Pretty much the same, I can re-wire a house (factory actually though it's been a long time since I trained as an industrial sparks), plaster, do basic joinery, plumbing, tiling, engine/motorcycle maintenance (I do my motorcycle and rebuilt scramblers when I was a kid), weld (not done it for a long time but it'd come back), sheet metal work etc all to a reasonable or better standard.

I've never lived out in the country, always in or on the edges of towns, 80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time.

I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it down the line (which makes sense sometimes).

I know people my age who can't rewire a plug which is frankly embarrassing.

> A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Time enough for Love - Heinlein)

> I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it

As a rich guy I knew used to say, do what you do best, and give away all the rest.

I spent my 30s doing all the things you mentioned and more. There was some joy in it, I will admit, but I am vastly less wealthy than if I had focused on my consulting business and learned how to negotiate and supervise the outsourcing of those tasks.

I know a lot of 'do it yourself' types and none of them are wealthy. I know a lot of wealthy people and none of them are 'do it yourself' types. It sucks to admit it, because there is a lot of 'manliness' associated with self-reliance, but it is often a foolish pursuit. Comparative advantage is real and you can use it to get ahead in life.

I think you are conflating things. The idea I see behind most self-reliance is that it significantly reduces the amount of wealth needed to accomplish everyday tasks. Following that, you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so.

> you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so.

Exactly this.

Money is a way to get other people to do things for you.

If you are happier doing the things yourself, the money doesn't have much use.

At a certain point, gaining more wealth just doesn't matter.

Yeah I noticed this. There are lots of kids or people who feel redundant and empty because whatever they want to do they can just buy it or hire someone else to do it for them. No need to do anything yourself but it also means nobody needs you which means people don't see anything in you other than your money.

The only way you can liberate yourself from this is by getting your hands dirty yourself.

Or by taking pride in the work you do to earn the money.

I really don't think one precludes the other.

You can take pride in the work you get paid for and the work you do outside of work just the same.

Some things have economies of scale. I could in theory dig minerals out of the ground, refine and distill them, and do the chemistry required to turn them into antibiotics... but that'd be about a million times more expensive (in bootstrapping monetary cost and labor) than just getting together with a bunch of people to found an oil refinery and a drug factory.

If only we didn't live in a world of property taxes...

Wealth should not be sneered at. Wealth buys a new well for your farm. Wealth buys you tools to expand your capabilities. Wealth allows you to exploit the capabilities of society to accomplish things beyond yourself. Do you want to preserve gun or property rights so you can continue to live a self-reliant lifestyle? That takes wealth(or you can cop-out and let other people do it for you).

I am well aware of the saying "sell your time to buy the time that other people sold", but that cynically omits the benefits of comparative advantage. Most HN readers time is far more valuable than a plumber or carpenter.

> Most HN readers time is far more valuable than a plumber or carpenter.

Are you sure about that? A good plumber, here in Seattle, can cost $300/hour.

Depends on how many hours you can work, though, and how many hours you're not getting paid for.

That's extremely rare in Seattle, maybe for overnight emergency, and that "hour" includes drive/admin time and overhead costs.

I think part of the problem is we’ve confused (and society has disproportionately valued) what is valuable to the economy vs what is valuable to society.

I think it was Penn Jillette who basically said we should most value those who we’d want around in the apocalypse. Farmers, doctors, mechanics would all be worth more than a financier. Maybe the irony is that in the coming decades they will have their comeuppance if their jobs are least likely to be automated away

David Graeber (RIP) and others would seriously question whether the financier even does anything for the economy, let alone society.

A financier works to efficiently allocate resources in the economy, which is very valuable.

Right, valuable to the economy. But my original point is that “what is valuable to the economy” and “what is valuable to society” may be divergent

I think the argument is they provide liquidity to an economy, but I’m not sure how that it translated to a value assessment

On one end of the spectrum, they make capital available to businesses in order for them to bootstrap and expand. They pick winners and losers and make decisions that significantly alter the course of economic development.

On the other end of the spectrum, they gamble on tulips. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

There's everything in-between. Factor in the universal human tendency for self-delusion, and you got tulip pushers who think they are moving the pillars of world.

The counter argument (Mariana Mazzucato in particular) is that they extract value rather than create value, and this, like all other value extraction, is a net harm.

If you want to apply a respect/disrespect lens, "I could do that" is the disrespectful position.

The respectful position is "this isn't my speciality, it's yours, tell me what you need and I'll get out of the way."

