Scrap

I live in Pittsburgh and I can tell you it's still like that - which is convenient when you want to get rid of things. I had some scrap aluminum that I put out with the trash the night before pick up and it was gone before I had walked back to the house. A guy pulled up in a Subaru Forrester and grabbed it. He asked me if he could have the wooden crate that I had also thrown out. I said sure. He asked me if I had any more scrap metal. I said not today, but I've got a 500 pound cast-iron tub that I need to get rid of soon.

Last year I bought a fixer-upper house last year on a bike trail and river in a small town outside of Pittsburgh ($40k - still possible here). I got in touch with the town secretary to discuss getting a dumpster for a while and she volunteered "I know a good scrapper". I called him and he and his son came and cleared out several hundred pounds of metal stuff that wasn't going to be part of my house renovations.

One convenient fiction that many wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"; and that's why they're poor.

I know lots of folks without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out, and not one single one, is "lazy." In fact, a few have more than one (difficult) job.

I am old enough to see a few of them getting into the back nine, with no cushion.

I'm extremely grateful for what I have.

[EDIT] Added "many" because it's more appropriate, and short-circuits the implied "all."

A friend was a property manager in Sacramento. His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper, that currently pays ~$5/lb. If people are really working this hard for steel at $0.04/lb, then transformers and air conditioners will have to be installed in vaults.

Wow, I didn't realize how much I missed blog posts like this. Is there any way we can get the version of the Internet where people posted like this on their personal blogs back? It's the reason sites like hacker news came to exist, you couldn't just scroll social media to find stuff, you had to sort of stumble upon (that used to be a website too, didn't it?) stuff like this and pass it around word of mouth. It was awesome.

Note that this post was written twenty years ago, in 2006 - it just wasn’t published until now.

Apologize for not engaging with the post directly but holy fuck can people stop using Twitter as a long form blogging platform. I don't want a full screen pop up telling me to sign in or a persistent bottom bar telling me to open the tweet in the app or a reply section mostly hidden unless I log in. I can't even use reader mode because somehow the paragraph breaks all goes missing and the whole thing merges into one didn’t wall of text. Not to mention your post may or may not end up entirely behind a login gate depending on Twitter's temperament of the day.

Please just put it on an old, boring web log. At this point I'll even accept substack.

We have them in Chicago, too. Call streets and san when you got something too big to fit in the can? Nah.

Also nearly got a job in Pittsburgh this summer…

Rich guy mocks his hometown

Not sure why of all people, Moxie Marlinspike would stay on this cesspool of a network that is X

I fear FIFTEEN CENTS A POUND is going to become a new vocal stim I will spam 50 times a day.

How do you like Pittsburgh? What are some pros and cons?

I spent a day there a couple years ago and it seemed like a really cool lil city that was surprisingly affordable.

Note that this post was written twenty years ago, in 2006 - it just wasn’t published until now.

We have them in Chicago, too. Call streets and san when you got something too big to fit in the can? Nah.

Also nearly got a job in Pittsburgh this summer…

One convenient fiction that many wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"; and that's why they're poor.

I know lots of folks without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out, and not one single one, is "lazy." In fact, a few have more than one (difficult) job.

I am old enough to see a few of them getting into the back nine, with no cushion.

I'm extremely grateful for what I have.

[EDIT] Added "many" because it's more appropriate, and short-circuits the implied "all."

I fear FIFTEEN CENTS A POUND is going to become a new vocal stim I will spam 50 times a day.

How do you like Pittsburgh? What are some pros and cons?

I spent a day there a couple years ago and it seemed like a really cool lil city that was surprisingly affordable.

Yeah, most people probably underestimate the effect that several things have on where they end up in life: education, self discipline, hard work, making good decisions, persistence, and, especially, chance. If you screw up majorly on any the factors under your control, you dramatically reduce your chances of “the good life.” But, even if you do all of them right, you are still at the mercy of chance. Get born in the wrong year or at the wrong place or into the wrong family or with the wrong genetics and that's all it takes to set you up for a hard life.

