People who pay for conveniences in order to delegate their labor these days often confuse their class/caste privileges for a sign of maturity. What you’re confusing for a sign of maturity (people cooperating with you because you are competent/ respected) is actually capitalism replacing your social connections with money. You’ll notice that’s also how they trashed the rest of your society, if you take two minutes and think about it.
If I had the money, I’d pay someone to tell you that you’re wrong.
An oil change at jiffy lube costs me 80 bucks and is about an hour or my time. Doing it myself is 50 bucks in oil and is about 2 hours of my time. Taking these simple numbers, that’s 30 of labor I can pay to save myself 2 hours of work. Or $15/hr saved.
You don’t mention the opportunity costs associated. Yes I can do it myself, but I lose 2 hours of my precious weekend doing it. Time I could be with family or friends, doing my own projects, or even doing projects that are more labor costly. Why waste my time with something like that when my time is much more better spent doing other things.
I have no maturity or caste whatever with it, you’re putting a lot of your emotions on other people. Good unpopular opinion though.
This example brings up another point that the argument doesn’t address. You have to know how to do an oil change to begin with, and you’d be surprised how many people don’t. Or maybe you wouldn’t, it’s not exactly straightforward. I knew someone who poured the oil down the dipstick hole instead of the oil tank hole
My Vehicle from 99 had a straight forward dipstick that always seemed to be perceptionally accurate. For some reason now I can’t seem to ever find good measurements on these small dipsticks. Is the engine warm, yes. Pull it, wipe it, dip it… Shmeer across the whole thing and I can’t tell where the level is at. Or the entire thing is covered or nothing at all which should be telling me it’s really high/low. I’ve even asked others to check them next to me and they tell me they have no idea what it is at either. i read somewhere to take sandpaper to old ones to give them more surface for the oil to stick to, but that seems like a recipe for metal shards flaking off into the oil down the line, maybe not though.
Level surfaces and patience are 2 things I need more of
At least it was in the oil spot and not the transmission fluid spot.
Good old Subarus, having the drainplug for engine and transmission near each other and identical led people to drain the transmission and overfilling the engine.
How not to build a car example number one
Nah, you’re missing two bits. One, you don’t personally share this delusion and aren’t being criticized. Two, you’re highlighting your class privilege by associating your time with money. I have no beef with professionals doing stuff a hobbyist is capable of. I just notice some people think that being able to pay to save their own time means that they’re wise instead of solvent.
Time is a finite resource. There are only so many hours a week and we have to make choices on where to spend those few hours. Privilege may dictate how many hours they can trade off, but we all do it. I guarantee the people at Jiffy Lube still make tradeoffs themselves on the weekend, but I admit those tradeoffs are more difficult the less money you have. For me, yes, I say the spending of $30 to save 2 hours of time is well worth it. Those 2 hours are more valuable to me spent elsewhere. That’s me though and my status. There’s a thousand other things though we decide on.
Are you a classist because you buy bread instead of making it yourself? What about choosing to work and hiring childcare?
I worked at Geek Squad now over a decade ago and learned then that I was wrong for thinking they took advantage of people, it’s that for most of the people who walked in they had more important things to do than to sit and fix their computer. I personally would do it at home, but it’s a skill I had and why pay money for a skill I had at the time, and I find enjoyment out of it. I did learn that most people have different skills though, and they would rather spend their time and money elsewhere. People of all classes and incomes.
you don’t share the perspective being criticized here but do you see how people a scootch luckier than you career-wise (and i’m not sniffing at 10 years of technical employment) might be susceptible to the “maturity” notion?
Oh I got yelled at constantly, demeaned, and shit on as a low level worker constantly. I put in 5 years retail there at best buy, and 5 years of fast food before then. If that’s what this is all about, then I completely see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s related to this directly, in fact it’s the opposite I’ve found.
In my experience working those menial jobs it wasn’t the wealthy or the rich who made it their mission to make sure I knew my place - it was the people on the lowest rungs of society. The people who were often the poorest were also the ones who would really shove in my face that they were paying me for a service. It wasn’t the well to do woman wearing a suit who came in asking me to fix her computer who would yell at me, it was the old farmer who drive 2 hours to nowhere to have me fix it and demean me.
And maybe that’s your point, it’s a little garbled in the messaging but maybe that’s what you were trying to say. From what I saw, they had someone in front of them that was finally “below” them, and they took every advantage of that fact. I had literal cheeseburgers thrown at me by people who were at best my equals at the time. Looking back I pity them, I think it’s a psychology thing. They had someone to prove to them that they weren’t the lowest class. It’s where racism and homophobia comes into play. To them as long as there is someone in their mind below them, they’re not the worst.
Yeah the worst bosses I ever had were when I worked in food service, because they were the only person making a decent living (maybe $80k at the time) while holding complete power over an army of minimum wage employees who didn’t really have choices.
For what its worth, I agree with you.
You did qualify what you said: “often confuse”.
Not “always confuse”, you didn’t say what you said totally without qualification.
It indeed ‘is often’ the case that people confuse convenience with… some kind of false, or ultimately self defeating idea of social status.
By using qualifiers in your original statement, you made it clear that you are describing a broad or general trend, not an absolute black and white rule.
…
Judging by your use of ‘cash-pilled’, I am guessing you are younger than myself, and all the older farts in this thread talking about whether or not to oil up their own dipsticks, lol.
