The ERE Wheaton Scale

[mountainFrugal]

I view it as developing skills in the other forms of capital (economic, social, technical, ecological, spiritual, etc. ) to a personal degree that any one of them could be dropped completely and you would still be doing your thing. Living off a portfolio (or a stash of just straight cash) in order to develop these other forms of capital is a common (and also temporary) path in the journey.

[theanimal]

A ~WL10 individual, who believes that capitalism is inherently linked to consumerism, and is anti-consumerist, [note that this does not apply to Jacob as he is an anti-consumerist capitalist], will either not maintain a very large stash because money is on tap anyways, or will have their stash in something other than capital (stocks, businesses, etc), or will be deploying their stash to do good in the world in some way consistent with their values.

I don't think that's the point @bsog (who also said he's not anti-capitalistic) is making. Simply put, I think it's : "Why do ERE practitioners (at any WL) focus on living intentionally and ethically, but when it comes to investments, they shrug their shoulders and do what everyone else does?"

[blink2ce]

It is my understanding that buying shares of a stock on the secondary market does little, if anything, to fund the the company's operations. It's just a piece of paper that sends dividends.

The only instance when buying shares of a stock actually funds the company's operations is during the company's IPO on the stock market. If you're not buying during any IPO's, I'd say that your giant stash is relatively meaningless in terms of funding the industrial consumerist machine.

[xmj]

I don't think that's the point @bsog (who also said he's not anti-capitalistic) is making. Simply put, I think it's : "Why do ERE practitioners (at any WL) focus on living intentionally and ethically, but when it comes to investments, they shrug their shoulders and do what everyone else does?"

Something to note by looking at the WL8+ examples is... they really, truly, do not do what everyone else does.

But there's so few examples that we might forget this. Iirc jacob does something more akin to what a mate of mine dubs "cyclical value investing"; AxelHeyst would be in the permanent portfolio camp (at least per 2022); and Vicki Robin frequently expouses the benefits of community-based, local investing.

On second thought, maybe it'd be interesting to assemble a number of "Howlie Asset Management strategies" in a separate thread in a way that's similar to the How to explain WL6+ systems? flowcharts of old.

[Western Red Cedar]

If these kinds of questions have already been thoroughly discussed, could someone kindly link me to those threads?

We had a more narrow discussion about some of the questions and points you raised in regards to the environmental impacts of investments and a runaway stash last fall in the JAFI thread:

viewtopic.php?p=280608#p280608

I suspect that as someone moves up the WL ladder, a logical approach is to focus less on overall COL and more on reallocating capital to projects that have a positive impact on the local community or environment. Moving from a reactive to a proactive mindset - less effort on minimizing your individual impact and more on maximizing your positive contributions.

This is difficult because after years or decades of frugality, it is easy to form an identity around COL and spending somewhere around 1 JAFI. Seems like it requires almost a completely different approach to one's finances and their broader lifestyle after years or decades of a particular approach. With the exception of Vicki Robin, I think it is probably much easier to approach WL 9/10 through a side door and forego all the focus on finances and financial independence in the first place.

[AxelHeyst]

This is difficult because after years or decades of frugality, it is easy to form an identity around COL and spending somewhere around 1 JAFI. Seems like it requires almost a completely different approach to one's finances and their broader lifestyle after years or decades of a particular approach. With the exception of Vicki Robin, I think it is probably much easier to approach WL 9/10 through a side door and forego all the focus on finances and financial independence in the first place.

Hm, I wonder about that last sentence. I'm not sure if it's quite right to think of being able to approach WL9/10 through a side door (to my mind that sort of implies a shortcut? maybe not how you meant it), rather than simply arriving there from a different path. Any path to WL9/10 is going to involve challenges, risk, multiple learning curves, dealing with being a weirdo/misunderstood by almost everyone, etc.

I agree with you that the risk of overfixating on COL, finances, and FIRE is a risk of the normative approach outline in the WL table. But in the same way that no one ran a three minute mile until what's-his-face did, and then everyone was running a 3 min mile nbd, will the first wave of WL9's and 10's who leave a paper trail make it far easier for others to follow and not get stuck in the 5/6 moat? (and also the 8/9 moat, which we haven't talked about much yet)

[jacob]

I did not present any vision of a ‘utopia’ nor do I think my questions reflect “dreamy” thinking– why are you addressing it that way? I’m providing specific examples that do not seem to be beyond the capability of “what you can actually do.” And I would argue, have argued, these relatively easy to do actions are in complete alignment with anti-consumerist “ideals”. The goal here (at least as it related to my inquiry) has nothing to do with convincing others or changing the world—it’s about alignment of values and actions.

