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111 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 1h \ parent \ on: the internet is dead mostly_harmless
I love the internet. If it has a downside it's that it homogenizes us -- maybe fewer weirdnesses in the world.
But, on the flip side we get all this great woozy goofiness and when you thought you might be the only person alive who was in to turning Gothic romance book covers in to bitcoin propaganda, it comes out that actually a few people dig it.
Also, I'm a collager -- I make things out of other things. The internet made it so on can get to other things much easier.
It's not dead, just a bit boggy.
but how are they supposed to make me money if they are "pursuing their interests"? (sorry, couldn't resist)
we don't have a classroom (homeschooling), so there is quite a lot of freedom in their day. This challenge is about affirming that children can produce useful things, too. And I'm hoping that they'll be able to learn this by making a product of some sort and convincing strangers to buy it.
I think @BlockchainB nailed it in this comment (#1197521): paying to post is actually one of the best parts of SN.
It's great that territory owners can set their own fees -- that way we get a mixture and we can tell where optimal fee levels end up (and also, we maybe find that there are multiple optimal levels).
Paying to post is the one thing that SN has that is not found anywhere else on the internet (that I know of). It's truly unique and useful: it makes people put their money where their mouth is.
I've been attempting some in-person on-boarding lately and I've been discovering that lightning is a major obstacle for many potential new users. It's kind of wild, but there are lots of bitcoiners who don't use lightning or if they do, use something like Strike.
People have to be either 1) very familiar with lightning or 2) highly motivated to join SN in order to overcome the friction of using SN.
I did not know that there was such as thing as
incrementalRelayFee and so I had to look it up and of course I found an excellent explanation on Stack Exchange.Thanks for the clarification and the education!
The kids and I were working on a dungeon and dragon-esque choose your own adventure just to play ourselves. But I like adding in hand drawn pictures (they love drawing and we produce a HUGE amount of art. It'd be a cool element to include.
We haven't done anything creating guides. It's not a bad idea. Hard to monetize though, but I suppose we could look at something like Gumroad.
42 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 5h \ parent \ on: Help me brainstorm child labor ideas alter_native
They are young enough that the only way this works is probably if it's something they enjoy doing. So we are focused on that. But a little part of me is hopeful that they'll catch an entrepreneurial bug from all this.
34 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 5h \ parent \ on: Help me brainstorm child labor ideas alter_native
These are some great ideas! We are native English speakers, but working on our Spanish. So my sons have had to make a bunch of flash cards for themselves. Great idea to make them for other people. And the idea of child artwork being on them does stand out (so much of what you find now is AI, and frankly it all looks too polished).
34 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 5h \ parent \ on: Help me brainstorm child labor ideas alter_native
We've paid older kids to do the 'mother's helper' thing when ours were smaller. It is a great first job!
My kids don't do much screen time. We don't own a tv. They don't have phones. The computers they have access to are in communal spaces and they aren't allowed to use them just whenever they feel like it.
I'm really curious how effective a kid can be given new tools like LLMs. It's easier than ever to spin up a website and payment rails. At the same time, products are cheaper than they've ever been, too. My daughter was talking about printing ballet-themed stickers and selling them to her fellow dance students. I think that could be a great start.
I want to start them thinking now: What problem can I solve for people that they will pay for? and I'm hoping that it gets us seeing the world as an opportunity-rich field. Also I want to get them used to the idea that spending money is necessary to make money.
It's not for everyone. We have a pretty good community of other homeschoolers around us, which helps a lot with socialization and confidence. Also, it helps that I grew up that way. My primary interest in homeschooling is that I feel that traditional schooling wastes kids' time.
The lemonade stand path is fun, and we've done a few things in real life like that, but there is this dynamic where kids may be more capable of useful work in the digital space than they are in the physical space. I really do want their end product to be more than a gimmick or toy (sure, adults buy lemonade from lemonade stands because they want something nice to drink -- but mostly it's just to be nice to kids). I want them to see if they can make something that other people are willing to pay for without knowing they are kids trying to make a buck.
30 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby OP 5h \ parent \ on: Help me brainstorm child labor ideas alter_native
Ah, yes, well this may also be my miscommunication; I am using homework interchangeably with school. So, I should have said "they are also spending very little time doing school (about 1 hour a day)."
Thanks for the ideas! They've talked about doing a garbage can washing service and the idea of doing booking and payment flows online would certainly fit the bill! I hadn't been thinking about mixing real-world and digital world like that.
63 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 6h \ parent \ on: Help me brainstorm child labor ideas alter_native
We do make some crafty things (potholders, beading, rubberband bracelets, greeting cards, etc...) and they have tried selling potted plants and stickers and coloring books that they made at various markets we've gone to. However, I'm hoping to push them into something that has to compete on its merits, rather than selling to a captive audience of parents who buy things because the kids are cute. Sometimes making crafts and then rewarding them feels like it's another version of homework. I want to do child labor.1
The digital world is pretty awful, isn't it? I'm fairly careful to walk with them through the journey of spending time online, but I'm also aware that they are going to have to learn to live in the digital world. I have not found sheltering my kids to be a very helpful practice. But I plan on being very involved, so I don't expect them to be exposed to too much awfulness without context.
Footnotes
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Here's how I'm thinking about this: in the US (maybe also most of the west) there's an idea that kids don't really do useful stuff as a part of their education. Learning is always denoted by the uselessness of the work (I wonder what Veblen would have to say about this...). But there's no reason kids can't embark on building a life of useful productivity right now. They have good ideas. They just need a bit of support to give it a shot. At the very least, I want them to get used to the idea of taking a risk and failing. There's very little risk in homework. ↩