
The Tyranny of Convenience - colinprince
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/opinion/sunday/tyranny-convenience.html?referer=https://www.metafilter.com/172744/Technologies-of-Mass-Individualization
======
mhb
Previous:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394027)

------
Jedd
> Once you have used a washing machine, laundering clothes by hand seems
> irrational, even if it might be cheaper.

It'd require some impressive mental gymnastics to consider hand-washing
cheaper than a washing machine. The societal changes (improvements) that
washing machines brought are immense, and fairly well documented.

> After you have experienced streaming television, waiting to see a show at a
> prescribed hour seems silly, even a little undignified.

Renting vhs/beta/laserdisc/bluray/hd etc has long been preferable to watching
something littered with advertisements every 12-15 minutes - leaving aside the
frequent censorship, lower quality audio or video, the inability to pause or
rewind at will.

The phrase 'streaming television' just seems wrong.

> To resist convenience — not to own a cellphone, not to use Google — has come
> to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for
> eccentricity, if not fanaticism.

I know plenty of people that don't have a smartphone, but have a 4G / LTE
'feature' phone. There's no stigma there - it's down to a combination of cost,
functionality, and signal range.

The suggestion implies there's a clear downside - an evil, perhaps - to using
a cellphone or any of Google's services (naturally conflating the two is not
useful).

~~~
naeemtee
Wait, why is a washing machine cheaper than hand-washing?

~~~
Jedd
That's a good question -- I'm struggling to find a _well researched_ summary
of the situation.

The biggest external cost with machine washing is the hot water, but most
detergents now are optimised for cold / room temperature wash.

The biggest _actual_ cost for hand washing is the time consumed - you may call
it opportunity cost. Historically the societal benefits of the shift from
having someone (typically 'the woman' of the household) spending 10-20 hours a
week attending to laundry, to requiring perhaps a half hour of someone's time,
have been better studied.

~~~
oldcynic
Not to forget that you will use a lot more hot water hand washing than a
typical front loader uses.

Yes, I'm aware top loaders are still popular in the US, which may change the
economics markedly.

------
btrettel
This is a real trade-off, but the "convenient" choice is not always bad if you
have control over the situation.

As a transportation cyclist, some people I know think I must have superhuman
willpower. But the reality is that I don't own a car, don't like the bus, and
live too far away for walking regularly to be practical. I structured my life
so that cycling is the most convenient option. I do this to save money and
stay in shape. (It's good for the environment too but that's not as convincing
to me. My pollution is a drop in the bucket, cycling or not.)

Here's an example most would consider less extreme: Switching to a "feature
phone" or not using a cell phone at all. In that case, calling from a feature
or landline phone becomes the most convenient option.

Few would be surprised by the general principle: When possible, structure your
life so that doing what you believe is right comes naturally.

What seems more surprising are the specific applications, perhaps because they
often are personal and consequently not applicable to others.

~~~
the_gastropod
> It's good for the environment too but that's not as convincing to me. My
> pollution is a drop in the bucket, cycling or not.

Hey, don't sell yourself short! Of course an individual's pollution
contributions are a "drop in the bucket". Just like a presidential vote is a
drop in the bucket. In aggregate, these drops do a lot of good (or could do a
lot of bad). You're walking the walk, so to speak. That inspires people to do
the same. Keep it up!

------
gukov
Inconvenience and boredom

People's lives are hyperoptimized leaving little room for random encounters
and chance. They just take the shortest route from point A to point B.

Also, boredom is fought ruthlessly. Boredom wasn't useless. It was used to
"entertain" the brain by pondering one's life problems, come up with
solutions. Today feeling bored means it's time to check facebook.

~~~
thisacctforreal
Or ctrl-t n enter.

For this I made a separate chromium profile who's tabs reopen on boot,
homepage is hn, and search engine is hn algolia. It's stopped the ctrl-t n
enter habit successfully.

------
dpflan
I noticed the "referrer=" parameter in the submitted URL is for MetaFilter.

> [https://www.metafilter.com/172744/Technologies-of-Mass-
> Indiv...](https://www.metafilter.com/172744/Technologies-of-Mass-
> Individualization)

I thought it'd be cool to see all the comments and discussion people are
having about this: How can the comments on all three sites {MetaFilter, NYT,
HN} be collated to into one discussion? Is there a service that exists for
this that my morning brain isn't thinking of?