I'm addressing it that way because the line of questions or objections kinda comes across as an arbitrary purity test. Perhaps the key to the disagreement is that a WL9+ is living in a way that they personally find virtuous, that is in according with their own values, rather than in a way that other people find virtuous, that is in accordance with other people's values. There's a long list issues that people will complain about it or turn into their special interest.

For example, "air planes are bad" for the planet, so some refuse to set foot on an airplane. Some take it as far as refusing to own a refrigerator. Some think that eating meat is ethically wrong and thus expect others to disavow animal products altogether. Is it virtuous to live without plastic? Some pacifist refuse to earn more than their standard deduction so as to not pay taxes and thereby avoid contributing to the defense budget. Rather than spending half an hour making this list longer, I'll just say that certain things on people's various lists may even contradict each other. Like isn't it evil to stop supporting capitalism because capitalism lifts people out of poverty and poverty is worse for humans than capitalism is bad for the planet? Forsooth, some even think that humanity is a bad idea for the planet. Does this mean that the virtuous choice is to off oneself, alternatively, invite an alien invasion because aliens could certainly do a better job at this than humans have?

I think pragmatism in that regard is to acknowledge that X is bad and choose to do less of it. However, I'm too crude/old/tired enough to not wanting to go all the way just for the sake of purity. For example, living without money is possible, but that project is pretty much going to take up all your time, and that just may not be worth it to you just to make a point and become instafacetok famous. There's a certain Pareto Law of effort and effect that optimizes for the most efficient impact.

For example, who has more impact on the world? MMM who inspires a million people to reduce their spending from $100000 to $50000. Or @jacob who inspires 50,000 to reduce their spending from $40000 to $10000. Or Mark Boyle who inspires 5 or maybe 50 people to live entirely without money. Answer: none of the above and all of the above. They're all part of an inspirational chain.

If you're really torn about investing in the market, consider this. You can live on $7000/year. I presume you're already doing as good as this, otherwise, I don't think capitalism is your biggest "fault", but you do you (probably comes across harsher than I meant it). But lets for the sake of the argument suppose you've settled on an annual spending of X. Without loss of generality, I see 3 ways to proceed here:
1) You can earn X by working a job that jives with your values. You simply earn less and only what you need which is very little. Over a lifetime of, say 80 years, you'll earn 80X and spend it on as pay as you go basis. In this case you'll basically interact with the economy but you can wash your hands off of the financial markets.
2) You decide that all investing is bad and that a checking account is much simpler. In this case, you'll earn 80X early on and put it in a checking account. Even better, put it cash in the mattress. This is similar to (1) except the timing.
3) You decide that some investing is okay, so you earn 30x and lend that to the capitalist market place which in return will pay you X. When you die you donate the 30x portfolio to the homeless cat association.

In all three cases, you consumed 80x. However, what you personally produced varied a lot. In case (3), you had other people supplying 50x and ultimately you'll even get your name on a bench for the donation. Note how (3) is the option that requires the least amount of time dealing with the economy.

This works for me.

Basically, the thing is that not every WL9+ want to turn their life into an anti-capitalistic manifesto just like not everyone wants to make a project out of growing all their own food or never getting into anything that has wheels or wings on it or avoiding anything with plastic. As far as I'm concerned, people can pick their own path. However, at that point they are forging their own path and basically living according to their convictions. Note how the sub title on the blog page says: "a combination of simple living, anticonsumerism, DIY ethics, self-reliance, resilience, and applied capitalism"

Another way of saying it is that once people hit WL9, my job---ERE's job---is done. People have the skills to find their own way.

[7Wannabe5]

Even if you run your own tiny business, like I used to with my book business, in order to support your very frugal lifestyle, you will still have to face the reality of turning a profit in order to survive and the ethical issues associated with this. Since my business partner was a primary Fi, strong ethicist, we frequently had discussion on topics such as whether we would sell books written on evil topics, buy packing envelopes or hand-construct shipping boxes from dumpster cardboard, or feel okay about buying a book from a Friends of the Library sale for 50 cents that was worth $1000 on the open internet market.

