggs are proteins and fats (both of which are essential to survival -- your body cannot manufacture certain proteins and EFAs). Ramen is virtually 100% carbohydrate. While it's going to provide you with energy, it's not going to sustain other essential bodily functions. And I really have a hard time parsing tobacco consumption as fiscally responsible under any terms.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    As far as nutritional value goes, eggs are a great deal. Packed with protein your body can use and easy to prepare.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      I do love me my eggs. Not just protein, but healthy fats and tons of nutrients in those yolks.
    - mabhatter 13y ago
      you know, you could grow a whole baby chicken from one of those!
      - watt 13y ago
        not from a store-bought unfertilized egg, no.
        krisgee 13y ago
        I think that was just a comment on why there's so much nutrition packing in an egg not any comment on the viability of a given egg.
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  Yeah, careful with using that ramen as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's the kind of food that will mess up your health long-term.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    This is a weird statement: I ate at a ramen restaurant a couple of nights ago. It was quite healthy, I think I had pork, egg, spinach and seaweed in mine. There are plenty of good ramen restaurants branded from Japan. It is not the best food, but it is not the worst food either.
    - graeme 13y ago
      In context, I think ramen should be read as "only ramen".
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Especially since what was referred to was "packs of shitty ramen."
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      They're not thinking of ramen-at-the-noodle-house ramen. They're thinking of nothing-but-cheap-dry-noodles-and-salt ramen.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Ah, I forget hacker news has an American biased perspective, where ramen just means cheap crap you get in packets, not the fancy stuff we have in Asia. And of course, ramen in Japanese just means "Chinese noodles", plenty of people in china eat them everyday in china and they are just fine. Imagine if some Chinese poster said "Yeah, careful with using that white bread as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's the kind of food that will mess up your health long-term". Isn't that weird o first glance?
Swizec 13y ago
For an even more interesting observation: I have grown up not quite in poverty, but still in a single parent home with mum having to work multiple jobs at times to support me and my sister. Thinking about money has rubbed off on me. Nowadays I personally have zero money problems on account of my freelancing business doing great. But going to the grocery store habits learned over half of my life still kick in. Do I buy $5 rice or $3 rice? Does that pack of tuna cost less per kilogram than that other pack of tuna even though they're the same brand? And so on. Buying steak at a restaurant still feels like "Holy crap man, what are you doing, chicken will be just as nice and it's like half as expensive." I suspect it will take years to unlearn this and I honestly envy people whose parents did not instill this kind of thinking in them. It looks easier.
- lightbritefight 13y ago
  Easier doesn't mean better. You learned risk aversion and prioritization skills from your mothers habits. The fact is that you don't need to employ that aversion at the moment, but its a tool you have if you do need it. The number of people I see who blow though heroic gobs of money astonishes me sometimes. I realize that my metric is entirely variable, but I'm talking about paying 2-3x for a similar good simply because its closer at hand, or offers some entirely minor benefit. This behavior isn't an issue when the wind is at your back, but I've had the unfortunate experience of helping, and eventually just watching, people that had a bad turn that just got worse because they didn't know how to stop their bad spending habits when they couldn't support them anymore. Your mother gave you a gift. Its a gift with a mental toll, but in the long run its a fine price to pay for it.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    There are a lot of people out there who make a ton of money and still stuggle financially. For some people, income is like RAM or CPU power: whatever you upgrade to, you'll fill it all up soon. I also play little games in the store with trying to find deals and such, even though I don't need to. It's far better than the other way around. Certainly there's a middle ground, but it seems to be really hard to hit.
Yetanfou 13y ago
Ah, but keeping track of cost/benefit is a solemn duty in a capitalist economy. The only power you as an individual consumer have against vendors and producers is the power of choice - the choice to buy which product at what price at which location. No matter whether you have plenty of money or have to turn each currency-unit twice before spending it, if you forget about this you will get pilfered. You will lose track of current market prices for commodities and end up paying through the nose because the vendor in your location has noticed he can increase prices without losing business, thus increasing profits. Others who have less to spend will take their business elsewhere and before you know it you'll have created yourself the groceries-equivalent of an Apple store. So if you happen to see fewer and fewer people swapping products in their baskets because they are not on sale or using coupons or hands of small change or whatnot, take heed and do some comparison shopping.