"The time it would take me to acquire your skills is more valuable than what you'd charge to fix my problem" is acknowledging the plumber's value, not diminishing it.

Is it your position that plumbers charge low rates just to be nice

You seem to be protecting a lot into a simple price comparison.

You're not being snarky. Seems pretty on the mark.

I can afford to pay others to help, but at the same time I know how to do myself 90% of what I need. That means I can fix something that breaks at midnight and have a professional do a permanent fix, if needed, in the morning. I can also fix by motorcycle or mountain bike when it breaks in the middle of the mountains 20 miles from the closest village, calling for help is many times not an option due to lack of phone signal. Yes, it is nice to do only what you do best, but it's not a good idea to be ignorant of skills that may be essential sometimes.

If I didn't do it myself, it wouldn't be done. Not everyone has the option of hiring everything done.

If you have nothing better to do with your time then go ahead! It can be a fine choice in many situations. For many HN types whose time is far more valuable than many tradespeople, it is a financially reckless choice.

I haven't seen skilled tradespeople that charge less than me. Sure you can hire people with zero qualifications for less than your salary but they will usually do a worse job.

> I know a lot of 'do it yourself' types and none of them are wealthy.

You have to do the math on this carefully though.

A lot of people think like this. I get paid $200 an hour, my electrician gets paid $100 an hour, therefore I should pay my electrician $100 and use the time I saved to make $200. But plenty of those jobs don't actually take an hour, even though that's the minimum billing time. So when they take ten minutes, you've got to pay the electrician $600 before you save enough time to make $200 yourself.

Then you've got a transaction costs problem. You called the plumber, but now you've got to let them in, explain the problem, review the invoice, submit payment. It could take the same amount of time as doing it yourself. It could take longer.

Then you've got a knowledge problem. If you take the time to understand how things work then you see warning signs, so you fix things while they're still a $5 problem instead of not understanding that it will turn into a $5000 problem. Or in reverse, not realizing that the person you're paying for services is charging you $5000 for something that could still be fixed for $5.

Then you've got a tax problem. You thought you were "making" $200, but actually half of that is going to taxes, whereas 100% of the money you're spending is actually getting spent.

The result is that the person who works more and pays for everything instead of doing it themselves has a higher annual income on paper, but less actual disposable income because they lose more than that to taxes and costs, and less free time because they're actually working more in reality.

> A lot of people think like this. I get paid $200 an hour, my electrician gets paid $100 an hour, therefore I should pay my electrician $100 and use the time I saved to make $200.

The flaw of course is that $200 is not opportunity cost. Your time is only worth money if you’d otherwise be working. So when I get home from my 9-5 job where I make a fixed salary, and fix my faucet, that job just got done for free. There was no opportunity cost because I don’t get paid hourly and was already done with work for the day.

I’m a rather extreme DIYer, and I can confidently say I would not live the lifestyle I do if I paid people to repair my car, build my furniture, cook my food, mow my lawn, do all my home improvements, plumbing, electrical work, fix my electronics. All that labor adds up, especially in the expensive Bay Area. If you take what you’d otherwise spend on all that, starting say age 20, and instead put it into your retirement account you could probably retire 5-10 years early.

Specialization is the nature of capitalism so what you say is true. However, not everybody has the aim to optimize "getting ahead in life" in terms of accumulating the most material wealth. A propos of the linked article, I know people in the high desert former-frontier whose ideal retirement is running a lodge or campground, constantly working as a general handyman. To them, that hits on many of the things necessary to find fulfillment: creativity, mastery, autonomy, purpose. They'd rather be put to pasture than trade that for some exorbitantly paying SV gig.

And they'll say that until that wealth could have done something useful for them, like defend their freedoms from encroachment or promote causes they find valuable.

Wealth is worth far more than fancy cars and fine clothing. I couldn't give a shit about expensive material possessions but I think that only an utter fool would disavow themselves of wealth. Don't be conned into thinking wealth is synonymous with frivolous, ostentatious displays and vanity.

You hit the nail on the head. Wealth isn’t about loving green pieces of paper. It’s about the freedom it provides. But from his place, he’s already doing exactly what he wants. There’s literally nothing he wants more than what he has. Now maybe that would change if his health is constrained, but as it stands he spends everyday exactly how he would spend his weekends if he was working at a 9-5.

That freedom of time is all that money can ultimately provide in the best sense. However, amassing wealth by moving away from that is definitely counter-productive. Wealth is just a means to an end; if the end is already at hand it provides little to no marginal utility.

>80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time.