It's easier to be frugal in your personal life than in even your micro-business life, because of the volume of other humans you have to please or motivate. If you just have to ship something once/week, making shipping boxes from dumpster cardboard is an easy gesture towards sustainability. If you have to ship 100 books/week, it becomes either a total drudge to perform yourself or an expense that eats into your profits if you have to pay others even a minimum wage to perform such as an economically inefficient task. I have previously argued that because the ethics vs. profits vs. hassle issues are right in your face when you support your frugal lifestyle with your own tiny business, it is a better option for generating needful cash-flow than semi-passive investing in the stock market, because the smaller loops are easier to close, whether materially or ethically.

However, this also makes clear why it can make sense to be a Capitalist but not a Consumerist (or more functionally expressed to preserve Capitalism within your self-aware practice while eschewing Consumerism within your self-aware practice.) Small c capitalism and consumerism, such as giving your neighbor two piglets from your best sow's litter to fatten on promise of returning one of them at slaughter weight, is not the problem (okay, would be a problem for Vegans, but that's a different discussion.) Large C Consumerism is actually a positive secondary effect of large C Capitalism. It's a positive secondary effect which produces negative tertiary environmental externalities. There are other secondary effects of big C Capitalism which may be regarded as negative, such as wealth inequality, but these aren't on the same branch as the negative environmental externalities.

Anyways, this is what I think Jacob means in the book when he writes about preserving the efficiencies of the market/Capitalist mass production. It entails pruning the branch at the juncture where Keynes predicted that the efficiencies obtained through mass production would eventualy allow for 15 hour work week (I am paraphrasing wildly here.) The anti-consumerist fable (anti is lower level conception than post) is that this is where the evil marketers rose from the swamps of Glengarry Glen Ross and seduced the sheep-like hordes with glittering electric egg cookers, etc. The higher functioning post-consumerist has to stop being afraid of marketing and also has to show the typical consumer more respect for their decision-making process.

Here's the straight-up deal. If (unlike the Rational Optimists who believe the negative tertiary externalties of big C Consumerism can be nipped off without nipping off big C Consumerism itself) you believe that the systemic cut should be made at the early 20th century Keynesian juncture, where humans should have been better encouraged to choose more leisure time over more consumer goods, then you MUST do a better job of empathizing with why the "typical consumer" prefers "shiny egg-cooker" over "more free time", so that you can do a better job of marketing Leisure Time. Otherwise, you are like the chubby, messy, nerdy girl attempting online dating who is not using enough of her brains to compete with Boca-Blonde-2.

Also, some of this is just a matter of getting your spreadsheets in order. Get dead clear on where/how you are running your life as a business, as a non-profit, and/or just running your life, and a lot of this disappears.

Teletubby, Bye Bye.

[jacob]

Anyways, this is what I think Jacob means in the book when he writes about preserving the efficiencies of the market/Capitalist mass production. It entails pruning the branch at the juncture where Keynes predicted that the efficiencies obtained through mass production would eventualy allow for 15 hour work week (I am paraphrasing wildly here.)

I think that is what I SHOULD have said instead of taking the questions about the WL table personally and firing back. My apologies.

Imagine if humanity had used capitalism to realize what Keynes wrote about his letter to his grandchildren. Instead of becoming reliant of buying and replacing egg cookers every time the last one went out of fashion or broke from deliberately bad construction [in order to solve Borsodi's distribution problem], humanity would actually have used their surplus production to take ownership control of the means of production and proceeded to increase their leisure time by a factor 4 while only demanding [buying] long-lasting quality pans for their egg cooking. This would have changed the entire economy from "struggling to get ahead" because the latest model egg cooker just broke again to an economy where people worked 4x less and took actual control of what they invested in instead of just accumulating massive positions in index funds.

A commonly complained complaint about FIRE and ERE is that it would destroy the economy if "we all did it". (The realistic answer that everybody is never gonna do it.) The idealistic answer is that it would only destroy the economy as we know it. It would destroy the production of throwaway crap. It would destroy the need to put in 80,000 hours of work over a lifetime into bullshit type jobs. It would change it for something better and 4x less wasteful. It's not like you can't build a car that goes 100mpg or lasts for many decades. It's just that consumers are dumb---because advertising has trained them that way.

As it is now, there's little individuals can do [because we aren't that many yet]... except perhaps avoiding to invest in the worst companies in that regard. The financial markets are still not there where throwing all your money into "a good idea"---like risking it all on a local chicken co(-)op business---is in any way a responsible/practical idea.

