Conspicuous consumption makes everyone in a society poorer and less happy. Consider the owner of the 10-year-old sedan that gets a family reliably to every necessary destination. Now  a neighbor buys a $50,000 SUV. The sedan owner wants to keep up with the Jones family and their pavement-melting SUV so he takes on a second job and cancels plans to take a nice summer vacation.

Now he and everyone else in the neighborhood have $50,000 SUVs but for most of them it isn’t something they would have bought otherwise, which in turn means that they will derive less than $50,000 in value from having the new vehicle compared to the old.

If the former sedan owner previously would have only paid about $10,000 to swap our his old car for the new SUV then he suffers a $40,000 loss as a consequence of conspicuous consumption.

This may be one reason why people suffer a measured loss of happiness when neighbors get wealthier.

The secret to Danish happiness

yeap

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn't worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don't even know?

This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young. Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.

The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. That kind of work ends up being done by people who are "just trying to make a living." (Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.) The danger is when money is combined with prestige, as in, say, corporate law, or medicine. A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone young, who hasn't thought much about what they really like.

The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?

How to do what you love.

Btw, tot ce scrie Paul Graham trebuie citit, in caz ca inca traiti sub o stanca si nu ati dat de el.

simplu:

We’re announcing the availability of TV ad targeting on Twitter.

TV ad targeting was developed over time through the acquisition of Bluefin Labs and is designed to make it even easier to extend and enhance TV ad campaigns. TV ad targeting for Promoted Tweets is available today in a limited beta to selected partners running national TV commercials in the U.S.

TV ad targeting enables marketers to engage directly with people on Twitter who have been exposed to their ads on TV. Synchronized Twitter and TV ad campaigns make brand messages more engaging, interactive and measurable, while making it easy for marketers to run always-on Twitter campaigns that complement and amplify their TV creative.

mi se pare foarte tare daca o sa le iasa.

nothing

Iata ca dupa HBO si Netflix, avem ceva noutati de la TBS si TNT din US of A:

TBS and TNT are about to become the first national entertainment networks in the industry to stream on-air content live across multiple platforms 24/7, including through the networks’ websites and a pair of newly created Watch TNT and Watch TBS apps.

The announcement was made during TNT and TBS’s annual Upfront presentation today in New York. Live streaming is the latest phase in the rollout of TV Everywhere, the industry-wide initiative that gives subscribers to cable, satellite and telco video services access to more of their favorite shows across a wide range of digital platforms.

Btw, asta implica si meciurile din NBA, pe care le transmite TNT, care meciuri le puteti cumpara si separat de aici, indiferent de tara in care va aflati.

Se intampla lucruri, interesting times.