Them's the old rules. New rules: 45% of it is being willing to give it a go, 65% of it is knowing how to find the right YouTube video to watch so you don't fuck it up.

:)

Oh man, YouTube is such a godsend when it comes to learning so many things but it also promotes terrible behavior for those looking to monetize information that would be better served up as plain text. Anything physical, such as learning an exercise or doing a car repair falls into the former category. On the other hand, there is a lot of very good talking head content that could be served up as plain text. Instead it’s gated in the form of video purely for YouTube monetization. I would gladly pay money for quality transcripts if that was an option.

A lot of the useful "how-to" content on youtube is created by people wanting to make a buck from creating the videos.

The first 10% is knowing what is dangerous enough that you need to look up how to do is safely first. I've worked on high voltage electronics - I'm still here because I knew to figure out safety first.

Same with gas (not petrol), it's the one thing in my house I absolutely would not under any circumstances touch.

Electricity I understand and how to work safely with it, water is the same (and the outcome isn't likely to kill you) but gas, gas will blow out the walls.

It's remarkable how safe we made it actually when you think about it but all of those lessons where often learnt in blood and strife.

Gas is crazy. The only time I needed to have gas pipes rerouted, it needed a change before the meter and the shut-off valve. So the gas company guys started the work ... by cutting a live gas pipe, intentionally lighting the leaking gas on fire, and welding a connection while the not-yet-welded hole was acting as a small flamethrower. Apparently that's considered safe to do with low-pressure small diameter pipes, but it seemed absolutely, totally insane.

burning gas never builds up to explosive concentrations, so it is what they do. I've heard other stories. A friend of mine cut a gas main digging, and when he called emergency they told him he should have lit a match instantly, it is too late now just evacuate the neighborhood. (the gas company was mad until he pointed out the gas main markings a safe distance away from where he was digging)

Nah you look for the youtube video after you've fucked it up.

Honestly though YouTube and the patient people who set out to show you how to do something is great (particulary the creators), it is an amazing resource for that.

Parent knows that

That's why it takes 110% of the time.

That Heinlein quote is nice, but also a little absurd.

I can change a wall outlet or a light switch, but if I'm rewiring my house, I'm calling my brother-in-law, the electrician, just like he calls me when he wants a trumpet player. (And if he wants a guitar player, he calls my brother, not me.)

Specialization is for people in communities, which we all are whether we want to admit it or not.

Building a moral philosophy around a fiction author who didn't even follow his own advice is absurd.

> I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it down the line (which makes sense sometimes).

Eh, I've only got so many hours on the planet, I've got a lot more spare money than spare time. I'd really rather just pay someone to fix it and spend my time doing something more fun.

I don't know. Just buying something is usually boring and makes you feel powerless.

It's not always a matter of willingness. Many people didn't have opportunities early in life to learn these skills, and as older adults they probably don't have the free time.

True plus modern urban living means people don't have sheds/garages both of which I had access to growing up with a lot of the tools as well.

> I know people my age who can't rewire a plug which is frankly embarrassing.

I’m sure there’s a country / culture factor there, but that’s rather condescending. I’m in my thirties, and there isn’t a single place I’ve lived in as an adult where it would have been OK for me to mess with the electricity, plumbing, or even paint the walls.

Putting a new plug on your kettle is allowed in all 50 states and most if not all of western Europe.

I misunderstood then - I interpreted the parent as being about the wall socket, because I wasn't aware that rewiring the actual plug was a thing you could do (or that these things ever failed, in fact).

I guess I'm a double embarrassment then!

You're not an embarrassment. Different people know different things.

Rewiring a plug is an extremely rare need..2

I was completely flummoxed when I went away to college and found I was the only person in my entire dormitory with a screwdriver, pliers, or a hammer. Nobody else was able to put together the end table they'd bought, hang a picture, etc. I was mystified that anyone would go to live somewhere for a 9 month stretch, full time, and not bring a screwdriver (or a first aid kit). Likewise the many people who didn't bring curtains or even a bowl or mug (the college had sent every incoming student a list of suggested items to bring, including window measurements). Forget the people who couldn't wash their own clothes. Some people are just raised to be useless human beings.

> They survive, in some cases, by cultivating long term relationships with the right people.

This is also a survival skill. There's no necessity to cultivate this in a middle-class urban environment when you can just call somebody.

If I fix the car or computer for the old retired farmer down the road, but then bags and boxes of fresh, homegrown vegetable regularly appear on my porch, then that works out quite nicely, actually.