What individuals can do, though, is to show that it is really possible to realize Keynes's prediction on the leisure time part. Capitalism actually makes it possible for individuals to choose to do this one by one and show the way. Maybe others will follow and if they do, the economy will change. If they don't, humanity deserves what it gets.

[Jin+Guice]

Imagine if humanity had used capitalism to realize what Keynes wrote about his letter to his grandchildren. Instead of becoming reliant of buying and replacing egg cookers every time the last one went out of fashion or broke from deliberately bad construction [in order to solve Borsodi's distribution problem], humanity would actually have used their surplus production to take ownership control of the means of production and proceeded to increase their leisure time by a factor 4 while only demanding [buying] long-lasting quality pans for their egg cooking. This would have changed the entire economy from "struggling to get ahead" because the latest model egg cooker just broke again to an economy where people worked 4x less and took actual control of what they invested in instead of just accumulating massive positions in index funds.

A commonly complained complaint about FIRE and ERE is that it would destroy the economy if "we all did it". (The realistic answer that everybody is never gonna do it.) The idealistic answer is that it would only destroy the economy as we know it. It would destroy the production of throwaway crap. It would destroy the need to put in 80,000 hours of work over a lifetime into bullshit type jobs. It would change it for something better and 4x less wasteful. It's not like you can't build a car that goes 100mpg or lasts for many decades. It's just that consumers are dumb---because advertising has trained them that way.

This is why ERE is cool and interesting and FIRE is neat but boring.





Question for everyone:

Is investing in the stock market homeotelic, heterotelic or neutral to post-consumerism? Why?

[Western Red Cedar]

Hm, I wonder about that last sentence. I'm not sure if it's quite right to think of being able to approach WL9/10 through a side door (to my mind that sort of implies a shortcut? maybe not how you meant it), rather than simply arriving there from a different path. Any path to WL9/10 is going to involve challenges, risk, multiple learning curves, dealing with being a weirdo/misunderstood by almost everyone, etc.

The comment about a side door was a reference to one of the meta-rules @Jacob had posted earlier:

Some meta-rules ...
[*]Generally, there's no jumping levels although it's sometimes possible to enter from a side-door.

My larger point is that the WL table is focused on personal economics, efficiency, and life skills. Many people who could conceivably fit in WL 7-10 likely never spent much time or energy on earlier levels, because financial capital was less of a priority than other forms of capital. I'm thinking about people like Vandana Shiva, EO Wilson, Geoff Lawton, Bruce Lee, Jane Goodall, Alex Honnold, David Holmgren, Doug and Kris Thompkins, Yvon Chouinard, Joel Salatin, Rob Greenfield, Dick Proenneke, Rene Redzepi, Wendell Berry, Callie Russell, or Alastair Humphrey.

I also think it is difficult to judge someone's inner journey from the outside, unless they are pretty explicit and honest about that journey (such as Rob Greenfield). It is possible that many or all of these examples spent time at earlier levels, I just don't think they cleanly moved up through the chart.

A major hurdle with the gap between 8 and 9 is that money loses much of its relevance, with the exception to which it helps achieve a larger goal or vision. That is a fundamental shift in perspective if one has been thinking about and focusing on money for the last two decades.

[zbigi]

Imagine if humanity had used capitalism to realize what Keynes wrote about his letter to his grandchildren. Instead of becoming reliant of buying and replacing egg cookers every time the last one went out of fashion or broke from deliberately bad construction [in order to solve Borsodi's distribution problem], humanity would actually have used their surplus production to take ownership control of the means of production and proceeded to increase their leisure time by a factor 4 while only demanding [buying] long-lasting quality pans for their egg cooking. This would have changed the entire economy from "struggling to get ahead" because the latest model egg cooker just broke again to an economy where people worked 4x less and took actual control of what they invested in instead of just accumulating massive positions in index funds.

I don't follow. How did start from Keynes' letter and arrive at masses of people involved in active investing?

What individuals can do, though, is to show that it is really possible to realize Keynes's prediction on the leisure time part.

I think the problem may be fear, specifically fear that whatever retirement scheme (4%, ...) they chose will blow up in their faces. Notice how almost all people people are generally quite happy to stop working once they hit the state retirement age and start drawing guaranteed state pension. This even happens for people who retire very early (e.g. cops and coal miners in Poland used to retire before 40 yo). So, I think the key part is perceived security/lack of security. Most people just don't trust financial markets enough to become entirely dependable on them. The solution to that would be to gradually lower official (state) retirement age ("UBI for middle-aged people").