~~~
skybrian
You could do three searches? Perhaps that's not convenient enough.

~~~
dpflan
That could be a start for a prototype browser plug-in.

------
tomrod
> Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the
> world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit
> thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of
> the economist’s incentives. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the
> same thing as trivial.

The mapping of convenience to cost is called "transaction costs."

It's certainly prevalent in a lot of economic work!

~~~
nabla9
That's not what transaction cost is. Transaction costs are expenses incurred
when buying or selling a good or service.

Convenience is a factor in preference (ordering of alternatives based on their
relative utility)

~~~
tomrod
Disagree. Convenience is a factor in the cost of use and acquisition of the
utility-generating bundle. Though I can see your view, if we were to take it
to the logical extreme one could say that all costs are an input of
utility/preferences, rather than a factor limiting the consumption set.

------
bhauer
It's certainly the force that is pushing a majority to willingly hand over all
of their personal data to third parties. Presently, it is inconvenient to set
up a virtual private network and application servers to host personal
omnipresent applications ("PAO" applications) and share data with friends. But
some of us insist on keeping personal data personal. Rather than store my data
on third-party services, I use my own disks with a virtual network that makes
the data available everywhere. Here at HN, similar-minded people are fairly
common.

Convenience is simply one variable used in decision making. Some of us value
it more than others. In many spaces, I value preference and self-ownership
higher than convenience, so many of the examples in the article do not
resonate with me. I see the described behavior in others.

As the article points out, technology evolves. Personal hosting will become
simpler with time and perhaps at some point, we will hit the tipping point
where it is approximately as convenient as third-party "cloud" data and
application hosting. Incremental steps along this path that merges self-
ownership and convenience (e.g., the work being done by ZeroTier) are visible
if you're looking for them.

------
nylin93
Really agree with the author's point that there is something fulfilling about
inconvenience and struggling.

After I started fishing in my spare time, I've had really good days where the
fish are hammering my lures and I'm catching them every 10 minutes. Those days
always start out well, but towards the end it's almost boring since I know
they'll end up biting and there's no sense of accomplishment.

But the days where the fish aren't biting and I have to switch out lures, tie
different rigs, and search for the fish make it much more rewarding when I do
catch one.

~~~
nine_k
Fishing for sport (not a significant source of food), at your leisure, is a
luxury. A well-chosen luxury is bound to be pleasurable, it's the whole point.

A washing machine, or running water, or not having to bake one's own bread,
are much less of a luxury, closer to basic necessities outside dire poverty.
Washing by hand or bringing water from a river may be fulfilling and fun if
you choose to do so, and are free to change your choice when you see fit. For
basic necessities, it is much less so.

------
cs702
This is a thought-provoking but ultimately unsatisfying essay.

Its exhortation to "resist the stupefying power of convenience" is unlikely to
work, because convenience, which I would define as "getting what you need or
want with less effort," gives rise to _economic incentives_ : Between any two
otherwise equal options, the more convenient one requires a lower investment
of time and work from you and is therefore, in the end, cheaper.

Exhortations against economic incentives rarely if ever work.

------
redka
> As if to mask the issue, we give other names to our inconvenient choices: We
> call them hobbies, avocations, callings, passions.

Aren't those things also filled with convenience? We use convenient tools,
places, etc. for them. As the author described earlier "By saving time and
eliminating drudgery, it would create the possibility of leisure. And with
leisure would come the possibility of devoting time to learning, hobbies or
whatever else might really matter to us". Since this is most likely, at least
to a point, true then couldn't convenience be thought of as something allowing
us to advance in areas that are of interest to us instead of wasting time for
things that aren't?