by scott_s 13y ago

angersock 13y ago

One of the most interesting domestic exercises is to think about how much different items cost in terms of other items. A steak dinner (say, $50) is worth just a bit more than 3 double-meat Chipotle burritos with drink and chips and guac (say, $14). Each of those burrito meals is worth a bit more than 4 dozen eggs (say, fancy-pants eggs at $3/dz.) Each of those dozen eggs is worth 20 packs of shitty ramen ($.15/pack). It's an exercise worth practicing, lest you find yourself one day needing to use that calculus. EDIT: This is also why buying Mississippi Mud ($4/qt. of passable black & tan) or Arizona RX energy drinks (~$1/can) is a good investment, as is rolling your own cigarettes or smoking pipes.

pfisch 13y ago
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say smoking tobacco is most certainly not a good investment.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  We all have our addictions. Being automatically prejudiced against one that happens to shorten your life isn't as useful as realizing you may be addicted to something far worse, e.g. spending most of your time thinking about dating or worrying how to shape yourself to fit the die that some institution has cast for your life, like college or work.
  - ramchip 13y ago
    To be honest, I don't think these are worse than smoking at all. They sound more like phases in a normal person's life.
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      Take the idea of evolution. As pg points out in his essay, the reason evolution was so difficult for people to accept is that species seem to be unchanging, static fixtures. It would be absurd to suggest that a dolphin used to walk around on land, yet evidence shows that they did, a couple million years ago. It turns out that the idea of evolution is useful in other contexts. Most of the best software was written by following a procedure strikingly similar to how a creature evolves. The idea of "release early, release often" is the idea of evolution applied to the process of writing software. In fact, this idea is so valuable that we probably wouldn't be having this conversation without it, because neither Viaweb nor Arc nor YC would exist. It was normal for society to be unaware of evolution the same way we're unaware of the spin of the Earth. And when people started to look at the evidence, it was normal for society to reject it. It wasn't until Darwin, an established scientist near the end of his life, that society allowed the idea to take hold. The consequence is that those who live a life that society lays out for them are almost universally denied access to the best ideas, because the best ideas are the ones you haven't thought of yet. It's tempting to believe that you're resistant to the effects of society laying out a normal path for you to follow. Aren't we free to think whatever we want? After all, no one can prevent us from thinking, right? Actually, that's exactly what happens. "Here is where you live. Here is where you play. Here is where you learn. Here is where you work. These are the hours you may relax." That cycle is too powerful to resist unless you actively try to break it. It stamps its seal onto your brain. For 16 hours a day, your thoughts are not your own -- they are owned by whomever pays you. The reason is because even though you are technically free to think whatever you want whenever you want, most people never do. At work, people think about work, or about coworkers. At school, you think about school or (more commonly) about other students. That sounds quite a lot like an addiction. In the same way a drug user becomes obsessed with acquiring their fix, most people are obsessed with living whatever life society tells them to be living. And in practice that means most people are limiting themselves to a small fraction of their potential, because your potential stems from your ideas, and your ideas come from your thoughts, and your thoughts are mostly not your own. I believe those addictions are the real ones to be avoided. And avoiding smoking is good while you're at it, but probably doesn't matter as much.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Each of those dozen eggs is worth 20 packs of shitty ramen Careful: at a point, qualitative aspects matter. Your eggs are proteins and fats (both of which are essential to survival -- your body cannot manufacture certain proteins and EFAs). Ramen is virtually 100% carbohydrate. While it's going to provide you with energy, it's not going to sustain other essential bodily functions. And I really have a hard time parsing tobacco consumption as fiscally responsible under any terms.
- scott_s 13y ago
  As far as nutritional value goes, eggs are a great deal. Packed with protein your body can use and easy to prepare.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I do love me my eggs. Not just protein, but healthy fats and tons of nutrients in those yolks.
  - mabhatter 13y ago
    you know, you could grow a whole baby chicken from one of those!
    - watt 13y ago
      not from a store-bought unfertilized egg, no.
      - krisgee 13y ago
        I think that was just a comment on why there's so much nutrition packing in an egg not any comment on the viability of a given egg.
Florin_Andrei 13y ago
Yeah, careful with using that ramen as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's the kind of food that will mess up your health long-term.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  This is a weird statement: I ate at a ramen restaurant a couple of nights ago. It was quite healthy, I think I had pork, egg, spinach and seaweed in mine. There are plenty of good ramen restaurants branded from Japan. It is not the best food, but it is not the worst food either.
  - graeme 13y ago
    In context, I think ramen should be read as "only ramen".
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Especially since what was referred to was "packs of shitty ramen."
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    They're not thinking of ramen-at-the-noodle-house ramen. They're thinking of nothing-but-cheap-dry-noodles-and-salt ramen.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Ah, I forget hacker news has an American biased perspective, where ramen just means cheap crap you get in packets, not the fancy stuff we have in Asia. And of course, ramen in Japanese just means "Chinese noodles", plenty of people in china eat them everyday in china and they are just fine. Imagine if some Chinese poster said "Yeah, careful with using that white bread as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's the kind of food that will mess up your health long-term". Isn't that weird o first glance?

