<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>jasode</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;don&amp;#x27;t use the work&amp;#x2F;income&amp;#x2F;tax&amp;#x2F;payment cycle to do it, try to use bartering&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fyi, bartering is taxable in the USA.[1]&lt;p&gt;Yes, lots of people barter without reporting &amp;quot;fair market value&amp;quot; of bartered services to the IRS and yes, there isn&amp;#x27;t a large scale manhunt or crackdown for the tax evaders.&lt;p&gt;So it&amp;#x27;s very possible that people think bartering is cheaper because of ignorance of IRS laws.  It&amp;#x27;s still technically &amp;quot;tax evasion&amp;quot;.  (Similar to how driving across state lines to buy things for 0% sales tax is also technically tax evasion when you don&amp;#x27;t declare the purchases in your home state&amp;#x27;s tax forms.)&lt;p&gt;E.g. A homeowner&amp;#x27;s lawn service costs $3000 a year.  The homeowner could barter his web developer skills to make a &amp;quot;lawn care website&amp;quot; in exchange for 1 year of lawn care.  The homeowner is supposed to declare the $3000-fair-market-value as &lt;i&gt;income&lt;/i&gt;.  If the homeowner is in 30% tax bracket, he owes ~$900 extra taxes PLUS he still has to expend the extra hours writing HTML&amp;#x2F;javascript to fulfill his side of the trade.&lt;p&gt;Is bartering that much cheaper if it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;under the table&amp;quot; and you add in the the extra work+time to satisfy your end of the deal?  (Especially if that extra work could be expended on other projects that are worth more than $3000 -or- working on websites more interesting to the homeowner than a lawn care service.)&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.irs.gov&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;p525&amp;#x2F;ar02.html#en_US_2016_publink1000229343&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.irs.gov&amp;#x2F;publications&amp;#x2F;p525&amp;#x2F;ar02.html#en_US_2016_p...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>grecy</author><text>&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The logical conclusion is to do &lt;i&gt;as much as you can&lt;/i&gt; yourself, and only get others to do things you are unable to do yourself. Where possible, don&amp;#x27;t use the work&amp;#x2F;income&amp;#x2F;tax&amp;#x2F;payment cycle to do it, try to use bartering or something more efficient where there are not so many middle-men taking a cut.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ah-ha, you&amp;#x27;re right - but it doesn&amp;#x27;t create &amp;quot;higher value&amp;quot; for the individual worker.. it&amp;#x27;s higher value for those at the top of the pyramid.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;If it didn&amp;#x27;t work. Market economies wouldn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, you are right, they don&amp;#x27;t work! The rich are getting vastly richer while the workers are getting vastly poorer. Look around you.&lt;p&gt;You might not have noticed, but the reason everyone goes to work every day for their entire lives is NOT because it&amp;#x27;s the most efficient or smartest thing for them to do. It&amp;#x27;s because they have been convinced that it is, and they are chasing the carrot dangling on a stick in front of them (house, car, new iPhone, etc.)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a few hours research before you even start.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you have never tried. Even the first time I did it I took less than an hour (inc research), and actually it would still have been &amp;quot;cheaper&amp;quot; even if it took 8+ hours (I was earning ~$70k as salary, mechanics where I live start at $145&amp;#x2F;hr)</text></item><item><author>UK-AL</author><text>This is demonstrably false, because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself. Including growing your own food.&lt;p&gt;The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value. I.e Get more stuff with less resources spent(which includes time)&lt;p&gt;If it didn&amp;#x27;t work. Market economies wouldn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;Are your perhaps not including the efficiency of the worker in your calculations? Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a hour of research and work grabbing the right replacement before you even start. Most farmers have a large of agricultural knowledge which allows them produce food cheaply in large quantities.</text></item><item><author>grecy</author><text>If you sit down and run the numbers, it&amp;#x27;s not even close. Going to work to pay other people to do things for you to &amp;quot;free up time&amp;quot; simply does not work. You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Money is an extremely inefficient middle-man, given taxes and everyone wanting their cut.&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind you have to deduct taxes from your income, and the expenses it costs you to earn your income (clothes, transport, bought food, parking, car &amp;amp; maintenance, expensive housing, etc.).&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind you must pay others with after-tax dollars. So when you pay that mechanic or plumber $85 per hour, that&amp;#x27;s a LOT of money, not even similar to you EARNING $85&amp;#x2F;hr.&lt;p&gt;I wrote a book about it, and in all my research and calculations, it roughly works out that most people earn only around 30-50% as much as they think they do.. so even if your salary is $120k, you&amp;#x27;re only earning something like $30&amp;#x2F;hr at absolute best, which is much lower than you pay a plumber or mechanic.</text></item><item><author>UK-AL</author><text>Because it&amp;#x27;s more efficient. If your a software developer, 1 hour of your time could probably buy many hours of time from someone else.</text></item><item><author>neilwilson</author><text>Call me old fashioned, but rather than working yourself silly to then spend your money buying time back, why don&amp;#x27;t we set society up so that you have to work less in the first place to earn a living?