The Logic of Stupid Poor People (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://tressiemc.com/2013/10/29/the-logic-of-stupid-poor-people/ <comment><USER3> This article connects the virtue of appearing professional to overspending on luxury goods as if they are identical.

I'm reminded of the "chav" subculture in Britain and their love of Burberry. (Extreme example: [http://i.imgur.com/8QxFSh5.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/8QxFSh5.jpg)) I don't get the feeling that they're trying to open doors to the British upper-class, but rather using it as a status-symbol within their own community.

Personally I don't see anything wrong with that; everyone wants to look good for their peers. But I feel like the author is trying to make it more noble than it is.

<comment><USER4> I thought of the same thing. I do not think, that you buy status symbols to move to an upper class, I think they are uniforms to identify yourself within your own class and move to the top of it.

Excessive manicure, hair extensions etc. are expensive but seem like a stupid investment. They (in my mind, subjectively) lower your social status, because they are uniforms of the lower class.

Moving one class up, a big car is expensive, but you still will not be accepted in the (upper) middle class if you do not have a proper job or you wear a uniform of the lower class. The question arises whether your house is paid of or not and why you bought that car if it is not

The farther up you rise in the Bildungsbürgertum [0], the more subtle the indicators get: Do you use foreign words, that indicate your French/Latin language education? Which instruments do your children play? Do your children play football (soccer) or tennis?

The point of these status indicators is, that you can not fake them easily. You can not pay of your house if you do not have a proper paying job. You have to get a certain education to show of certain skills. If you have these things you already belong to the respective class.

Edit: Wanted to add one more thing: My most favourite social status indicator is the number of children. It seems to me, that having more than 3 children is an indicator of either the lower class, because the marginal costs of an additional child are mostly paid by the state, or the upper class, because you they can handle the marginal costs on their own again. The middle class often does not want to pay these costs.

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsb%C3%BCrgertum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsb%C3%BCrgertum)

<comment><USER5> In most of America, we don't have a ridid class system.

At least where I grew up, how much money you had, and what clothes you wore meant absolutely nothing. In fact, it often worked against you if you happened to have rich parents--the whole spolied rich kid thing.

As adults, I guess Americans start to stereotype, but we don't have hard and fast demarcations between low class and upper class.

I'm not saying Americans aren't racists, but the whole class thing was never a big deal where I grew up, or I didn't notice it?

I have noticed a bit of a change lately, but it's still not a ridid system.

I have never heard a guy talk about the economic class a women fits into-- Never! They find that special person and will do anything to win them over. In other words, they find that person they find Perfect, and want a relationship --period. (The're usually rejected, but that's another topic.) I have seen women judge people on how much money they come from, but it's not as strong as in other countries, and it usually/always comes from jealousy. Yes, looks do matter. It's a commodity, especially when you are younger. How much money you have doesn't come into the picture until later in life, but that's for men. A pretty, caring female is not judged on how much money she makes. In a lot of circles, it might even work against her? Some of you will call me a sexist over that statement, but it's just something I have noticed. A rich guy who looks/acts like Donald Trump will get his pick. A rich women does not get the same perks. Yes--it's wrong, but I can care less over the happiness of the wealthy. (There I go, I am using wealthy as a demarcation of class? Yes, in American we do talk about the wealthy, and 1 percenter's, but we don't associated it with class, morals, manners, or intelligence. (Donald Trump is a perfect example of a "upper class" person in America. It just doesn't work?)

Over the years, I have sat watched movies/series about the upper classes(usually in Great Britain), and always found them hilarious. I know it's because we don't have a monarchy--thank goodness--personally I couldn't stomach all that pomposity, and family lineage b.s..

(This is coming from a 40 someting, who's always lived in liberal communities.) I don't want to argue--I never even come back to posts. I hope I didn't offend anyone concerning their perceived class?)

<comment><USER4> Even if you will not answer me, I want to state, that I think your points a highly subjective and I find all of them questionable. The inherent optimism to rise up by your own does not make a society classless.

I can not think of a western country that is as extremely divided as America. No limit at the top, no limit at the bottom.

People do not talk about the class of people they meet, because the mostly meet people of their own class in the first place. You go to similar schools, attend similar colleges and live in similar neighbourhoods.

Europe has its nouveau rich, that do not really belong to the 1%, too, the same way, that America has its aristocrats, too. I mean, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Bush vs. Clinton again?!?

<comment> o0-0o I think if you dig deeper you'll see that the only somewhat aristocratic family in your statement are the Bushes. The Clinton's are just power hungry, ugly, bourgeois. The Obama's are just a vessel for many things.

Otherwise, spot on, and fantabulous analogy about the limitless top and bottom!

<comment><USER6> The Kennedy's would be a better example of an aristocratic family than the Clinton's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of what she says is true, but a lot of it is cultural and transcends borders. If you go up to frugal places in new england, putting on airs will not get you too far... but in other places, more flashy places, it helps.

But this phenomenon is certainly not only American or essentially white. You can go to Japan and you can go to urban coastal china and contrast that with rural china. Or you can go to Nigeria and contrast Lagos with people not from Lagos.

The signaling and the the appearances are not either uniquely american nor are they borne from mainstream american culture. It's pretty much semi-universal.

On the other hand, poor people in China and Japan will try to look as presentable as possible while being quite frugal.

This whole thing brings up a pet peeve of mine and that's the "cultural fit" meme one finds so pervasive in the valley. It's as if someone who has a Motorola 'culture' is a bad 'fit' for working at Cloudera, to make something up.

None the less, you see people slurping up the corporate culture du jour as if a 'jobdesiac'. You could imagine how if essentially mainstream engineers can be categorized as bad cultural fits just from one company to the next, how slightly different cultures would have even more pronounced experiences due to discrepancy.

<comment><USER8> What if "whiteness" is not a geographical/physical trait but a social construction? What if whiteness varies in the specifics of its processes around the world?

<comment><USER9> "Whiteness" is absolutely physical/biological, but if you want to talk about characteristics signifying traits associated with power and dominant status, then yes, they are socially constructed. It's just not called "whiteness."

<comment><USER10> It is though.