Swizec 13y ago

For an even more interesting observation: I have grown up not quite in poverty, but still in a single parent home with mum having to work multiple jobs at times to support me and my sister. Thinking about money has rubbed off on me. Nowadays I personally have zero money problems on account of my freelancing business doing great. But going to the grocery store habits learned over half of my life still kick in. Do I buy $5 rice or $3 rice? Does that pack of tuna cost less per kilogram than that other pack of tuna even though they're the same brand? And so on. Buying steak at a restaurant still feels like "Holy crap man, what are you doing, chicken will be just as nice and it's like half as expensive." I suspect it will take years to unlearn this and I honestly envy people whose parents did not instill this kind of thinking in them. It looks easier.

lightbritefight 13y ago
Easier doesn't mean better. You learned risk aversion and prioritization skills from your mothers habits. The fact is that you don't need to employ that aversion at the moment, but its a tool you have if you do need it. The number of people I see who blow though heroic gobs of money astonishes me sometimes. I realize that my metric is entirely variable, but I'm talking about paying 2-3x for a similar good simply because its closer at hand, or offers some entirely minor benefit. This behavior isn't an issue when the wind is at your back, but I've had the unfortunate experience of helping, and eventually just watching, people that had a bad turn that just got worse because they didn't know how to stop their bad spending habits when they couldn't support them anymore. Your mother gave you a gift. Its a gift with a mental toll, but in the long run its a fine price to pay for it.
- mikeash 13y ago
  There are a lot of people out there who make a ton of money and still stuggle financially. For some people, income is like RAM or CPU power: whatever you upgrade to, you'll fill it all up soon. I also play little games in the store with trying to find deals and such, even though I don't need to. It's far better than the other way around. Certainly there's a middle ground, but it seems to be really hard to hit.

Yetanfou 13y ago

Ah, but keeping track of cost/benefit is a solemn duty in a capitalist economy. The only power you as an individual consumer have against vendors and producers is the power of choice - the choice to buy which product at what price at which location. No matter whether you have plenty of money or have to turn each currency-unit twice before spending it, if you forget about this you will get pilfered. You will lose track of current market prices for commodities and end up paying through the nose because the vendor in your location has noticed he can increase prices without losing business, thus increasing profits. Others who have less to spend will take their business elsewhere and before you know it you'll have created yourself the groceries-equivalent of an Apple store. So if you happen to see fewer and fewer people swapping products in their baskets because they are not on sale or using coupons or hands of small change or whatnot, take heed and do some comparison shopping.