
Hackers on happiness & tiny houses, plus The Story of Stuff - fogus
http://faircompanies.com/blogs/view/hackers-on-happiness-tiny-houses-plus-story-stuff/
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mattmaroon
The problem with tiny houses would seem to be resale value. I personally don't
want a large house necessarily, but I want a really nice one. I want top of
the line counters, ceramic floors, top-notch appliances, etc. It's not so much
that I want more stuff, in fact I probably want less. It's more than I want
nicer stuff. I think that's not uncommon. (It's also why if I had an infinite
bankroll, my next startup would make a luxury version of the Corolla, but I
digress.)

The problem is that if I put all that stuff into some tiny house, I'm stuck
with it pretty much forever. Nobody else who can afford that stuff wants a 65
square ft house, or at least so few that I have no hope of getting a fair
market value. It seems unlikely that will change, especially since by the time
you can sanely afford these things you're probably near having a family.

One extremely way in which people value homes is $/sq.ft. Compare a 65 sq ft
home to a 4,000 sq ft one, both with top of the line everything, and you're
probably left with a market value about equal to what your dishwasher cost.

If I buy a 4,000 sq ft home and load it up I'll be able to sell it 10 years
from now. Barring the very rare bubble bursting (like we're experiencing now)
I'll probably be able to sell it for more than I paid for it. If I buy a 65 sq
ft home and load it up, I'll be out a bundle.

So if money is not a constraint and you just want a smaller home, I think you
have to find the happy median. Get a fully loaded 1,500 sq ft house and hell,
just leave half of the rooms empty. There's certainly some size below which
you're hemorrhaging money on the deal, and I imagine it's at least 1,500 sq ft
here in Middle America.

If you have so much money that you don't care about resale value and you do
care quite a bit about the environment this is probably fine. If you want
laminate counters, vinyl floors, and cheap appliances, this solution might
also be fine too. But for a large segment of the market this is unfortunately
financially untenable, no matter how appealing.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Exactly.

I'm the "programmer in Michigan" (actually Minnesota) she mentioned in the
article. I live in a 3,000+ sq ft house. We moved from an 1,800 sq ft house
that we only used half of, so we obviously didn't need all that space. So why
is my house so frickin' large? We needed at least 10 acres of land with less
than a 50-minute commute to work and wasn't 100 years old (Minnesota's climate
is very harsh on houses). _Every_ place on the market that met the basic
requirements we set was close to, or more than 3,000 sq. ft. Many were much
larger. Around here builders simply don't build small houses on large lots and
I suspect they won't anywhere else in the US for much the same reasons you
give.

Personally if I could sell my house tomorrow and buy a 1,200 sq. ft. home on
20-30 acres I'd be thrilled to death.

~~~
cagey
I too had to buy a comparatively giant house to get a parcel of land the size
I was looking for within sane commuting-time of my job. We were living in a
house almost half the size, but have figured out ways to take advantage of the
extra space, but clearly could live without it.

I think a big driver of this phenomenon is
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_and_best_use>

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Quarrelsome
It's highly recommended that we all watch every single documentry by Adam
Curtis, including "The Centuary of Self". His stuff is gold IMO, opinionated,
but gold.

If you want a taster check out the latest series running on his blog about the
history of Afghanistan:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_num...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_number_one.html)

~~~
bretthoerner
"The Century of the Self" in 4 parts.

<http://www.archive.org/details/AdaCurtisCenturyoftheSelf_0>

[http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPar...](http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart2of4)

[http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPar...](http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart3of4)

[http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPar...](http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart4of4_0)

~~~
sleepingbot
Also, you can find the same documents on Google Video. I share the search
"google video the century on the self" on Google. <http://tinyurl.com/yb7kluz>

The Google Video link: <http://tinyurl.com/yd5ptt6>

~~~
fnid
down modded for the short urls. Please use the full urls here. HN shortens
them automatically.

~~~
sleepingbot
Sorry about that. Links (search and google video) were, as anyone knows, long.

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DanielBMarkham
I started reading the PDF, and I found several errors on just the first couple
of pages. I also found information that was sourced to warresisters.org,
greenpeace, commenweal.org, etc.

I'm not trying to be harsh -- I'm sure the video is of high quality -- but
when you say things like "In 2003, humanity’s Footprint exceeded the Earth’s
biological capacity by over 25 percent" or "In the past three decades, one-
third of the planet’s resources, its ‘natural wealth,’ has been consumed"
there is certainly room for debate about these things.

Debate which probably doesn't belong here.

Flagged.