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

<comment><USER11> > if you want to talk about characteristics signifying traits associated with > power and dominant status

Whiteness is associated with power and dominant status, but not all categorizations of "characteristics signifying traits associated with power and dominant status" are Whiteness. Whiteness is a subset of CSTAWPADS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somehow I think truth might be somewhere between "Poor people are making rational decisions to consume status goods in the hopes of improving their economic outcomes by convincing gatekeepers that they are, in fact, middle class" and "Poor people are spending $2,500 on handbags because poor people value handbags more than they value $2,500."

Case in point: there is no conceivable narrative by which one's sofa gets one welfare benefits or a new job as a shift lead. Poor people apparently are quite aware of this. When asked (in the article referenced by a sibling thread), the young lady's answer to "Why did you buy a sofa?" answer was "Because I wanted a sofa."

<comment><USER13> Can you link to the article in question? Wanting a sofa does not seem unreasonable (you have to sit on something), and I feel I'm missing something.

Was it a particularly expensive sofa? Or by 'sofa', do you mean something other than 'couch', which is what I take it to mean?

<comment><USER14> The idea is that one does not need a $1500 sofa if all one wants is something to sit on.

As an example, I purchased my first sofa costing more than zero at age 43. But I've always had sofas everywhere I lived before that. Sofas that meet the definition of "something to sit on" can be had for roughly zero dollars and are plentiful at that price point.

You would notice the difference if you put one side by side with a new one costing $1500, indicating that perhaps that difference in appearance is the real reason that somebody without $1500 to spare would choose to buy the latter in favor of the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _I sat in on an interview for a new administrative assistant once. My regional vice president was doing the hiring. A long line of mostly black and brown women applied because we were a cosmetology school. Trade schools at the margins of skilled labor in a gendered field are necessarily classed and raced. I found one candidate particularly charming. She was trying to get out of a salon because 10 hours on her feet cutting hair would average out to an hourly rate below minimum wage. A desk job with 40 set hours and medical benefits represented mobility for her. When she left my VP turned to me and said, "did you see that tank top she had on under her blouse?! OMG, you wear a silk shell, not a tank top!" Both of the women were black.

The VP had constructed her job as senior management. She drove a brand new BMW because she, "should treat herself" and liked to tell us that ours was an image business. A girl wearing a cotton tank top as a shell was incompatible with BMW-driving VPs in the image business. Gatekeeping is a complex job of managing boundaries that do not just define others but that also define ourselves. Status symbols — silk shells, designer shoes, luxury handbags — become keys to unlock these gates. If I need a job that will save my lower back and move my baby from medicaid to an HMO, how much should I spend signaling to people like my former VP that I will not compromise her status by opening the door to me? That candidate maybe could not afford a proper shell. I will never know. But I do know that had she gone hungry for two days to pay for it or missed wages for a trip to the store to buy it, she may have been rewarded a job that could have lifted her above minimum wage. Shells aren't designer handbags, perhaps. But a cosmetology school in a strip mall isn't a job at Bank of America, either._

<comment><USER15> _Gatekeeping is a complex job of managing boundaries that do not just define others but that also define ourselves. Status symbols — silk shells, designer shoes, luxury handbags — become keys to unlock these gates._

Pierre Bourdieu's "La Distinction" is a great text that investigates this topic in depth. It's (among other things) about taste. How it's inherited through generations, how it's a gatekeeping tool for jobs and status.

 _What_ you wear isn't the whole story btw. It's also _how_ you wear it (as exemplified above ("Chavs" wearing Burberry)). One of Bourdieu's examples is art and how one speaks about it (using certain words, knowing the "right" works of art etc. Another example might be wine).

I don't know if Bourdieu is widely read in the US, but he certainly influenced my thinking about class, class boundaries, and taste. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER16> +1 for Bourdieu. I think everyone should read him.

I thought he was particularly interesting on music. You might expect the upper classes to be opera buffs and experts on classical music. But in fact he found that the middle classes used a knowledge of classical music as evidence of aspiration.

The upper classes sometimes used opera as a status marker, but were more likely to enjoy undemanding music, like easy listening and musicals - presumably because they felt they had nothing to prove.

Interestingly, median prices for a stadium show by a mainstream act are higher than tickets for most seats at the Royal Opera House.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I grew up poor among other poor people, and it never struck me that anyone was buying expensive stuff because they thought that's what would lead them to a better job or some such. They were buying expensive stuff because they wanted it. There's this new feel-good ideal that it's not poor peoples' fault they're poor, but no one ever supplies data to back it up. Only well-written personal stories. I'm sure it's not a binary, but from personal experience where I grew up, the poor people in my family and around me were poor mostly because they were lazy, wanted expensive possessions, and refused to work the long-game to getting out of poverty.

I'd love to see real data that points to this being the exception.

<comment><USER18> There is a small irony in you asking other people for data to back up their arguments, and then making your argument "from personal experience".

<comment><USER11> But note that a single counterexample disproves a general law.

<comment><USER19> Not in social sciences. When you are dealing with people and cultures, trying to find a "law" that applies uniformly to everyone is naive.

BTW, if you are really interested, here is an article (with links to actual scientific studies) on why being poor is hard: [http://thepsychreport.com/research-application/featured- rese...](http://thepsychreport.com/research-application/featured-research/the- cognitive-burden-of-poverty/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really hard to read for me. I don't know the way the author expresses her ideas is hard to grasp.

The basic idea of course is right: You need to fake status if you don't have it, if you want some of the benefits.

But what is missing is some data. Because if we think that further, you can certainly overspend on that hope that one day someone let's you in on something because you have status. And probably many people do overspend on that (I'm thinking about the golden $10k Apple watch here as an example). There must be a way to evaluate how much is good and when it starts to hurt you. And I guess there should be a lot of science on that.

<comment><USER21> There is a comment below the original article which makes the point that even knowing the threshold is itself a form of privilege in the particular case of "dressing to impress".

<comment><USER20> Which comment do you mean? Ctrl-F for "threshold" and "dressing to impress" didn't yield anything. Skimming the first three comments didn't either.

Also what's the point? I don't really agree with "knowing <X> = privilege" but let's say it's true. Then what? Does that change what should be the best decision? Does it change how we react on incomplete information?

