> But the author's examples and 'calculations' are just this side of garbage.
You spend one third to one fourth of your life sleeping. Just idling away time. Wait - a 10 minute shower everyday as well? And 10 minutes for breakfast? And a 30 minute lunch? You're wasting a lot of time. Better get your productivity a notch up.
Why? Because you find it irritating that he finds it irritating that some people spend more time cutting others down than trying to improve themselves?
The majority of comments on this post are of the form "his analysis is wrong, because it doesn't take into account factors x, y, and z". That's great --- we're having a civil discussion about the merits of his argument.
Linking to his blog post in this way is tantamount to implying that the commenters on this thread are "complainypants", which I find quite rude. If that wasn't his intention, then he certainly could have done a much better job communicating it.
The post he was responding too wasn't any kind of civil or even logical discussion. It just said his examples and analysis were borderline garbage with no justification.
Which is a fair point. I actually had originally drafted a much longer reply which included additional problems with the figures and comparisons [1].
But after about 10 minutes I realized that the author wasn't making a financial argument from the numbers, he was making an emotional argument with hand-waved numbers for garnish. And that, despite my interest in the issue and agreement with his conclusion, it simply wasn't worth that kind of time.
[1] e.g. $200/20,000 miles for car costs beyond oil/gas/tires is laughably low; ignoring parking/toll costs in the no-commute/used-car case; considering lost time in the commuting case but not lost-personal time in the no-commute case; assuming financing in the commuting case and savings for a used car in the no-commute case; ... generally just considering worst-case for the commuting case and best-case for the no-commute case in almost all things
But the author's examples and 'calculations' are just this side of garbage.