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277 points cebert | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.438s | 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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1. _DeadFred_ ◴[] No.44369672[source]
There are MILLIONs of human years of effort, by experts at manipulating people, put into making people feel this way.

Saying bro, why can't your willpower overcome MILLIONS of years of experts trying to manipulate you is a pretty weak argument. It's basically the same as saying 'why can't you take on the top UFC fighters?' at this point. There is a battle to squeeze everything possible out of the sheep on one side, on the other side is us sheep that just want to chill, enjoy life a little. The sheep are f'd.

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2. ndriscoll ◴[] No.44371708[source]
GP isn't saying "why can't you take on top UFC fighters?" They're saying "why would you try to take on top UFC fighters?" It's exactly that one-sided battle that makes it so avoiding the engagement is necessary. A lot of effort is no doubt spent developing psychological weapons to use against me. Fortunately there are very few channels for any of them to use to reach me.