How Much Money Would Make Accidentally Pushing Your Hands Through a Glass Door Worth It, and Other Questions

What stage of capitalism is this?

David Stahl

There are still several months left in 2021 but I'm going to go ahead and nominate this blog for the most deranged thing you'll read all year.

Business Insider put this story up yesterday with the typically subtle headline, "When a shower door sliced my hands open, I used $23,000 from renters insurance to pay off my student loans — and it was worth it."

I'm not going to recount every detail of how the writer sliced her hands open because it's gross. All you need to know is that it was an accident, and that all things considered, the writer came out on the other side of it feeling okay about the whole thing:

At the end of the day, because of that settlement, I was able to become debt-free at 25 years old. But I had to get nerve damage to do it. If I could go back in time and avoid this traumatic event, though, I wouldn't. I would go back and let it happen over and over again. All the pain and the suffering, and the permanent scarring and nerve damage, is worth being free from student loan debt.

I'm not making a judgment call on the writer here. I also know what it's like to not have much money, and to be saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt as soon as you start adulthood is an incredibly fucked up thing that puts anyone who doesn't come from money at a disadvantage. The fact that the writer had to suffer through nerve damage, permanent scarring, and what I imagine was an extremely annoying and painful few weeks and months to feel like she has some semblance of a future is more of an indictment of our system, as is the fact that it eventually became content.

But this is no longer about her. Instead, it's about us, and how much it would take for us to deem pushing our hands through a glass door and suffer nerve damage, permanent scarring, and all of the other stuff to be worth it. Below is our Slack convo about it. Please do not try this at home.

(Aleks and Sam also answered via DM. This is what they said):