Knowing that there is a threshold at which returns start to diminish is a good point, because it tells you to look for clues of when to stop spending on status symbols. Having an expensive watch might help you, but the $60k watch might not improve your situations 10x of what a $6k watch would do.

Now if we add that the knowledge of the threshold is privilege, what does it change? Of course the person who has that knowledge makes better decisions. But knowing that it is a privilege to know that threshold doesn't give any more change to the decision making process. Or at least I don't see it.

<comment> semi-extrinsic This is just semi-anecdotal, but for watches I don't think there's really a lower threshold when it comes to price. My watch is the $90 (sadly out-of- production) Casio MDV-102 [1] which is a real cult classic. I have it on a black and grey Nato strap ($10) and it does get me compliments from watch connoiseurs from time to time. But I guess there's a definite knack to recognizing cult classics though.

[1] [http://forums.watchuseek.com/f220/review-casio- mdv102-duro-2...](http://forums.watchuseek.com/f220/review-casio- mdv102-duro-200-super-illuminator-diver-472351.html)

<comment><USER22> People don't generally spend $60k on a watch to impress watch connoisseurs, but to impress people who know nothing about watches. The reason Rolex is so popular is not really because they are great watches (they are), but because everybody knows that Rolexes are expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like how this article is written, but I don't think many of the "unneeded expensive buys" help to climb the ladder.

I think most of it is to feel better.

If you like your job and most of the other parts of your life, you spent less money to feel better.

But if nobody gives you a good job and you don't have much time left for the rest of your life, you get the impression that you have to buy happiness.

Can't blame those people. Did it myself for years.

</comment><comment><USER24> A high school friend of mine wound up working as an "ATM Clark" \- essentially the guy in charge of filling ATMs. The salary varies wildly based on how much overtime is done, his take-home salary was usually $2500/month (which lies in the richer portion of the middle class in South Africa). His colleague did no overtime and took home $500/month.

This guy who only earned $500 spent $400 on a loan and insurance for a Golf GTi (one of the status symbol cars in South Africa). My friend who earned 5 times as much drove around in a derelict '92 VW Fox.

So I've seen it first-hand, "stupid poor people spending stupid amounts of money on stupid things." In the same way me and my friend spent stupid amounts of money on our own type of stupid things. We bought smartphones (back in 2005, this was the WinMo days) so that we could tinker with them. Instead of getting a prestige symbols we got toys that we could play with.

Whether or not something is stupid depends on who you ask. If you ask a poor person whether someone buying a nice car is stupid they will probably say "no." If you ask them whether buying a smartphone (pre-iPhone, remember) is a stupid idea they would definitely say "yes." I would guess it speaks about the underlying psychology of wealth: those with no monetary wealth seek approval from others (prestige symbols: cars, handbags, etc.) and those with much seek approval from themselves (toys: fast internet, flashy computers, etc.).

<comment><USER25> This is also seen in many Eastern Europe places with flashy cars near crumbling post-WW2 soviet apartment buildings where obviously their (leased) car costs twice or more than any home there. Just because they show off their car for style or status.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Unfortunately today, integrating in society means being liked and for that, you must blend in and look similar to other people. People feel much stronger when they can see they are part of the larger group, and like to confirm their norms as correct and will always unconsciously exclude minorities or people who are off. Animals do exactly the same thing: groups of dogs will never tolerate cats and vice versa. One cat can tolerate a dog, but never in groups.

That's why law was invented, to put some order into the zoo and transform it into civilization. The real political issue is to make people have faith in society and leave their culture at home.

The hardest difficulty for minorities is to not feel rejected, and to have faith in the law and the democratic system. There has been real historical progress towards legal statuses, but it's true that you can't really prevent people from behaving like social animals and make sure they behave like citizens first, social animal second.

The real intellectual fight, is to systemically crush the idea that some cultures and ways of life are to be thanked for because they brought our society's greatness. I guess the US is a large country with very diverse cultures, and it can be very hard for the federal government to make the union hold into something thriving and prosperous.

The saddest thing is when you hear people defending the founding fathers like they are the sole ideal of america: white catholic conquerors founded america and thus america should be at its image.

<comment><USER27> Re your last sentence: hardly any Founding father was Catholic.

<comment><USER28> "Catholic" means "Christian" (well, "church universal", really), although it's often used as a shorthand for "Roman Catholic", being a subset of Catholicism.

Sometimes the distinction is made by a lower case leading "c" for the church universal, and an upper case leading "C" for shorthand of "Roman Catholic".

Here's a Lutheran church using the term in this way: [http://web.archive.org/web/20081203192002/http://www.elca.or...](http://web.archive.org/web/20081203192002/http://www.elca.org/Growing- In-Faith/Vocation/Rostered-Leadership/Leadership-Support/Safe- Place/Terminology.aspx)

<comment><USER29> Yes but the "universal" sense is vanishingly rare outside of religious boilerplate and doesn't make sense in the context here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Discussion from 2013: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6647809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6647809).

</comment><comment><USER31> My favorite poor decision, tattoos.

I am not talking about the cutesy ankle tattoos, I am taking tattoos that require long sleeves to cover up or worse cannot be hidden. Unless your trying for a job where creativity is king I cannot find many instances where they are acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER32> I loved this part from the article.

 _That's how generational wealth happens where I'm from: lose a leg, a part of your spine, die right and maybe you can lease-to-own a modular home._

That was a very powerful sentence.

</comment><comment><USER33> There certainly are many approaches to getting ahead if just enough. I suppose some rely on 'status symbols', while others talk their way up the ladder. I don't think this justifies some people's ridiculous purchases of status symbols while they still live in poverty however, especially those who don't use them to gain a leg up in their situation. I feel like that was not considered in the writing of this article, I could be wrong though, or have overlooked it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I was going to write a diatribe about how my sister-in-law manages to get a three bedroom semi in Berkshire in the UK, has a nice 60" television and an iphone 6 and hasn't worked a day since 1998 nor has her numerous partners, her physically disabled 15 year old son (who incidentally managed to scale a 7 foot tall wall because he couldn't be bothered to walk around the house to go and buy cigarettes), sitting there with her friends last week all they discussed was how to screw more things out of the state whilst bathing in a cloud of smoke in the garden and simultaneously annoying their neighbours with loud garage music..