The tragedy is that we could have a society that gives people more opportunities to escape the downward pull of chance gone wrong early in life. Maybe someday we'll get there.

The pervasive myth that hard work == wealth needs to die. Every people I have met in my life wanted to have a shot at a decent life and would have put the necessary work for a decent wage.

The word lazy should be identified as what it really is: a pejorative.

Being poor is a lot of work, as is very well documented. When you have more money you can offload some (or in extreme cases pretty much all) of the labor.

Some people just have a several hundred year head start on others.

> convenient fiction that wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"

just like all poor people aren't lazy, so too all wealthy people don't think this.

Also prosperity evangelism.

You might be misunderstanding what is meant by "lazy". I don't think it's such a difficult perspective to understand.

What if your wealth was created by self-employment and building up a business? When you see so many talented and hard working people rejecting all of their available opportunities to do so, what word would you use? Ignorance? Arrogance? I can't think of any positive word. At least "lazy" implies they're still waiting for a lower risk moment to pounce.

This is how most of the wealth in the USA was built, so I don't think it's offensive. It's the prevailing culture.

The more money I’ve been paid the less hard I’ve had to work. Across my friends this seems to be a pretty strong trend.

There's four quadrants, lazy, works hard on one axis, and poor and rich on the other axis. Of those four quadrants, people exist in all four of them and it's stupid to pretend otherwise. That means that not pretending lazy poor don't exist, nor that rich hardworking people also exist. I know lazy poor people that aren't lazy so much as have severe mental health problems related to being poor, but also know rich people who could have fucked off to the beach forever by now but they keep working for some reason.

Why do I bring this up? Am I nitpicking? (yes) Until such time that there are no poor people, claiming there are no lazy poor people just gets people that actually know lazy poor people to tune out anyone's dreams of UBI because I'm not paying taxes on income I earn through me working, so that everyone else can be lazy and not work. It's as simple as that. Yes we can point to systemic and racially moviated biases that lead to unequal outcomes, but that isn't convincing on why my tax dollars should go to lazy poor people who refuse to work or even go to the EBT office to. I'm all for my tax dollars going to hard working poor people, and especially to their health care because a cancer or diabetes diagnosis should not bankrupt anyone, but the rest is hard to swallow.

Not lazy, smart -> Likely to become a millionaire

Not lazy, not smart -> Will probably make ends meet, but not a millionaire

Lazy, samrt -> Toss-up. Can either make it far or end up broke

Lazy, not smart -> Likely to be broke

My GF works with energy infrastructure in Colombia and they have lots of issues with people stealing copper, I didn't verify her claim but she said despite not having natural sources of copper Colombia had significant export volume of copper, pretty much all stolen. Her company has launched multiple investigations and unveiled gangs and networks repeatedly.

> His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper

It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables. They've been found to steal, too, heavy road grate if they were of any value: which created actual serious accidents (where a car's tire falls into the hole).

Regarding the electrical cables for trains, one solution is, slowly , replace them with cables with basically the same properties but 1/10th the copper.

Other funky solutions have been implemented: chemical sprays with a composition that is watermark and that cannot easily be removed. So when caught the thieves cannot deny because for x weeks the watermark stays, invisible and harmless, on their skin.

One question of course is: what does society think we should do with thieves who create road accidents and who render trains inoperable?

> ~$5/lb

Copper sells over $6 per pound these days: https://www.kitco.com/price/base-metals/copper

Please just put it on an old, boring web log. At this point I'll even accept substack.

> I don't want a full screen pop up telling me to sign in or a persistent bottom bar telling me to open the tweet in the app or a reply section mostly hidden unless I log in.

make an x account then?

Not sure why of all people, Moxie Marlinspike would stay on this cesspool of a network that is X

I'm open to correction on which rule to cite, or whether to cite a rule:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Picking:

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

I understand the partisan juxtaposition of "X" and Moxie Marlinspike, and the partisan appeal of commenting on it, but to me it is a tangential annoyance.

I'm curious what cesspool you mean, because i can see cutting edge true hardcore science publication announcements on X better than elsewhere.

i ask because i evidently have tuned my account parameters somehow way the heck better than you experience.