I would imagine what you are saying is much, much more generally true with people your age, younger… the simple stats bare out that as economy has gotten worse and worse, it has financialized much more, everything is a subscription, a micro loan, nothing is built to last but instead built to break or be thrown away, finding a job with better than subsistence wages is extremely difficult, almost none of you will ever own a house, or be able to climb any kind of social ladder.
This has produced the phenomenon of ‘luxury poverty’… saving up for things is pointless, so dive headlong into conspicuous consumerism.
AI is going to ‘do everything’, so why bother developing a hobby or a skill… why even bother learning anything, writing anything.
And then of course all the mass shootings, and climate change is going to burn down and flood the world… life is cheap, yolo, live fast, die hard, there is no future.
…
Sure, it can be rational to pay someone else to do something for you, if your own time is more valuable.
But, you are, I think, coming from a perspective where… no, most younger people’s time actually is not that valuable, and they are being foolish in paying a premium for convenience, when their wages are usually so low that the straight math of the equation doesn’t work out …
… and they are also robbing themselves of experiences and opportunities to actually develop useful skills… and those experiences, they could actually be an antidote to the mindless narcissistic nilhism engendered by never having to do anything ‘real’.
…
So maybe that is a bit of the disconnect here, which you are trying to get at via mentioning classism:
You have trouble seeing that a person can work, still be working class, but it can also make sense for them to not do everything themself.
But others have trouble seeing the true extent of the … just, poverty, of the younger generation, which you identify as a meaningful dispsrarity of wealth.
…
I guess I wish I could have showed you the 90s.
We really were optimistic, broadly, back then.
Thought that things would get better, the internet and computers would usher in ‘The End of History’, a somewhat bumpy but predictable ride toward a near utopia.
We were very wrong.
But still, I wish you could have known some of that… awe, wonder, and hope.
Which tasks are we talking about? That’s quite a general statement.
Here are examples:
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meal prep and delivery
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child care / elder care
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laundry service
My opinion is that these are services that people often delegate with money in order to pursue financial opportunities other people don’t have, and they often confuse their class privileges for social maturity because money has replaced social relationships in their life.
Oh, fair enough. I don’t do any of those either. Though I don’t think it’s bad enough that it can be interpreted as being not mature.
What do you think delegating your needs through capitalism is a sign of?
“Raise your own fucking kids, that shit is GROSS”
- Karl Marx
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Do you grow everything you eat yourself or do you pay someone to do it for you?
This is a bad faith comment.
No it isn’t, I’m trying to get OP to see some nuance instead of them just “hurt durr rich idiots pay others to do everything”
Food supply in modern age goes from grocery store, food out, food in, delivery.
Grocery store is required in modern age…
But broke idiots keep ordering delivery
I think that’s the OP’s thesis
I think you forgot that whole part before the grocery store. Food has to come from somewhere first, it doesn’t just materialize on the shelves
You are being dense
Mentioned in another reply I’m working on personal food and water security. I supply about 1/3 of my calories from gardening.
I did it myself with hand tools, took about 40 hours all said but most of that was up front over about a week. Potatoes are easy and I’m in a region where Tisquantum’s method of sewing the three sisters works really well. My wife does tomato and peppers. Its a lot of potato. 6 ft x 10 ft trench yielded buckets full.
So you’re privileged with great soil and still paying someone else for 2/3 of your calories? You see why people may pay others to do something they’d technically could do themselves.
That’s your gotcha? Holy shit sorry for taking your comment in good faith, hope you trip 🖕
Civilized.
A lot of working class people create favor networks as a way to collectively perform tasks while still benefitting from the division of labor. This activity is seen going back to prehistoric times.
Money has become a means of exchange to denote those exchanges, but division of labor has been a hallmark of humanity.
You say “your society” as if you aren’t part of it. You also assume we haven’t thought about it already, with a condescending sendoff. Not so much an unpopular opinion as it is virtue signaling from a soapbox.
i live around a lot of nazis i don’t identify with and they currently control society here (rustbelt midwest) but i see a lot of people of various political backgrounds with this particular misconception
anyway I even qualified this unpopular opinion with “people often” and you’re not under this delusion
if you’re not being criticized by the premise, and you don’t agree with the opinion, perhaps it is an Unpopular Opinion?
Do you get all your food by farming? Do you collect fresh water?
I’m at about 35% calories from my own farm and the water infrastructure out here pulls from the river a mile from my house which the village does a bad job of treating, I’m patching together water solutions right now.
I see folks justify convenience purchases by quoting some savings per hour, but without a plan for how to generate revenue with the time they save. 🤷
What does “cash pilled by advertising” mean?
cheery whistling music
Listen, life happens. But when you’re on the go, you don’t want to be weighed down by the basic chores that allow people to live. That’s why we sell schmoopy. Your transportation/ child/ meal prep/ elderly parent/ laundry/ chauffeured ice-cream taco/ media collection won’t take care of itself, but you can pay schmoopy so you don’t have to think about it. That way, you can get back to the more lucrative activity we’ve designated for your class.
Ahh thank you!
i’m just glad that explanation made sense to you bc it was the easiest way i could think to frame it
It was spot on!
How is this unpopular…
broke idiots getting delivery is idiotic, and their excuses are generally out right pathetic
Socialism is when no services.