...but I'm sure the logic of this article explains that...

Actually they're not stupid. They're ruthless in some areas and its hard for me to sit there a a relative and not explode violently at them.

This post is somewhat an experiment however as reddit's UK population seems to think that this class of person doesn't exist and would happily downvote people off the internet for even suggesting it, labelling you as a tory supporter and general inhuman.

<comment><USER35> What so wrong about that? She doesn't want to work. Her choice. Get over your puritanical veneration for work. She is wise to have found a way to not work and spend her time in leisure.

<comment><USER34> What is so wrong: It's dishonest.

Dishonest as she has built her life on a web of lies at the extreme cost of others. Everything she owns is on credit and has no intention of paying for it for example. If she's short of cash, her solution is to find someone to fuck and get another kid to pay the bills.

She has three children. The oldest is disabled but not and has two criminal records already. The middle one has been kicked out of two schools. And she has a social worker for the third one.

Making a career out of dishonesty isn't acceptable morally. Neither is leaving this legacy.

For ref, I'm not for work entirely and as someone who automates people out of it, I understand that there isn't likely to be enough work to go around one day.

Also I have three children and actually look after them.

<comment><USER35> No, that is presupposing that the way the system works is honest and just. I don't agree with that at all.

The earth is bountiful enough for a person to live off it without working (hunter-gatherer). Is it her fault that she was born at a time when all land and productive capacity has been appropriated by those who came before? Is it somehow noble for her to sell her body into labor to work in a society that can feed all without making her into a wage slave?

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence becomes an act of rebellion." \- Albert Camus

<comment><USER36> _The earth is bountiful enough for a person to live off it without working (hunter-gatherer). Is it her fault that she was born at a time when all land and productive capacity has been appropriated by those who came before?_

If that's the issue, there is a simple solution. We can provide hunter/gatherer levels of subsistence for anyone who wants it in some roped off, undeveloped land. Anyone who wants latrines, heating, clean water, textiles or metal still needs a job in the modern world.

This will cost essentially nothing and will allow people to live as hunter gatherers. Somehow I suspect this isn't quite what you had in mind.

<comment><USER37> Well, to be fair, no, we couldn't do this, at least not for any significant fraction of the population. The carrying capacity for a traditional HG society is a tiny fraction of an agricultural one (there should be more deer than humans, etc.)

Mind you, very few people would take you up on the offer, as you know, so we could probably manage this for anyone who wanted it...but doing so would take a lot of work without providing a lot of benefit for the whole population. So there's no good reason to. :)

<comment><USER36> I agree that no one actually wants this. It would take a moderate amount of work, but certainly far less work than the modern welfare state which I'm proposing using it as a substitute for.

My real point is that liltimmy's appeal to some hunter/gatherer era is silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> By far the best article I read today. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER39> Things don't even necessarily have to be expensive though. Someone that knows how to dress will be able to judge you in 5 seconds and clock you for what you're worth. The chest is too big, shoulder divots, sleeves not showing enough collar, why in god's name is it a 3 button, did you really match your pocket square to your tie, etc.

Simple things will betray you, much like accent and non idiomatic English. You might not ever speak to this person, but they will have formed an opinion about you in 5 seconds and poof! an opportunity slips by.

I know this seems "unfair" or maybe people will even say "yeah well if someone is so superficial maybe it's a good thing" these are all just ways of trying to rationalize an irrational world. Rather learn to play the game.

<comment><USER40> Also, for those of you not used to wearing a jacket, please don't button up th last (lowest) button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is painful to read because it is true. It is very hard to explain privilege. Almost all (good) privileged people have a very hard time of seeing it. But how to fix it? My Fair Lady style? Trickle down? Charity? So far the only thing that worked was Revolution.

</comment><comment><USER42> People seem to constantly rediscover signaling with clothing. Recall "Dress for Success" which came out in the 1970's, for example.

I know many people who refused to conform to clothing signaling norms, and it has never worked for any of them.

</comment><comment><USER43> A HN/tech-startup translate this kind of situation: would you reject someone - and maybe not bother looking as hard into their technical qualifications - <USER2> they showed up to the first interview in a "stuffy suit" that "obviously wouldn't be a good cultural fit"?

Obviously, I'm stereotyping a bit, but that's kind of the point! Sometimes there are barriers to overcome and middlemen that need to be appeased, and working to overcome these problems is a demonstration of good problem solving skills, even if it looks "stupid" to an outside observer.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is a continuation of sumptuary laws ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law)), which were laws regulating what you could wear depending on your social class. The supposed logic behind these laws was always to stop stupid poor people from buying expensive clothes they couldn't afford, but the real reason was always to preserve existing signals of wealth and class.

<comment><USER45> Except that it's _not_ a continuation of sumptuary laws because there's a huge difference between a law and individual decisions people make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This piece hinges on the premise that "not filthy rich" is the same as "poor", and goes on a tirade from there. Is it really that controversial to state that you shouldn't buy what you can't afford?

<comment><USER47> I don't think you've read the article.

<comment><USER46> I've skimmed through it after the blatant straw man in the first paragraph, which prompted me to post. I might read it later if the resulting discussion on HN is interesting :-)

edit: downvote away, but I doubt I'm alone in feeling turned off by this kind of clickbaity behavior

<comment><USER48> I would assume the down votes are less about "avoiding clickbait" and more about "commenting on something you didn't read"

<comment><USER46> Perhaps - but to me, the article goes like this:

[premise] society loves to hate on poor people and considers them stupid for buying luxury

[tweet that states nothing of the sort, not even remotely]

[thesis]

so, given that I've never heard of this trope myself (perhaps it's a bit of a US thing?) I felt turned off and commented on that, nothing less, nothing more.

<comment><USER49> I read this article years ago, and it's worth re-reading... ergo, not clickbait.

The author talks about how it __appears__ wasteful to buy expensive clothes when you're poor, but it's all about __signalling__ to others that you're someone that should not be ignored. It profoundly changed the way I thought about the "people buying expensive things they can't afford" idea when I read it.