&lt;p&gt;Are we not back to the parable of the fisherman and the banker? &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.garywu.net&amp;#x2F;fisherman-and-banker&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.garywu.net&amp;#x2F;fisherman-and-banker&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Buying time promotes happiness</title><url>http://pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114.full</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>TheSpiceIsLife</author><text>It is extraordinarily unlikely any of my ancestors were ever rich.&lt;p&gt;And even if some of my ancestors were rich, my life today as a &lt;i&gt;worker&lt;/i&gt; is economically better of by, oh I don&amp;#x27;t know, a factor of 1000.&lt;p&gt;If we also take in to account things like decrease in child mortality, clean running water, modern medicine, the internet, Wikipedia, Khan Academy, &lt;i&gt;disposable computers&lt;/i&gt;, my life today as a &lt;i&gt;worker&lt;/i&gt; is better off by a factor of at least 10,000.[1]&lt;p&gt;Additionally, despite what Jubal Harshaw might have us believe[2], it is &lt;i&gt;infeasible&lt;/i&gt; that any given person should hope to be proficient at a wide variety of tasks.&lt;p&gt;While I certainly &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; do most automotive servicing myself, I lack a few specialist tools that would make the tasks efficient and enjoyable, so I outsource some &amp;#x2F; most if it as I choose.&lt;p&gt;1. Deirde McCloskey bangs on endlessly about this in her book &lt;i&gt;Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World&lt;/i&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bourgeois_Dignity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Bourgeois_Dignity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Competent_man&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Competent_man&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>grecy</author><text>&amp;gt;  &lt;i&gt;because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The logical conclusion is to do &lt;i&gt;as much as you can&lt;/i&gt; yourself, and only get others to do things you are unable to do yourself. Where possible, don&amp;#x27;t use the work&amp;#x2F;income&amp;#x2F;tax&amp;#x2F;payment cycle to do it, try to use bartering or something more efficient where there are not so many middle-men taking a cut.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ah-ha, you&amp;#x27;re right - but it doesn&amp;#x27;t create &amp;quot;higher value&amp;quot; for the individual worker.. it&amp;#x27;s higher value for those at the top of the pyramid.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;If it didn&amp;#x27;t work. Market economies wouldn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, you are right, they don&amp;#x27;t work! The rich are getting vastly richer while the workers are getting vastly poorer. Look around you.&lt;p&gt;You might not have noticed, but the reason everyone goes to work every day for their entire lives is NOT because it&amp;#x27;s the most efficient or smartest thing for them to do. It&amp;#x27;s because they have been convinced that it is, and they are chasing the carrot dangling on a stick in front of them (house, car, new iPhone, etc.)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a few hours research before you even start.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can tell you have never tried. Even the first time I did it I took less than an hour (inc research), and actually it would still have been &amp;quot;cheaper&amp;quot; even if it took 8+ hours (I was earning ~$70k as salary, mechanics where I live start at $145&amp;#x2F;hr)</text></item><item><author>UK-AL</author><text>This is demonstrably false, because otherwise the logical conclusion is to do everything yourself. Including growing your own food.&lt;p&gt;The entire premise of market economies is that people are better at different things and by working together you get a higher aggregate amount of value. I.e Get more stuff with less resources spent(which includes time)&lt;p&gt;If it didn&amp;#x27;t work. Market economies wouldn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;p&gt;Are your perhaps not including the efficiency of the worker in your calculations? Mechanic could probably change the brakes on a car without even thinking about it, you would probably take a hour of research and work grabbing the right replacement before you even start. Most farmers have a large of agricultural knowledge which allows them produce food cheaply in large quantities.</text></item><item><author>grecy</author><text>If you sit down and run the numbers, it&amp;#x27;s not even close. Going to work to pay other people to do things for you to &amp;quot;free up time&amp;quot; simply does not work. You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Money is an extremely inefficient middle-man, given taxes and everyone wanting their cut.&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind you have to deduct taxes from your income, and the expenses it costs you to earn your income (clothes, transport, bought food, parking, car &amp;amp; maintenance, expensive housing, etc.).&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind you must pay others with after-tax dollars. So when you pay that mechanic or plumber $85 per hour, that&amp;#x27;s a LOT of money, not even similar to you EARNING $85&amp;#x2F;hr.&lt;p&gt;I wrote a book about it, and in all my research and calculations, it roughly works out that most people earn only around 30-50% as much as they think they do.. so even if your salary is $120k, you&amp;#x27;re only earning something like $30&amp;#x2F;hr at absolute best, which is much lower than you pay a plumber or mechanic.</text></item><item><author>UK-AL</author><text>Because it&amp;#x27;s more efficient. If your a software developer, 1 hour of your time could probably buy many hours of time from someone else.</text></item><item><author>neilwilson</author><text>Call me old fashioned, but rather than working yourself silly to then spend your money buying time back, why don&amp;#x27;t we set society up so that you have to work less in the first place to earn a living?&lt;p&gt;Are we not back to the parable of the fisherman and the banker? &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.garywu.net&amp;#x2F;fisherman-and-banker&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.garywu.net&amp;#x2F;fisherman-and-banker&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Buying time promotes happiness</title><url>http://pnas.org/content/early/2017/07/18/1706541114.full</url></story>