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song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
d--b · 10 months ago
Idk, I've seen 40-year-old Ikea cabinets being totally fine (in France).

Nowadays, the trend is that people buy the cabinet frames from Ikea, and then buy the doors, handles, and bottom support from someone else who makes more durable ones.

The thing is that with Ikea, I kind of know what I get. From a custom kitchen cabinet maker, I could get something that lasts a lifetime, or something that wears quickly.

song · 10 months ago
There's been a severe decline in quality with Ikea though. I know that the cabinets prior to 2012 were significantly better than now.
song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
alexey-salmin · 10 months ago
Sure. I'm not interested in high-quality appliances per se, it's just an example of something middle class people buy that poor people aren't really aware of.

The original question still stands: What do insanely wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about?

By the definition of the question I can't know the answer myself: I am "ordinary people" so I must know nothing about it. So what's left to me is to suggest parallels at the level I do know something about.

Another example of a "middle class thing", not related to things or appliances: services, in particular moving. I changed flats many times in my life, more than 10. I used to pack, load, unload and unpack everything by myself and at some point it started to take 2-3 days of my time full time. Then one time I contracted an end2end moving service (you just give them the keys) and I would never ever go back.

Recently a friend of mine was moving and asked to help to load the truck. After an hour of sweating I asked why he didn't contract someone -- this idea just never crossed his mind. A year later he was moving again and was grateful for the advice.

Surely, rich people enjoy services that would never cross my middle class mind? A governour for the child maybe? Well I would never know.

song · 10 months ago
> A governour for the child maybe?

That's very much country dependent. I live in a country where anyone middle class has a house keeper either from Phillipine or Indonesia (cost about 10-15k usd a year if you're not an asshole and don't pay the lowest possible salary). That housekeeper's work is to take care of the children and do the housework. Upper middle class people have two. Then the next level up is to also have a private driver.

Governor/Governess is after that, I know two people who do it, they hired someone directly from UK for about 45k usd a year. That person takes care of their child and helps with education/homework etc.. Main advantage compared to the housekeeper is that the governor is more educated and so will be able to actually teach things to the child. But it's not necessarily super common and I know plenty of rich parents who decided not to do that and instead invest more heavily on tuition/activities and later (starting from 9-10 years old) summer camps at Oxford, Cambridge, John Hopkins, etc...

song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
rsynnott · 10 months ago
> IoT

Has no place in a dishwasher.

> and in the near future, arms for self loading and unloading

Pure fantasy for now; if it's ever not pure fantasy, go ahead and replace the dishwasher, I suppose?

> Older microwaves have a cumbersome enter time, hit start procedure. Newer microwaves also have a "quick start" button for 30 seconds which you can just press four times to get it to go for two minutes, or enter the time if you need it to go for a while.

... I'm 40, and every digital-control microwave I have ever used has that 30 second quick start button. So, okay, maybe that was an advance in microwave UX in, like, the 80s, but it was apparently the last advance.

song · 10 months ago
Sidenote, I wish my washing machine had wifi, it'd allow us to see what settings our housekeeper is using and why our clothes age so much quicker than when we were doing the laundry ourselves.
song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
pjc50 · 10 months ago
More generally, it can be hard to distinguish between "luxury" products that are primarily more exclusive with very little functional benefit (or in some cases more fragile!), versus products that are Actually Good.

The display luxury category: anything by LVMH, Birkin bags, limited edition sneakers, Ferrari, etc

The "better product for more money" category: Miele, wood furniture, Lexus etc

song · 10 months ago
> The display luxury category: anything by LVMH, Birkin bags

Birkin bags are also actually better products for more money, they can last quite a while with minimum care. They are display goods for sure but there is a qualitative difference between a good quality handbag from certain brands and a much cheaper one.

Just as an example, my wife's only handbag is a balenciaga bag that she's had for 12+ years, she's been using it to carry back food from restaurants, put anything she needs in it, etc... and it's still in good shape. In the end, her bag has cost her so far 60 usd/year.

