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A comment on Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in yo... by _emacsomancer_ on Sunday June 24, 2018 @11:16PM (#17389687)
When I lived in India, it was cheaper to hire someone to wash clothes and dishes by hand than to buy a washing machine or dish washer (and the place we lived wouldn't have had anywhere to put them anyway). [Though half the time we did these things (by hand) ourselves.]
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Re:Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in yo... by megy on Monday June 25, 2018 @12:52AM (#17389969)
I mean, of course. It is cheaper to do that anywhere in the world. The trick is to use the washing machine more than once.
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Re:Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in yo... by newnewpdro on Monday June 25, 2018 @02:02AM (#17390193)
I laughed, but my impression is that due to overpopulation it's incredibly cheap to rent a human for such tasks there. It'd probably take years to spend what the machines cost, and they take space (a premium, see: overpopulation) and require maintenance.
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Re:Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in yo... by infinite8s on Friday July 06, 2018 @04:46PM (#17474959)
That's one of the defining characteristics of the third world:

TCO(human labor) << TCO(automated labor)

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Re:Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in yo... by _emacsomancer_ on Monday June 25, 2018 @11:41AM (#17393248)
"When I lived in India, it was cheaper to hire someone to wash clothes and dishes by hand [assuming that context makes it clear that the costs are being calculated over an extended period of time rather than a single instance] than to buy a washing machine or dish washer".

Just like if I were to say "when in city X, it was cheaper to travel by taxi than to buy a car", I wouldn't mean a single taxi ride.

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