~~~
nkurz
Which PDF?

The URL I followed brought me to a interesting blog post with good but
speculative discussion about the perspective of 'hackers' vs 'greenies' on
mass consumption.

Did you really flag this link because somewhere within it there is a link to a
PDF that includes unreliable sources? That's a pretty tough standard! :)

~~~
sleepingbot
Reading all the comments, I came to the conclusion he probably refers to this
coment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=940369>

It would be great if he can confirm so.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Yes.

I didn't have bandwidth for the video, so downloaded the PDF and scanned it as
I had time.

If I missed the point of the article, doh! I was relying on the other comment.

~~~
nkurz
The PDF is a transcript of a video that is linked from 15th paragraph of the
article, but is just one of many linked videos. The actual article is a
response from the author (approximately) of the recent HN post about the 100
square foot house.

The article itself is good, and you might enjoy it. I skipped the video, which
is probably flawed in the ways you suggest. But maybe you could unflag the
interesting link to the response in the meantime? :)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
done

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NathanKP
I highly recommend that you watch the film mentioned: "The Story of Stuff".

It is a very detailed look at how companies drive consumerism to keep the
economy going at the expense of third world countries.

~~~
araneae
I started watching it, but then stopped when she started going through the
"corporations are evil" bit.

She deliberately chose to paint government as good and corporations as bad
even though they are both only composed of people, who are just looking out
for their self-interest, trying to get money from other people, who are also
just looking out for their self interest.

It's a intellectual shortcut to paint corporations OR government as evil, and
not accurate or meaningful at all.

~~~
NathanKP
Actually in my experience she painted government as evil as well. She clearly
points out how governments give corporations the power to do what they do.

In addition, I see no reason why painting government or corporations as evil
is a bad thing because when it comes down to it, what they are doing to third
world countries is evil.

We execute murderers for killing people. Yet corporations are killing people
overseas by poisoning and maiming them in dangerous factories.

I see no reason why calling a corporation evil is not accurate or not
meaningful.

~~~
roqetman
I think the point the OP was making was that both corporations and governments
are made up of people. I agree with this; a corporation and a government is
not a physical entity, and can therefore not be evil. However, people can act
evil in the name of that entity. Personally, I think that as soon as we try to
brand a group of people, we lose the argument.

~~~
NathanKP
I personally think more as Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath". The people in
the organization are not evil, it is the organization itself which forces them
to play certain roles to serve the group and the machine they have built.

Steinbeck portrayed the bank as a great machine in which each person working
for it played a small role that they didn't necessarily like to play. Agents
were forced to evict people from their land because they were not able to pay
their mortgage, yet that was not something that they really wanted to do. It
was something they had to do because of the corporation they were a part of.

No individual person in the corporation is evil (generally). However the
corporation is bigger than each individual member.

So calling a corporation evil does not mean branding each individual person.
Rather it means that you recognize that the corporation as a greater force
causes evil things.

In that respect I don't see it as unrealistic to say then that the corporation
can be evil.

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balding_n_tired
1\. Sigmund Freud lectured in the US in 1909, when Bernays was a teenager.

2\. Planned obsolence: I see 40-year old cars and pickup trucks here and
there. On the one hand, a lot of cars could be run longer before replacement.
On the other hand, an older car is vastly less safe, without airbags or
crumple zones, and the older car (ignoring manufacturing costs) pollutes more.
And how many on HN work on old computers? America was settled during a period
when technology rapidly advanced and obsolescence did not have to be planned.

~~~
ams6110
I drive a 26 year old car and my home computer is a six year old Macintosh.

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stcredzero
I intend to build my own.

<http://www.shelter-kit.com/kits.php?kit=barnhouse>

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gcheong
I highly recommend everyone watch Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" series.

