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277 points cebert | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.249s | source
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PostOnce ◴[] No.44361768[source]
Theoretically, credit should be used for one thing: to make more money. (not less)

However, instead of using it to buy or construct a machine to triple what you can produce in an hour, the average person is using it to delay having to work that hour at all, in exchange for having to work an hour and six minutes sometime later.

At some point, you run out of hours available and the house of cards collapses.

i.e., credit can buy time in the nearly literal sense, you can do an hour's work in half an hour because the money facilitates it, meaning you can now make more money. If instead of investing in work you're spending on play, then you end up with a time deficit.

or, e.g. you can buy 3 franchises in 3 months instead of 3 years (i.e. income from the 1 franchise), trading credit for time to make more money, instead of burning it. It'd have been nice had they taught me this in school.

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1. goldfishgold ◴[] No.44362254[source]
One flaw with this reasoning is that ignores the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar a hundred years from now, if only because we’ll all be dead a hundred years from now. From that perspective and with favorable terms it can make sense to sell the future to buy the present, if someone is willing to take that trade.