[7Wannabe5]

Keynes prediction complete to highest Wheaton levels. He wrote the piece in 1930 (depression era) looking forward 100 years (about now!) I think it's rather remarkable how he spells out many of the problems encountered on this forum.

The strenuous purposeful money-makers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of
economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller
perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able
to enjoy the abundance when it comes.
Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of
abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. It is a
fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if
he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional
society. To judge from the behaviour and the achievements of the wealthy classes today in any
quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing! For these are, so to speak, our advance
guard-those who are spying out the promised land for the rest of us and pitching their camp
there. For they have most of them failed disastrously, so it seems to me-those who have an
independent income but no associations or duties or ties-to solve the problem which has been set
them.
I feel sure that with a little more experience we shall use the new-found bounty of nature quite
differently from the way in which the rich use it today, and will map out for ourselves a plan of
life quite otherwise than theirs.
For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some
work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich
today, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall
endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be
as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem
for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to come. When the accumulation
of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of
morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have
hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of
human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to
assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession -as distinguished
from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life -will be recognised for
what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological
propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds
of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic
rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they
may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of
capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.

[jacob]

I don't follow. How did start from Keynes' letter and arrive at masses of people involved in active investing?

Step 1. Collect underpants.
Step 2. ????
Step 3. Profit!

Seriously though. I think the internet has been and continue to be a significant force multiplier in spreading the ideas. While few people will act on ideas alone and even fewer will create them, most people will follow if enough people lead by example. In 15 years, the world has gone from a handful of bloggers to 2.2M members on r/financialindependence. I think it's fair to say that FIRE has COVID level impact, that is, directly and materially affects 0.5-1% of the population AND their investment habits. This means that almost everybody knows ~1 other person who is into FIRE. I think it's easy to forget/never have known what the challenge was in the pre-internet days. You'd have to come across a book in the library or at the book store. Then proceed to read it. Then internalize its ideas. Then engage on a 5-10 year plan all the while everybody you turned to told you that your dreams were totally unrealistic (and here's a bank advisor to prove it). That still happened 10 years ago. Tabloid headline: "Man saves money instead of spending it". You should have seen the comment track. The world has proceeded through several of the stages of "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Few people are fighting these days because what can say when there are enough people out there proving them wrong.

The majority of people are still financial illiterates, which is both sad and ironic given how much importance society ascribes to money. Like, here's literally the most important piece of paper/slices of metal in the world. You can buy almost anything with it. It's what people give you for working 2000 hours a year. So lets proceed to completely avoid teaching people anything about it during their general education. As such, most people get their financial education from the internet if they get one at all. But at least they can now get one.

Also, I think if teenagers were exposed to more variation than "you can have any career you want as long as it's a career", more would actively choose financial independence.

I think the problem may be fear, specifically fear that whatever retirement scheme (4%, ...) they chose will blow up in their faces. Notice how almost all people people are generally quite happy to stop working once they hit the state retirement age and start drawing guaranteed state pension. This even happens for people who retire very early (e.g. cops and coal miners in Poland used to retire before 40 yo). So, I think the key part is perceived security/lack of security. Most people just don't trust financial markets enough to become entirely dependable on them. The solution to that would be to gradually lower official (state) retirement age ("UBI for middle-aged people").

I find [investment culture] to vary a lot between countries. When I grew up (Denmark 1990s), investing was considered a casino or something that only business people did. Maybe you had some shares in your bank in order to get better interest rate on your savings account or maybe you had some in the company you worked for, but shares was not something people bought in general. Otherwise, general knowledge was at stage where people could not explain what a "dividend" was. Since FIRE got popularized into the mainstream around 2015 over there, this [attitude] has changed a lot. Unlike the US, where JL Collins soothing voice has converted everyone to the one faith of indexing, it's my impression that the loudest Danish advocates of investing are stock pickers. (This is likely also because there aren't really any national index funds available. Sure, you can buy US ETFs, but that's another hurdle to be jumped. Picking national stocks has fewer barriers of entry.) Indeed, the biggest issue in Denmark is not safety but rather "what do I do with my life if I'm not jobbing". Currently most examples involve either teaching others about investing (which obviously not everybody can do) or pursuing "the simple life" surrounded by vegetable gardens and home canning. (Shit, I'm living my culture.) Whereas in the US, the examples generally involve world travelers. The lack of diversity of examples of post-FIRE life is likely what holds a lot of people back because they'd rather keep working than spend their life growing potatoes or sleeping in airports.