At the risk of quoting too much, this is the part that really was memorable for me, and is worth reading more than once in the original article:

      I remember my mother taking a next door neighbor down to the
      social service agency.  The elderly woman had been denied benefits ....
      The woman had been denied in the genteel bureaucratic way — lots
      of waiting, forms, and deadlines she could not quite navigate.

      I watched my mother put on her best ... outfit.

      It took half a day but ... my mother's performance ... got done
      what the elderly lady next door had not been able to get done
      in over a year. I learned, watching my mother, that ...
      we had to pay to signal to gatekeepers that we were worthy of engaging.
      It meant dressing well and speaking well. It might not work.
      It likely wouldn't work but on the off chance that it would, you had to try.

Sure, there are stupid people that buy things they don't need. However, sometimes the things we think of as "luxury" are necessary for Getting Things Done. Hell, this is the reason I have a suit in my closet that I've worn rarely (job interviews). Expensive accessories and a Nice Outfit can help people ensure that they aren't discriminated against for being "low-class".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Intelligence (being well-read, habitual 'mapper') should come before appearance. All these bearded hipsters, imitating the same personage from the "Into The Wild" movie or each other, are so ridiculous, especially in India or Nepal, where they seemed to believe that they belong to some alien super- intelligent race or something. But when you are trying to talk to them, they cannot express anything interesting, but a small set of current memes and cultural codes.

One such hipster once told me that he is from a different tribe of humanity, and commented two minutes later, that "the eachquake was nice, I learned a lot". And he isn't even acting - he is just that.

Status symbols must be not vearable. It must be healthy looks and open- mindedness - the effects of possession of at least some intelligence (evolution do favour looks of healthy youth, not purchased status items marketed as such. Not being able to grasp this simple fact means one isn't qualified even for a hipster).

BTW, real intelligence and real spirituality does not require any special attributes to make it self-evident. On the contrary, it is inversly correlated with appearance - the dreaded-and-tattooed hippues in rags marketed for tourists are the most primitive. Then come yogis, sages and babas. Breaded hipsters comes next.

As for status symbols to impress waiters and clerks, well, they could be much subtle and cheaper that a ₹1 lakh bag. Usually, the matching set of clothing which reflects your personal taste - texture and quality of a fabric, matching colors, simplicity of being good-enough is enough.

</comment><comment><USER51> Call me closed-minded, but with a title like that I'm not clicking, and I don't want to see this post on HackerNews. It's just mean.

When I was a kid I was all "oh, I can separate the artist from their art", but as an old man... fuck that.

<comment><USER52> Quotation marks would serve to clarify the voice of the article, yet they would weaken the message of the article.

The Logic of "Stupid Poor People"

As an old man, I learned something by clicking on that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to land at fair shares distribution between founders - <AUTHOR> I am about to meet with a colleague who I'd like to invite to my side gig.
I call this side gig, but I already validated the idea and I know who needs the product, I also have some connections who are decision makers and in genuine need for a product I'm about to build.
I'm coding myself, so I will be contributing (though this colleague is more skilled than myself).
What would be the fairest distribution of shares? In the past I had some bad experiences where decisions like this was left till the end causing tensions. This time I would like to settle everything upfront so everything is fair.
Does validated idea count like something valuable enough to translate into more shares than colleague? Or should I just do straight 50/50? I was reading lots of stories where people advice against 50/50 to avoid blockages in making decisions.
I was thinking about decision power and share in financial matters. I don't mind to do 50/50 when it comes to financial stuff, though based on above thoughts I think it's fair to talk and negotiate about decision power.
Or maybe I'm totally wrong and should not even think about these matters at this stage? <comment><USER2> You also have to think of possible future ownership dilution if you bring other people in or look for funding. If this idea has a chance to be very lucrative and turn into a fulltime company, then you should probably have a lawyer draw up documents.

If this is a smaller venture and you don't see this developing into a fulltime job, I would say give them a cut of the profits without ownership (like some company's yearly profit sharing). This gives them incentive in the company performance but you retain the final say.</comment>


Mice Change Their Appearance as a Result of Frequent Exposure to Humans - <AUTHOR> http://www.media.uzh.ch/en/Press-Releases/2018/Self-domestication-House-Mouse.html <comment><USER2> Another possible explanation could be that animals feeded on an artificial monotonous diet and set free from predation pressure, start showing genetic/colour defects quickly. Similar colour issues happen with captive birds and fishes unless we provide extra charotenes to complete its diet. In the wild the diet is much more diverse and finding charotenes is not a problem.

Or that when the mice population increases the animals just fight more. Domestic mouse males fight and bite other males. Mother with litters will attack males also. More animals in the same place = more scars by bites, and this could easily lead to an increase on white (regrown) hair patches. A simple explanation that does not depend on human contact. Is normal in birds to create white feathers after a predation event to quickly replace missing ones and cover bald patches.

And another explanation could be that when the mice population increases, their individual size decreases because there are less food for each one (and different hormone interactions non necessarily human related). If we extract some of those mice and put it in a new cage subject to the same human manipulation but with a more diverse sources of food, would the average skull size quickly increase again? Would the animals with white patches decrease? I bet that yes.

<comment><USER3> Yes, these are all possible explanations, but the specific symptoms observed - development of spots and smaller cranial capacity - are well documented as common effects of human domestication across a broad range of mammalian species. That the same mechanism is driving the changes observed in these mice would be a simpler explanation than various disparate, piecemeal effects combining to produce them.

<comment><USER2> Domestication, like in the foxes study, needs a small genetic pool to work and a deliberate selection of the sexual reproduction by humans (killing the non- desired ones, mating only animals with desired traits). Nothing of that is happening here.

One of the problems with the article is that does not try to discard those explanations. A simple check to investigate if white spots are linked to sex or age would help. A check for scars in those patches would positively help us to understand what is happenning. It does not mean necessarily harming the mice, they could just rasurate some white patches and take a look.

We are concluding that animals sort of "deliberately increase" their "cuteness" to please humans but this conclusion is not justified. What if aggression is just being increased as response to animals being marked with strange human odour?. This kind of articles should discuss at least some of those alternative explanations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article claims that the animals were not exposed to selection based on their domesticity, but it includes this line "These animals are regularly provided with food and water, and investigated by the researchers."

