[1]Tom MacWright

tom@macwright.com

[2]Tom MacWright

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Maximization and buying stuff

2024-12-29

I’ve been revisiting the vintage 37signals blog post [10]A Rant Against
Maximization. I am by nature, a bit of a maximizer: I put a lot of time into
research about everything and have grown to be unfortunately picky. On the
positive side, I don’t regret purchases very frequently and can be a good
source of recommendations.

But this year I decided to starting figuring out how to spend money more
effectively – to figure out what it’s useful for that gives me joy and
long-term satisfaction. Partly inspired by [11]Die With Zero and [12]Ramit
Sethi’s philosophies.

It has been a tough transition. I’m used to finding some price/quality local
maximum, and nice stuff is always past that point. Leicas, luxury cars, fancy
clothes, etc are usually 80% more expensive and 20% technically-better than the
value-optimizing alternative.

To be clear, I bought a fancy bicycle, no BMWs for this guy. But it followed
the same diminishing-marginal-utility arc as other fancy stuff. I’ve spent a
lot of time thinking about whether I would have been better off choosing a
different point on the cost/value curve.

But really: for most things there are a wide range of acceptable deals. We were
not born to optimize cost/value ratios, and it’s not obvious that getting that
optimization right will really bring joy, or getting it wrong (in minor ways)
should make anyone that sad. And it’s a tragedy to [13]keep caring about
inconsequential costs just because of psychology. I’m trying to avoid that
tragedy.

Anyway, the bike is awesome.

Also, with the exception of sports cars and houses, people in the tech industry
and my demographic in the US likes to keep its consumerism understated. For
example, an average tech worker in San Francisco tends to look clean-cut middle
class, but going up the stairs from the subway you’ll see a lot of [14]$500
sneakers. There are acceptable categories of consumerism – you can buy a
tremendously oversized house and get very little flack for it (maybe the home
is a good investment, though I have my doubts), and a big car (bigger the
better, to protect your family in crashes with other big cars, apologies to the
pedestrians). Uncoincidentally, I guess, these are also the two purchases that
in the US are usually financed, or in other words, leveraged.


References:

[1] https://macwright.com/
[2] https://macwright.com/
[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
[9] https://macwright.com/about/
[10] https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/a-rant-against-maximization/
[11] https://macwright.com/2021/09/11/die-with-zero
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramit_Sethi
[13] https://wggtb.substack.com/p/having-a-healthy-relationship-with
[14] https://www.nordstrom.com/s/common-projects-original-achilles-sneaker-men/4976450