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277 points cebert | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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lm28469 ◴[] No.44364104[source]
> the average person is using

The "average person" is told from birth to consume as many things and experiences as possible as it if was the only thing that could give their life a meaning. The entire system is based on growth and consumption, I have a hard time blaming "the average person"

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john01dav ◴[] No.44364189[source]
I acknowledge that such telling exists, but there is still responsibility for people choosing to listen to it. Skepticism is vital. Beyond being skeptical of what you see, it is wild to me that we don't have approximately everyone blocking all ads, cable news, most social feeds, and other such transparently manipulative shit. Advertisement especially is literally industrialized and research-based psychological manipulation to make people do things that make no sense (see what Alfred Sloan did to GM, for an early example) — it's toxic and should be absolutely avoided.
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mathgeek ◴[] No.44364209[source]
You can’t block all of it all of the time, and children (some of the most vulnerable) especially can’t.
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1. rayiner ◴[] No.44365110[source]
I’m not sure my kids have ever seen an ad except for little computer games, and they have laptops and iPads (but no network TV or cable). They are far less exposed to consumerism than when we were kids. My teenage daughter dresses like a hobo.
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2. neutronicus ◴[] No.44365789[source]
If they've seen Paw Patrol they've been exposed to ads. I don't mean "commercials" I mean that the entertainment itself is the ad - generating excitement for branded merchandise, but also normalizing the idea of kids accomplishing things and learning life lessons in 20-minute increments with the aid of a tremendous amount of stuff that they just have.

Maybe they haven't but the idea extends to most kids' entertainment.