It strikes me that that situation represents a selection pressure, because mice that are more afraid of humans, are likely to avoid a place where they are regularly present, and thus lose the advantage of the risk-free meal ticket these particular humans are providing.

<comment><USER5> Along same line. With wolves, the aggressive ones were likely shooed away or killed. Either way it's selection or a learned then taught behavior pattern change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also observed in foxes:

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

"Russian scientists achieved a population of domesticated foxes that are fundamentally different in temperament and behavior from their wild forebears. Some important changes in physiology and morphology became visible, such as mottled or spotted colored fur. Some scientists[citation needed] believe that these changes obtaining from selection for tameness are caused by lower adrenaline production in the new population..."

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested in hearing more about phenotypic changes in domesticated mammals (many of which also apply to humans), I'd recommend "The 'Domestication Syndrome' in Mammals: A Unified Explanation Based on Neural Crest Cell Behavior and Genetics" (link: [http://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/197/3/795.full.pdf](http://www.genetics.org/content/genetics/197/3/795.full.pdf)).

</comment><comment><USER7> Makes you wonder if humans do the same with their surrounding peers?

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- domestication#In_humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- domestication#In_humans)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Makes me wonder if the anatomical features humans consider "cute" actually have a root in being real predictors of timidity.

<comment><USER10> My initial thought was that it would make sense to make yourself as cute as possible if you want humans to leave you alone.

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One interesting aspect is the idea that more than just natural selection is at stake in the evolution of our gene pool. That some genetic features may be dropped or changed if not required anymore without the pressure of a higher death rate / lower reproduction. Another example is wisdom teeth, which aren't really useful anymore given that we cook meat. They are slowly disappearing but not as a result of natural selection. Darwinism doesn't seem to explain everything, there must be other mechanisms involved.

<comment><USER12> >That some genetic features may be dropped or changed if not required anymore without the pressure of a higher death rate / lower reproduction ... darwinism doesn't seem to explain everything

If the results of a newly-introduced selection pressure can be explained by darwinism / natural selection, then surely so can the results of a removal of selection pressure.

For example, if there are genes that result in lowered fear or agression, and that leads to fewer offspring for wild mice, they will have a lower frequency in a wild mouse population than in a population where they don't lead to fewer offspring. I'm no expert, but it doesn't seem like this particular article requires any additional mechanisms beyond natural selection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow this is fascinating. I didn't realize changes in the adrenal glands could so rapidly and dramatically alter a species. What evolutionary pressure to domestic themselves would these animals have if they werent coming into contact with people regularly?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to the original study: [http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/3/172099](http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/3/172099)</comment>


Solar-System-Sized Experiment to Put Time to the Test - <AUTHOR> http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/205 <comment><USER2> The experiment proposes to introduce a time delay between two paths of a coherent signal by distorting them with a gravitational field (i.e. that of Jupiter). The experimenters would then check for interference between the two signal paths to verify quantum behavior on the "cosmic scale".

The "traditional" result would predict no interference, because the time delay means betrays "which-path" information.

But I don't see any way for this experiment to turn up anything but a mundane answer. If the two wavefunctions do not overlap because they are happening at different times, how can they possibly interfere?

(And where there _is_ overlap, we lose our ability to distinguish "which- path", and we expect the interference to return).

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you mean by "the wave functions... happening at different times".

First of all, the two-slit experiment is interesting (in part) because it works if you use a continuous stream of particles and observe their pattern, or discrete particle packets and observe the pattern resulting from combining many packets together. The key result is that the same pattern is observed in both cases, except if we can tell which slit a specific particle went through. It's possible to design an experiment where you can detect which slit a particle goes through, but still let the particle through both slits. Detect the slit -> no interference; don't detect the slit -> interference. Using discrete packets makes it easier for the detection aspect.

Secondly (to clarify) the experiment would use one signal wave which, due to the distances involved , would spread wide enough to hit multiple moons at the same time. The returning signals would be combined to look for interference patterns.

In this experiment, the two (or more!) moons are the equivalent of the slits in the traditional experiment. If we cannot detect which moon bounced a particular packet we should see an interference pattern, as per previous experiments. If we can detect the moon, we shouldn't see a pattern.

The unique question this experiment asks which we haven't previously is: Can the effects of gravity be used to detect the outcome of a quantum event? where of course the quantum event is a photon packet bouncing off of moons.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the two moons are analogous to slits, in that they're point-like objects interacting with a large, coherent wavefront. The "slits" will be identified (according to the proposal) because the gravitationally distorted light path _also_ introduces a time delay, such that it takes longer to pass by one moon than it does the other.

This means the signal will be split into two pulses, one arriving before the other. You detect a pulse from moon 1, then another pulse from moon 2. You know which moon any particular photon passed by because you can look at when it arrived.

The experimenter seems to be asking "can we observe interference between the two pulses even though we know which 'slit' the photon passed through because _mumble mumble mumble_ gravity".

But there is no way for interference to happen, gravity or otherwise. Those pulses do not overlap (as far as I can tell) by the design of the experiment, because they are not happening at the same time. In other words, if pulse 1 has wavefunction psi_1(x,t) and pulse 2 has wavefunction psi_2(x,t), then <psi_1|psi_2> is nearly zero-- there is no overlap. There is no `t` where psi_1 and psi_2 have appreciable magnitude (and where they do, we would _expect_ to see interference anyway, and we would no longer be able to tell the origin of the photon).

If there is no overlap, there is no interference, whether you are measuring planets or slits. So I don't see what we could possibly learn from this experiment, or where the experiment designer expects to see interference; it is all but guaranteed to deliver results that are exactly in line with a tabletop interference experiment.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you use Phoenix/Elixir for your SaaS startup? - <AUTHOR> I wonder how people think about Phoenix Framework. Would you use it for your SaaS startup? Why? Why not? <comment><USER2> Absolutely not. You get three "innovation tokens"[1] to spend on any startup and if you spend one of them on getting a team to learn Phoenix you're short- handed right out of the gate. Choosing boring technology allows you to focus on the business/problem domain you're trying to solve and allows you to find more qualified engineers to help you get there.

