Electricity.
If you lose electricity most people lose access to:
Hot water
Running water (if you have a well)
Air conditioning
Indoor heat
Television
Internet
Indoor lighting
And hot meals if you don’t have gas.Losing electricity would cut you off from almost all of your luxuries as we’ve become completely dependent on it over the last century or so.
it sounds like a necessity
It’s a utility and so I agree it’s a necessity. A luxury would be some of the things electricity allows like Internet.
The Internet access should be classified as a utility but good luck getting ISPs to stop lobbying against that
Yeah in the modern age internet access should be considered a necessity. There are a lot of things you can’t do without the internet (like get a job or pay bills).
Not necessarily, you could absolutely survive without electricity, I live in a predominantly Amish area that proves that.
It just wouldn’t be any fun.It does take a bit of preparation for the lifestyle that we are not ready for. Ways to store and prepare food, maintain temperatures, get information, illuminate spaces.
Hah, that’s fair
Yeah but no electricians no more electrocution… Think of the positives lol
Clean and well-tasting tap water. It sucks when I’m going to another country and they have chlorinated tap water
If it’s that important to you then an RO filter would be a cheap solution
Where in the world?
We have clean water in Austria, directly from the mountains without adding anything (just cleaning it with UV light to kill potential bacteria in most regions, nothing else. Not even that in some regions).
Some of the best and cleanest water worldwide, so whenever I go to another country I’m disappointed by their water quality.
Don’t tell Nestle, lol
Swede here who frequents Austria. I agree, and I love drinking the water while hiking in Austria.
If you visit Sweden, our water is mostly as good as the one in Austria. Some exceptions are Gotland because of high chalk (so? “Kalk”) levels.
PC world.
I haven’t thought about that jingle in years (decades?) but it came back instantly. And now it won’t leave.
Oh fun, here’s another:
There’s a magical place, we’re on our way there
With toys by the million, all under one roof…Another banger. Millions of Jeffrey
It’s got some pretty dark Edgar Allan Poe vibes:
“There’s millions” says Jeffrey, “all under one roof…”
If he’s a toy himself, then he’s selling out his own kind by cramming them like sardines in inhumane conditions and selling them off to the highest bidder. Despicable.
You probably wouldn’t know it, but “There’s a funky little place down on bayside drive”
“…where woman and children have to hunt to survive” ?
In the US. I feel the same about our well water. Completely untreated and so good.
Not all well water is untreated…
True, especially big community well situations. We’re the only ones on our well, though.
Clean water on demand
Likewise, flushing the toilet and the shit disappears.
Coffee. Can’t even stop drinking it when I’m sick bc I feel like ten times worse.
I gave up caffeine a few years ago and I was really surprised by how easy it was and how little I missed it.
Maybe it’s different for me but caffeine ended up being much more of a habit rather than something I thought I needed.
While I am trying to use the internet less since the past 2 years or so, I will freak out if it ceases to exist completely.
I wouldn’t even call it a luxury. Hasn’t been for years.
I miss when it was a luxury. Pretty fun times if you ask me.
Agreed
You bring up an interesting point.
Most people wouldn’t consider a cup of tea to be luxurious at all. But if tea was scarce and you only got one cup a year, it would seem absolutely amazing, a special occasion and you’d really savour the experience.
There’s definitely something to be said for luxury which is much more about rarity or restriction rather than the experience itself.
Spices. Very much spices. If I was limited to like 5 good ones I’d make do but I have a drawer with like 50 spices in it I use regularly and it’s my happy place.
Same, one of the things that influenced my decision to buy my house was a long cupboard next to the hob that would be perfect for a 48 jar spice rack. The rack is now full and there’s a small crate of miscellaneous spices sat on top of the cupboard.
The only time I agree with the people going on about how we live like Kings in the modern world (absolutely fucking not) is about how many spices we can just have for cheap and not the cost of a horse.
100%
It kills me when I go to someone’s house and the only spices are black pepper and cinnamon. Salt does not count.
Break me? No. Really depress my mood? Probably no longer having Plex and my media collection. If my hard drives and back-ups all spontaneously combusted right after a trade war drove their prices through the roof x5 or something and I couldn’t afford to replace (and/or couldn’t find any to replace because of shortages) I would be quite sad. Additionally I’ve worked quite hard to curate my collection so losing it entirely in the first place would be depressing because of the amount of work required to rebuild it, encoding, scraping hard to scrape rarities, setting the posters just the way I like them, etc.
I would be devastated. I have three backups at the moment, but thinking about a fourth.