So yes, it's not obvious to people not in the know but even products that seem to be display luxury category can actually be worth it from a quality perspective.

song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
ta1243 · 10 months ago
Depends where you live, but plenty of countries you're at risk of kidnapping at 1/100th of that net worth and thus need bodyguards
song · 10 months ago
Oh yeah of course, depends entirely of the country and the income disparity. I live in HK and regularly I see some members of the Li Ka-shing family go to one of my favourite restaurant (Chiu Tang, a nice but not too expensive fine dining place). They're always accompanied by 4-6 bodyguards and have to dine in a private room.
song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
tsoukase · 10 months ago
After health and edu, your points do not apply. Filthy rich do not have jobs, hard times etc And at least in Europe we have (mostly) low cost health and edu and we do not (mostly) get jealous about the rich
song · 10 months ago
I'm French and, out of all the countries I've lived in (US, developing countries in South East Asia, China, ...) I have a hard time thinking of a country where there's more hatred for the rich than in France. So I'm not sure that the statement of Europeans not getting jealous about the rich tracks. If anything Americans seem to dislike their rich less.
song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
JumpCrisscross · 10 months ago
> the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed

I broadly agree with you on their hotels. But I’d note that Four Seasons doesn’t compete on room quality, but service. If you planned your stay perfectly they shouldn’t outperform. But if you forgot something, or need help with something weird, they have a habit of being halfway legendary. (Colleague left his suit at home. They had one made overnight. Concierge apparently knew a suit maker’s cell.)

song · 10 months ago
Memorable experience at a four seasons in Shenzhen (memorable for how well they fixed my screwups that is), I had forgotten my laptop charger (apple laptop). They didn't have any I could borrow, went to the apple store to buy one and lent it to me. I forgot my phone in the taxi arriving at the airport. Noticed immediately, I tried calling my phone, the taxi driver hung up immediately on me (so he knew I left my phone there and was probably planning on selling it). I called Four Seasons, they had kept a record of the taxi number, got the phone fedexed it to my destination.
song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
JumpCrisscross · 10 months ago
Now take that experience, put it on a private jet and yacht, with staff who know you personally and can be prepositioned to ancitipate your needs and you're around where the hundred millionaires live. (Billionaires operate like mini heads of state.)
song · 10 months ago
In my experience, if you value your privacy, freedom etc... I'd say living like a millionaire with close to 100 (but not above) is much nicer than living above that. Below 100 million, you don't need bodyguards and private security, you can be as low key as you want.
song commented on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)   old.reddit.com/r/AskReddi... · Posted by u/Tomte
amarcheschi · 10 months ago
I knew a son of two entrepreneurs with a ~30m yacht, they own a (ex) monastery they use, either for parties, events, or as a residence

They have Miele appliances, but having "same appliances" doesn't make justice to the fact that there are deeper differences. Yes, they're status goods, but I think one's life might greatly improve by being very wealthy - even if your life can still be shitty as a wealthy person

song · 10 months ago
My apartment has Miele appliances. It came with the apartment and I'm honestly not impressed at all besides the fact that they still work after 18 years (when they were installed).

The oven is mediocre at best, my Annova Precision Oven is much much better, much better control of temperature, heats up much faster, has more features, infinitely cheaper.

The range hood needs to be repaired because it makes a lot of noise. Repair of Miele appliances are super expensive.

The only appliance I'm impressed with is the wine cave but that's a white labeled Liebherr

song commented on Waiting for Postgres 18: Accelerating Disk Reads with Asynchronous I/O   pganalyze.com/blog/postgr... · Posted by u/lfittl
ttfkam · 10 months ago
Apples to apples, Postgres might lose, but that'd be tying both hands behind its back first.

Remember that Postgres's feature set is far larger than those alternatives. If you can use a range with an exclusion constraint, an unnest with an array, or the like, you'll be seeing Postgres leave the alternatives in the dust.

Imagine writing a benchmark comparing programming languages, but the benchmark only includes idioms that all tested languages shared in common. Wouldn't be a fair comparison, would it?

song · 10 months ago
Yes, but I wonder how many apps using ORMs actually use all features from postgres. So, in the practical use case of typical Rails, Laravel, Django or expressJS, what would the performance look like?

u/song

KarmaCake day1315March 6, 2008View Original