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277 points cebert | 1 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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rayiner ◴[] No.44365086[source]
There is no “system.” It’s all just people making choices. My wife puts straws in the dishwasher to reuse them. She grew up in America the same as everyone else.
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1. lm28469 ◴[] No.44365239[source]
> It’s all just people making choices.

Yeah sure... and some people get together and make choices that impact other people ability to make choices, it really isn't rocket science.

If you think Zuckerbeg spending hundreds of millions a year to get the top XXX behavioural scientists to work on how to milk your attention span has the same impact as "my wife puts the straw in the washing machine to reuse them" I have bad news for you

idk how you call lobbies spending literal billions every year to make you think "cars are freedom", "debt is wealth", &c.