I was going to post this exact reasoning but you beat me to it.
High-quality food. For me, food is one of the main sources of enjoyment, and if instead I’ll have to shove something down my throat just to satisfy hunger, I’ll get very depressed very quickly.
Housing. (Again)
I don’t know, maybe oxygen.
As a diving instructor once told me, Air is overrated.
How does oxygen fit the definition of luxury?
Though that’s not really the point of your post is it? What you did was read and understand OP correctly but then thought, “won’t it be so hilarious if I make a joke and answered with something that you LITERALLY can’t live with out, instead of contributing to the discussion!?!?! Hahaha delightfully devilish, professorozone!”
That your comment is upvoted is disappointing. It’s Reddit tier crap.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. But also you missed the subtle undertones of how things are going so dystopian that soon oxygen may actually become a luxury.
Not sure why that upsets you so much. Just sit on the floor, cross your legs Indian-style if you like and take in three big breaths of air. Wooosha. Wooosha. Wooosha. Like that. You’ll like it. There’s oxygen in the air. Kind of like a luxury.
My headphones. I just love listening to music way too much.
Well luckily for you, apparently it’s now acceptable to just blast your music out loud in public.
Soap and clean water
Chocolate.
Proper chocolate, not the shit that Cadbury turn out since it was bought by the cheese people.
No wonder they lost their royal warrant. That’s the first thing that Charlie has done since the Prince’s Trust that has really impressed me.
That’s super interesting, I actually like him a bit now because of that
Sharpening stones and files. I can’t imagine using dull knives. I can’t stand knives duller than hair popping sharp. I have excellent knives that hold a crisp edge and I sharpen those every 30 minutes of super fast chopping (10 seconds on a 9k stone).
Not just knives but scissors, trowels, shovels, cooking spatulas, dust pans, vegetable peelers, can openers, toenail clippers, all need to be sharp. Not being able to sharpen all of those would be a tragedy.
If you are delaying getting into sharpening, just do it. It will serve you for the rest of your life, and I sharpen every single day (I’m a woodworker). Its truly a luxury to have sharp tools, all the time. So satisfying.
Aside from that, chocolate. The cravings will never go away.
Air conditioning, but I would argue that is a very expensive necessity.
and I sharpen those every 30 minutes
I’m sorry, what?
If I sharpened my knives after every 30 minutes of use I wouldn’t have any steel left after a couple of months, tops. My knives are shaving sharp, I use them for several hours every day.
If your knives hold an edge and are profiled correctly, sharpening every 30 minutes (even a quick touch up) is entirely unnecessary. Professional meat cutters and fishmongers annihilate cutting for 10 hours a day and require razor sharp tools, and they don’t spend even close to as much time as you’ve claimed touching up their edges.
Don’t get me wrong, I love sharp knives, but either you’re exaggerating or doing it wrong.
I use a 9k stone and sharpen for like 10 seconds, so its not that much material. I have an extremely high standard of sharpness.
For the first 30 mins to an hour of work, the edge absolutely flies through food. (Hair whittling/hair popping)
Afterwards its still very sharp and cuts very well ( clean shaving)
Then it starts to struggle with tough skins and delicate foods (bell peppers, tomatoes, etc) this is usually where it stops shaving.
I like to keep my knives so sharp that it flies through everything.
Do you have some suggestions for a novice sharpener on how to get started?
Coarse diamond stone and a thin cheap knife. The coarse stone is fast so you get immediate results and feedback, which is crucial for learning. You want to use a cheap knife since you can damage knives with bad technique. Cheap knives are also softer and sharpen faster
Diamond plates are much more straightforward than waterstones. You dont need to soak it, water it, flatten it, etc. They aren’t necessarily better, but they require much less maintenance
Also I highly recommend freehand. Youll always encounter a knive that doesn’t work with this, or that system, but you can sharpen every knife, tool, scissors, etc, on a normal sharpening stone.
I sharpen my knives about quarterly but I’m not cutting wood with them.
Dull knifes are even more dangerous to use because they tend to slip in unexpected directions.
Healthcare, condoms
Its sad that health care is considered a luxury.
Eh, what’s the alternative? Healthcare requires high level of education and expensive equipment. Similar to air travel.
It’s a luxury due to high costs.
Most other countries have the costs be very affordable
The average cost of the NHS per person in the UK is £3,268, not being able to opt out of the cost doesn’t make it cheap.
To me it’s absolutely a luxury and despite the NHS not being perfect, there’s an awfully lot of people around the world that envy the system.
Must be in the US if Healthcare is a luxury