> “Even with all the new labor-saving appliances,” she wrote, “the modern
> American housewife probably spends more time on housework than her
> grandmother.”

Even if that's the case I'm sure it's not if we take into account more than a
single generation. Imagine, for example, the convenience of the washer. Before
it, washing the clothes was a very tedious and time-consuming task.

~~~
jfk13
> Imagine, for example, the convenience of the washer. Before it, washing the
> clothes was a very tedious and time-consuming task.

True; but I suspect that in the past, people didn't wash as many clothes as
frequently as we do now. It seems possible that the total amount of laundry
being done in a typical household has grown so that although the process is
easier/more efficient, we still spend a similar amount of time on it.

~~~
andrepd
I don't think this is true; see e.g.
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-
economic-...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-
history/article/time-spent-in-home-production-in-the-twentiethcentury-united-
states-new-estimates-from-old-data/59CAB406A472381356E80B92B90B6860)

------
jancsika
> Why? Because the introduction of the iTunes store in 2003 made buying music
> even more convenient than illegally downloading it. Convenient beat out
> free.

tldr; Convenient does not beat free. A convenient system with fees and with no
propaganda against it whose use carries no risk of ruining one's
life/finances/reputation beats a gratis system with widespread propaganda
against it whose use, development, and distribution carries a risk to
everyone's life/finances/reputation.

* you can get sued into oblivion for even _using_ the free option. This is such a danger that Bram Cohen, original author of Bittorrent, has stated publicly he decided from the outset _never_ to download content over it so that nobody could ever impeded his current or future work with threats of lawsuits over copyright infringement. (And the current debacle with Project Gutenberg shows how big a danger those lawsuits can be.)

* you can get jail time for publishing the locations of the free options

* you can be threatened with lawsuit and/or criminal penalties for developing an application like Popcorn Time that makes the free options discoverable and user-friendly

* you _will_ eventually get your domain name suspended if you ignore all the risks above and serve up an app/site for the free option

* even projects like Gutenberg and IMSLP which serve up content exclusively that is no longer under copyright have to spend considerable resources consulting with lawyers to make sure parties who would rather sell what they offer cannot simply strongarm them or sue them out of existence

Take all those risks into account, plus the fact that RIAA and Hollywood have
enormous resources to throw against the free option. It is amazing that the
free options have existed _at all_ , much less in the user-friendly and
convenient form of something like Popcorn Time.

------
mitchtbaum
See also The Tyranny of Stuctureless

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness)

and The Tyranny of Tyrannosaurus Rexes

[http://rarrrrrrrr.com/](http://rarrrrrrrr.com/)

------
alfonsodev
I heard this concept the first time from Richard Stallman in the context of
trading freedom for convenience.

I think it was this video [1] when discussing innovation at any cost.

[1] [https://youtu.be/SUJtMlEwd6Q?t=1012](https://youtu.be/SUJtMlEwd6Q?t=1012)

------
jgalt212
> I prefer to brew my coffee, but Starbucks instant is so convenient I hardly
> ever do what I “prefer.”