If we've learned anything from Facebook it's that you can start out with a pure LAMP stack and scale to billions of users with selective re-engineering later if there's a need to scale (Twitter proves something similar with Ruby on Rails; I'm sure there are "boring" Python examples as well).

[1] [https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring- technology](https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology)

<comment><USER3> That's certainly an argument to be made, but I think you've overlooked the part where Erlang predates Rails by about two decades.

<comment><USER2> Erlang does, but Elixir and Phoenix don't.

<comment><USER3> Elixir and Erlang both yield BEAM bytecode, which is what actually runs. There's zero difference other than a choice in interface design, which is why they're also completely interoperable.

Phoenix is basically a feature wrapper around Cowboy which is written in Erlang and dates to 2011 when it reimplemented Webmachine which ran on Mochiweb which I am too lazy to dig up the actual start year for beyond "had quite an install base when Rails was in alpha."

Again, potentially useful argument, but you're pointing it in a direction that doesn't make any sense if you actually understand how those work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our company has been using Phoenix/Elixir since day 1. Most of our engineers have experience using Rails and they are productive in less than a few days.

The Elixir community is strong and once a while when we have questions, we are able to get a quick answer from the community.

After building products from scratch using Rails (on LinkedIn mobile), Go, and Elixir, which each product has served over tens of millions of people, I am very pleased with the decision using Elixir which we spent the less time in scaling.

Happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> My startup is build on Elixir for two reasons

1.) The nature of the problem (Distributed Multiplayer Game with complex logic but not computation heavy/number crunchy)

2.) I just like the language and have used it professionally for years

The value of #2 can't be overstated. In my experience, for some (most?) applications, the tech stack doesn't really matter. What tends to be more important is being comfortable with the language enough to iterate quickly and deliver value to customers

<comment><USER5> I'll build on this.

One thing I like about phoenix/elixir is that its as easy as a rails app to get started. The really cool thing is when you need some power/polish you can reach under the hood and do very powerful things with the BEAM.

My experience running rails apps at scale has been nothing but headaches when I do something concurrent or slightly weird in ruby. I always feel like I end up rewriting parts of the BEAM with redis/postgres

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We built our online campaigning tool with a graphql phoenix backend

For our use case (burst of visitors staying for a minute) it served us well and we were quickly productive with it.

I ran/coded similar petition tools in rails and php, the concurrency level you achieve with elixir is an order of magnitude higher (or we became better ;)

[https://github.com/TechToThePeople/proca- backend](https://github.com/TechToThePeople/proca-backend)

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes and no. In my opinion Elixir/Phoenix can make you and your team productive from day 1. Phoenix is well designed (apart from few naming quirks and inconsistencies, but hey, which eco system doesn't have them) and Elixir is mature enough. Few years ago there was a problem with 3rd party libraries which were hobby projects, but never turned into proper OSS and were just abandoned - e.g. User Management library called Addict ([https://github.com/trenpixster/addict](https://github.com/trenpixster/addict)). IMHO the community got much more mature now, so the problem is less apparent.

The argument for no, is the shortage of Elixir developers. I have a feeling that while it's easy to find node/java/c# devs - it is remarkably hard to find good Elixir developers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, and yes. In my point of view, the speed of development in Elixir/Phoenix is almost equivalent to that of Rails. And this is minus all the frustration of working with Ruby. Add on all the performance and language semantics of Elixir and you are far ahead already.

Rails can get you started quickly, and allows you to iterate quickly as well, but the way it slows down pisses me off. The only way to keep up is to keep feeding more and more beef.

The only negative I see with Elixir/Phoenix is that you'll have to figure out some things on your own until you arrive at a template for workflows you want to use in your app. After that it's all pretty smooth. A lot of people who have Rails experience don't seem to have any problem picking up Elixir/Phoenix

</comment><comment><USER9> When I started working on DynaBlogger ([https://www.dynablogger.com](https://www.dynablogger.com)) I picked Rails because that's what I've been using for many years. After one month or so into the development I tried Elixir and Phoenix and I seriously considered switching since I was still at the beginning. I liked response times in microseconds while with Rails you have to implement aggressive caching to achieve good enough performance. I liked the language and Phoenix too was nice, but eventually I decided to stick with Rails. The main reasons were 1) it was easy to get started but it would have taken quite a while for me to become as fluent with Elixir/Phoenix as with Ruby/Rails, 2) I would have had to reinvent several wheels from scratch or make do with inferior alternatives to popular Ruby gems. I didn't want to spend too much time with this then but I will likely revisit Elixir/Phoenix later, if needed for performance or else.

I think this is a good combination of language and framework but if you go that route you need to be sure you're ok with a smaller ecosystem, meaning that you may need to build things from scratch more often.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes. But only as an api. Elixir is a highly scalable and very productive programming language.I personally think its a better choice than nodejs, django or even GO.

</comment><comment><USER11> Would you use a pair of scissors for lawn maintenance? Sure, if my lawn was 1 square inch!

It depends on your specific use case! What are you building? Is this the best tool for the job?

Seriously these empty questions about using a tool for some general open ended purpose need to stop.

Use critical thinking. Research your issue.

Ask HN has become an exercise in handholding toddlers. I'm surprised this was even upvoted.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question was not: " _Should I_ use Phoenix/Elixir for _my_ SaaS startup?".

I was interested in the broadest possible picture. Plus, I wanted to see how much interest there is at all for Phoenix/Elixir on HN.

If you feel offended by my question, please feel free to ignore it. Please don't shoot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would not. I've experimented with it enough to know that I am much more comfortable executing with flask, rails, or dotnet. As a manager, I would dread trying to find engineers (I'm not in SV/SF), and I definitely would not want to build a product where everyone was learning the language/framework as we went (and everyone is thinking "re-write" before the first year has passed).

As others have said, if you're building a business, use what you know. Use what you can execute on the fastest, with the fewest unknowns, and with the most confidence.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have experience with it then yes.

Although, I work with Ruby for most of the time, Elixir is my "go to" language for all new projects.

I like it because of the speed and low resource consumption. If you don't have an experience with it then you would probably be better choosing known technology.