I _do_ still see what look like rage-bait nonsense that people post for clicks, totally unrelated to medicine or biology, so i block or mute that nonsense. I'm guessing that's part of the cesspool but you may see different stuff.

Why do you think Moxie Marlinspike is not the type of person that would stay on this cesspool of a network that is X? From what I've seen I'd have been very surprised to see him anywhere else.

It is ironic that the founder of maybe the most popular privacy-conscious IM app is actively contributing to his and his followers' data being harvested on X though.

Not sure what image you have of him. But a cesspool is where he belongs, imo.

Rich guy mocks his hometown

Many hometowns are mockable, even if someone from them eventually becomes rich and talks about what it was like there publicly.

Being poor is a lot of work, as is very well documented. When you have more money you can offload some (or in extreme cases pretty much all) of the labor.

The pervasive myth that hard work == wealth needs to die. Every people I have met in my life wanted to have a shot at a decent life and would have put the necessary work for a decent wage.

The word lazy should be identified as what it really is: a pejorative.

The tragedy is that we could have a society that gives people more opportunities to escape the downward pull of chance gone wrong early in life. Maybe someday we'll get there.

You might be misunderstanding what is meant by "lazy". I don't think it's such a difficult perspective to understand.

This is how most of the wealth in the USA was built, so I don't think it's offensive. It's the prevailing culture.

Also prosperity evangelism.

Some people just have a several hundred year head start on others.

The conflict of interest is that the myth is mostly propagated by people with more wealth against people with less of it. Everyone wants to feel better about themselves and the easiest way is to look down on someone who has less. Less "whatever" really, people always find something that they think makes them better, money is just the obvious choice because society slowly associated money with success. It doesn't matter if the wealth came from their parents, or luck, they can still pretend it makes them better.

I think it’s self evidently true that hard work is not equal to wealth and I don’t know how that meme became a thing.

You can exert extreme effort in unproductive directions and provide marginal, even extremely negative, value.

You can work extremely hard, all day every day, and accomplish nothing.

Gulags aren’t known for their wealth or value generation. They’re known for their labor input.

> convenient fiction that wealthy people (in the US) tell themselves, is that poor people are "lazy"

just like all poor people aren't lazy, so too all wealthy people don't think this.

The more money I’ve been paid the less hard I’ve had to work. Across my friends this seems to be a pretty strong trend.

Never said they did. Interesting read of what I wrote…

I've worked in both tech and construction. Never seen a tech worker go home and come back with the soles of their shoes resoled overnight because they didn't have a better option for work tomorrow.

Is that the best option? Generally no, it's probably not worth your time to do things that you don't specialize in. But at some point, you run out of hours to profit from the things you specialize in, and you still need something, so you figure it out. You do your oil changes, and fix your shoes and repair things even when they would generally considered 'totaled'. You miss work or at least hours on days when your late model car doesn't start. You take care of your own house repairs and yardwork, if your lucky enough to own something your landlord's yard and maintenance work more likely. And this is all off hours stuff because that's the option you have.

I've worked so much less in tech, yeah the hours can be long and oncall sucks. But I end up being able to redirect all my effort into the thing I'm specialized in and that I get paid the most to do. Which means I can pay to have my boots resoled, or just buy new ones, I take my (newer cars that always start) to the dealer every 6 months. I can pay a premium for delivery of food and staples, I can hire help around the house for anything from lawn care to tree trimming to roof repairs.

When I left the trades, 50 hours was generally required and 60 was becoming the norm. I'm not working any more in tech at work, but I work a lot lest to have a better life outside of work. It's just night and day.

Your tax dollars go to all kinds of things far worse than helping people survive. The Protestant work ethic cannot die soon enough. Never once have I cared if someone is "lazy". A rich person may work very hard exploiting others, that's far worse than not working at all.

I feel like even a lot of atheists get trapped in this Protestant mindset because we've been raised in this environment (like a fish trying to detect water), but if you think it through you'll see it doesn't actually make sense. Especially under capitalism.