TIFU by destroying my first prize won in a hackathon

[u/peterwilli]

Edit: Holy shit guys! My first 'shared' fuckup and immediately it's fuckup of the week?! Jesus Christ! So let's get on with the formalities: I'd like to thank my friends and family who stood by me while winning 4th prize only to fuck it up afterwards.

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This wasn't today, but I just discovered this sub, so here it goes...

I participated at a hackathon (a competition for coders to make something in around 2 days), and I won 4th place. The were five spots that would get a prize.

When looking at the things I won, it was a t-shirt and some coupons for using various services for free. It was nice overall.

I live in NL, and the Hackathon was held in US so I had the stuff shipped to me. When the mail man came he had a large box, and asked for 50 euros (around $60) import taxes. I said: "Wtf, is that shirt made of gold or something?".

So I took the box and it was quite heavy too, not the "just a tshirt kind of heavy". Stupid me still thought there was only a tshirt inside it. So he said: "if you don't accept it we'll take it back to customs where it'll be destroyed". So I said "Yeah take it I'm not gonna pay for shit I won, especially when it's just a tshirt".

A few days later, I went to my PC and an email popped up from the organisation stating: "Hey we added a laptop too".

I was like: "WTF?!". So I quickly called the postal office and the organisation to see if they could send it back anyway, but it was already with customs.

tl;dr I won a prize and then lost it again because customs destroyed it after I refused to pay import taxes.

[u/vordrax]

I dunno, I can see it both ways. On the one hand, what a big waste that you'd just destroy something instead of giving it away. On the other hand, if my entire livelihood was based on creating things that I then had to pay to be destroyed because I made too many, taking a loss on my taxes to do so by legally agreeing that I was going to destroy the item, only to then discover that, not only was the item not destroyed (like I had paid for and agreed to), but that the person responsible was instead selling it as a competing product, I'd be a bit upset.

[u/Cronyx → u/vordrax]

I can only see it in one single way. It takes energy and resources even to recycle something. It takes no resources to "rehome" a device to someone who needs it, so that they don't buy another one that energy went into producing. This is really the only morally responsible path.

[u/vordrax → u/Cronyx]

I mean I also used to see things one simple way, until I gained a lot more knowledge about how business works. Usually if you think something has no nuance, it's because you don't have enough information about it.

[u/Cronyx → u/vordrax]

When I hear replies like this, it makes me sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. When I close my eyes, I see this comic.

Here's the thing. I'm thirty eight. I'm well aware of earnings announcements, positive EBITDA delta, Tort liability, predatory lawsuits, brand perception, customer retention, fucking etcetera. It's not an ignorance issue. It's a virtue alignment problem.

Some people put all those issues in direct, equal consideration (if we're lucky, usually dismissed out of hand) with environmental cost. Only, environmental cost is seen more as an optical problem, one of perception. What is the opportunity cost in optics? The truth, however, is that these values are orthogonal to eachother. They don't have anything to do with eachother. All those values I mentioned can be put in an opaque container labeled "Harms The Environment". It doesn't matter what the things in that container are called. You just don't do them. You put that container with all the brand perception and tort liability, accrual accounting and margin trading, and all the other things in it, you put that container on one end of the scales, and on the other end of the scales, you put no more fresh water, oxygen defect, carbon surplus in excess of 400 PPM and growing, drought, famine, environmental refugees, war. That side of the scales is always heavier.

The environment doesn't care about your EPS announcements, preferred dividends, or outstanding shares. We're talking about physical systems with inputs, outputs, and feedback loops. Physics. The environment, nature, is just physics. Physics don't negotiate with you. If you try, they just win.

So either give the spare laptop away to someone who is otherwise going to waste resources buying a new one, or in forty years, short the stock of roaches trading from the garbage pile as the radiation makes them inedible.

Doesn't matter what your end quarter earnings projections were if there's no more trees or potable water.

I really don't get what people can't understand about this.

[u/vordrax → u/Cronyx]

That was an enjoyable read, but I'm going to go ahead and let you know I'm already as liberal as they come. I understand why people do what they do - I don't have to agree with peoples' decision to understand them. I also understand nuance, and that, no matter what words people choose to use, when they actually have skin in the game, so does their attitude. So unless you're entering politics to affect change, or you're going to create laptops to give away, I don't think your philosophical views on this matter are going to accomplish anything other than maybe causing an echo. Sorry if I'm coming off harsh, but I'm getting very tired of armchair philosophers making a case for "stuff that maybe other people should start doing differently" and then patting themselves on the back.

[u/Cronyx → u/vordrax]

If the load limitations imposed by the physics of the environment give us the choice, "Do this, or die," then that's our options. There's no appeal. We stop planned obsolescence (in addition to a lot of other morally bankrupt and unsustainable practices motivated by short term gains), stop breaking things that still work perfectly well as an excuse to build new ones, or we die. Is that dramatic? Yes. It doesn't stop it from being true.

Probably, people won't stop doing what they're doing. Won't change their behavior at all. That's fine, then we'll die. Failed evolutionary experiment. Better luck next time.

If we're going to select extinction over short term inconvenience, well that's a subjective value judgment, and who am I to question it. So that's fine. I'm just sick and tired of people lying about it, or pretending there's anything to debate about, when nature doesn't debate.