From my perspective, technology doesn't matter that much as we, engineers, would like it to be. What really matters is your ability to deliver product and your ability to market it.

As my experience shows you can even write your project with Lisp and if you're lucky enough ebay will buy it. Slack is written on php, so what? Should we all use php then?

</comment><comment><USER14> If you or your engineers liked Rails, sure! Otherwise, namely at MVP stage, stick to whatever you guys are familiar with

</comment><comment><USER15> Use whatever you know best. You can use all shell script if that solves the problem.

</comment><comment><USER16> Absolutely yes. My SaaS startup uses it, and it's really great.

I strongly disagree with the "innovation tokens" argument, at least as applied here. For one thing, while Elixir and Phoenix can certainly be considered "innovative" in the sense that they're better than more common alternatives, they really aren't "innovative" in the sense people sometimes try to scare you with—it's not all _that_ different, on a fundamental level, than those alternatives. It feels very similar to Rails or Django—different in some ways, sure, but not at all alien.

But on a more fundamental level—all being well, this startup is something you're going to be doing for at least the next two or three years, and quite likely more. By _far_ the most important factor in making technology decisions is going to be to use technologies that don't make you give up in frustration. Building a startup is a long hard journey, and yes, there will be many time along the way when you'll be tempted to throw in towel and give up.

If you're working day in and day out in a codebase, framework, language, or idiom that you don't enjoy, feeling that every day is a grind, then regardless of anything else you're chances of getting very far are less then they'd be otherwise.

So you're number one consideration when picking a language or a framework should be something that is a joy for you to use.

Of course, that's not to say productivity with he language (etc) is not important. Of course it's important! It's probably the most important factor that goes into that feeling of joy. That's why so many people love Rails… and that's also why so many people love Phoenix.

So go with it. Forcing yourself to use something that will be a slog for you to use is a fatal mistake for your startup—so go with what makes you feel comfortable and productive. If that's Phoenix, go for it!

My startup has been going for more than a year now, and in retrospect writing it in Elixir with Phoenix was absolutely the correct decision. I can say a lot of good things about it: it's comfortable, powerful, productive, efficient, and so forth. But most importantly, _because_ of all these things, I'm not pulling my hair out. Yes, doing a startup is hard. But at the very least we can avoid making things worse by deciding that the things that are under our control (such as the framework and language to use) won't be adding to those headaches.

Maybe there are other languages and frameworks that are even better. Maybe that's true, although I do think that Phoenix is at the top of the list at the moment. Some people are already comfortable with Rails or the like, and prefer to stay with it. Sure, if that's the position that you're in, that may be the correct choice for you.

But as a general rule, the principle shouldn't be "avoid innovation", it should be to avoid getting stuck in a tech stack which will feel like a grind to work on a year from now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Elixir is cool but I don't think it can help especially when you're interested in getting your MVP fast. You can try to rewrite when the product is seeking to scale

</comment><comment><USER18> I tried for ~18 months but eventually threw in the towel.

I was super impressed with Live View when it was first announced, so then I started building my app without Live View since at that point LV wasn't open source.

Things were moving along slowly but surely. It was slow for me because Elixir isn't the easiest language to learn if you're coming from Ruby or Python -- at least it wasn't for me.

Then LV went open source and got a few pre-1.0 versions under its belt. So then I decided to rewrite my app using LV. This was a grueling process because there's very little docs (at least 6-9 months ago in case things have changed), and almost no community resources around it. So I was asking a lot of questions and getting stuck but eventually I got most of it working (although it was in a very inefficient manner) with the help of a bunch of people who were kind enough to answer my questions.

I ran into issues left and right and ran into some really big concerns like not being able to detect if CSS or JS bundles changed on a LV driven page (I went all-in with LV and developed my whole site with it). So I opened a discussion about that and a few days later Phoenix and LV were patched to have that behavior which was an amazing turn around, so really, hats off to Jose and Chris.

But that really scared me a lot. It scared me because the CSS / JS bundle issue is something Turbolinks has solved like 5 years ago and it's something you would encounter when deploying your first application with LV. I didn't even get to the point where I was ready to deploy it, but I was getting close to MVP status so I was marking items off my check list.

What I'm getting at is, and maybe I'm totally off base here is that, if anyone on the core team were using LV in production then this issue would have been addressed long ago. It really shattered all and any confidence in using LV. I know as of today [https://bytepack.io/](https://bytepack.io/) (Jose's SAAS app) is powered by LV, but it's being developed behind closed doors and seems to still be in a pre-shipped status so we don't really know what's happening there on the dev side of things or how the app looks and feels.

Also my app requires a decent amount of uploading and about a year ago uploads with LV were "on the horizon" according to the author of LV. It's now a year later and the latest 2020 ElixirConf keynote talked about file uploads. It's still not available yet and given my experience with the CSS / JS bundles, I'm not really sure how battle hardened the uploader will be initially. I know someone has to pioneer new features in production but I'm a firm believer that initial burden should be on the developers of the library. Sort of like how Rails usually fully bakes features into Basecamp for months before extracting them out into Rails so the community can test them.

It's nice to see the core team is building a real application using the technology they are developing. This is IMO why Rails is so successful (Basecamp was the focus from day 1). Phoenix IMO has a lot of catching up to to do and I hope one day it gets there because there's a lot of great things around the ecosystem of the language in general. However for now, I've stepped aside with intent to consider it again in a few years. It's unlikely I'd rewrite my current app in it then, but maybe the next one.

I hope no one takes this as a personal attack on Elixir and Phoenix. This has been my experience and I hope nothing but the best for Phoenix / LV in the future. I still do want to use it, eventually.

Also if anyone is wondering why I didn't just bail on LV and use Phoenix directly with "dead views", it's because I determined the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. A web server takes in HTTP requests and returns an HTTP response. We can do that in any modern framework and still get 100ms or less response times on low powered DigitalOcean servers without things becoming an infrastructure mess. Web server + background worker + Redis + Postgres can go a LONG ways in almost any stack. It seemed like I could get my app off the ground much faster using a language and framework I'm familiar in, with a much larger ecosystem of libraries to leverage.</comment>