How is this even remotely true? I always wait on spirit crushing lines at
Starbucks. I guess you can order ahead, but the "planning factor" does take
away some convenience.

~~~
gyom
The point would still stand even if Starbucks was indeed instantaneous.
There's is something nice about being able to spend 2-5 minutes to prepare
your own coffee. Sometimes you don't want to do it, but I think the point here
is that if you have the convenient Starbucks alternative right in your face,
you might "accidentally" surrender the pleasure of brewing your own coffee due
to your laziness of the moment.

------
joncrane
"The Tyranny of Convenience" reminds me of a book I read called "The Paradox
of Choice."

Basically, these things that modern technology and optimization have wrought
tend to be burdens to those of us who tend to think more deeply about things.

It's good to stay aware of the pitfalls of modern life. However there can be
no doubt that overall, the changes that bring about increases in convenience
and choice are good for most people. Their effect on society is a little more
nuanced.

------
astro_robot
I have lots of problems with this article's arguments. He uses several
simplified examples to show the "cost" of convenience.

> When you can skip the line and buy concert tickets on your phone, waiting in
> line to vote in an election is irritating. This is especially true for those
> who have never had to wait in lines (which may help explain the low rate at
> which young people vote).

The youth vote has been on decline since the 1980's, long before Ticketmaster
ever came along
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_vote_in_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_vote_in_the_United_States)).

> We are willing to pay a premium for convenience, of course — more than we
> often realize we are willing to pay. During the late 1990s, for example,
> technologies of music distribution like Napster made it possible to get
> music online at no cost, and lots of people availed themselves of the
> option. But though it remains easy to get music free, no one really does it
> anymore. Why? Because the introduction of the iTunes store in 2003 made
> buying music even more convenient than illegally downloading it. Convenient
> beat out free.

This argument blows my mind how simplified it is. There are plenty of reasons
someone would prefer iTunes over Napster, not illegal and more user friendly
to name the two biggest. Why not use the example of a record store versus
iTunes or even Napster? To show how conveniency can beat in human experiences
or make you bend your morals to steal music?

> Americans say they prize competition, a proliferation of choices, the little
> guy. Yet our taste for convenience begets more convenience, through a
> combination of the economics of scale and the power of habit. The easier it
> is to use Amazon, the more powerful Amazon becomes — and thus the easier it
> becomes to use Amazon. Convenience and monopoly seem to be natural
> bedfellows.

This argument totally neglects that Amazon was ever a "little guy." Amazon's
growth is the embodiment of American's prizing competition. Without
competition, Amazon would never have been able to steal customers from Barnes
and Noble, Walmart, Kroger, etc. Also, Amazon's framework allows for "little
guy" shops to start up with low cost.

> However mundane it seems now, convenience, the great liberator of humankind
> from labor, was a utopian ideal. By saving time and eliminating drudgery, it
> would create the possibility of leisure. And with leisure would come the
> possibility of devoting time to learning, hobbies or whatever else might
> really matter to us.

If this was a "utopian ideal", then we would not be able to read this article
on the internet. There is a reason that only the wealthy elites were
scientists in the past. It's because they didn't have to spend their majority
of the day doing laborious tasks. Without conveniency, there would be a lot
less engineers, scientists, writers, artists, gamers, etc.

This article has no leg to stand on. You can swap out the word conveniency for
innovation at many points, which is completely counter-intuitive to human
philosophy. I understand that the writer is saying it's nice to take things
slow. To not multi-task your brain to death. What he should be arguing for is
to practice patience not to wash your clothes by hand.

------
adamio
Convenience is just another word for removing waste. Wasted movement, or time.

~~~
gcp123
The author's point is that we've thrown out too much of what we've perhaps to
broadly labeled as waste. We're realizing that some of the "waste" (to use
your term) actually has value in it that we previously didn't recognize. It's
a waste of effort to climb to the top of a mountain when you could've taken a
vehicle to the top, perhaps, but for some folks that value isn't in the
destination alone. Author's point is that we should be more aware of what we
value, and how much of the "waste" a convenience a convenience removes is
truly "waste" vs meaningful/valuable experience/effort for growth and
fulfillment.

~~~
adventured
The fundamental problem with the author's premise, to use your example, is
that the effort needed to climb to the top of a mountain every day, is
ridiculous.

There's no outsized value in washing your clothes by hand every day, week,
month. It's monotonous, very time consuming and physically punishing. There's
also similarly no value in cutting your entire lawn by hand. These things are
not comparable to climbing a mountain, which you're going to do rarely.

If you have to climb a mountain every day, take a vehicle. Your body will
thank you. And so will your loved ones, because climbing a mountain is
extremely time consuming, so you'll never see your loved ones again.

------
jonathansorum
Why can't a publication like NY Times put 2 minutes into editing an article or
op ed piece into something a bit more pleasant to the eyes? It wouldn't take
much to add some subheadings, make key words/phrases bold.

Getting tired of publications where Wall of Text hits you for +100 hp...