It's conceivable that the FIRE movement is just another cycle and that we have peaked out. Give it another 15 years and we'll see if it's become long forgotten at that point or whether it's become part of the school curriculum. Note how it HAS become part of the curriculum for professionals starting some 5 years ago. You can actually talk to advisors and expect them to know what FIRE is.

[jacob]

Here's the full letter (7 pages): http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

[zbigi]

The majority of people are still financial illiterates, which is both sad and ironic given how much importance society ascribes to money. Like, here's literally the most important piece of paper/slices of metal in the world. You can buy almost anything with it. It's what people give you for working 2000 hours a year. So lets proceed to completely avoid teaching people anything about during their general education.

This brings up a point that's similar to the one I made already (about state retirement beginning in middle-age instead of old age). The lack of FI education in schools is not a bug, it's a feature. Education curriculum is decided by the state, and currently the state sees people becoming FI and getting out of workforce as a threat to society. We'll never get mass finance/FI education in schools until state's education policy changes, and that requires FI ideas seeping into country's politics.

More broadly, I don't think it's possible to implement huge social change in purely bottom-up manner. What usually happens is that thinkers/activists/early adopters eventually get enough people behind an idea so that it becomes adopted by a major political player, and then implemented at country's scale by that player while in power. For FI/RE, what is definitely lacking before such political adoption can happen, is some credible economists creating a theory of economy and society in a world where most people are following FIRE. Until we have that, mass FIRE will be seen as too much of a risk, no serious politician will touch FIRE, and the state will actively fight it from becoming a mass phenomenon.

[AxelHeyst]

The comment about a side door was a reference to one of the meta-rules @Jacob had posted earlier:

My larger point is that the WL table is focused on personal economics, efficiency, and life skills. Many people who could conceivably fit in WL 7-10 likely never spent much time or energy on earlier levels, because financial capital was less of a priority than other forms of capital. ...

... It is possible that many or all of these examples spent time at earlier levels, I just don't think they cleanly moved up through the chart.

Ah, yes, I agree. Our ereWL is but one path, and our path has XYZ identified challenges. There's also the original permie WL path that we have a table for. And then all of the other paths we haven't figured out yet and possibly never will. But anyone who starts somewhere near 21st century baseline mainstream cultural perspective and ends up at WL7-10 will have had to overcome challenges and avoid (or scramble out of) traps and moats. We're very familiar with the trap of over fixation on finances because that's the FIREwater we swim in. We're not so familiar with the traps the permies (high ecological capital) or people who worked with high social capital or any of the other myriad possible paths have to/had to overcome, and we shouldn't forget that the EREWL is but one possible path.

A major hurdle with the gap between 8 and 9 is that money loses much of its relevance, with the exception to which it helps achieve a larger goal or vision. That is a fundamental shift in perspective if one has been thinking about and focusing on money for the last two decades.

I think you're absolutely right about this, and you've well articulated another reason I now have for speedrunning/Crowbar Method'ing this stuff. Move fast so financial fixation has less of a chance to stick to you and you don't fall into the trap of identifying with your spreadsheets. Jacob's career was 5 years, and the only reason he's spent time thinking about money much since then is a) he appears to have enjoyed it/found it interesting and b) he's dedicated a huge portion of his life to helping other people get through that same phase.

A more typical ERE path could involve heavy thinking about money for a year or two, cruise mode for another few years, and then something like a handful of hours a year from there on out.

[7Wannabe5]

I think Keynes' essay may also hint at why some would choose "work 15 hours/week" semi-ERE over FI-ERE. In an individualist model, some (points finger to Teletubby-esque self- the episode entitled "Laa-Laa has Muddy Feet from the Muddy Puddle" perhaps most representative of an abstract 7WB5 mini-biography) may be lacking enough initial "strenuous purposeful money-maker" within, even if they grew up in a cultural/family-of-origin milieu such that they were literally handed a pamphlet on the topic of the math related to financial derivatives while still in elementary school and frequently helped themselves to the leftover potato chips from their father's Friday night Stock Club and Poker Night meetings. OTOH, there are some who seemingly can't relax their "strenuous purposeful money-maker" within or their "Individualistic protector of boundaries towards freedom" even when they have accumulated more than enough money for anybody's version of the good life. For example, right off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen men in my personal acquaintance who either are or would be impossible (for me) to live with in retirement for this reason.

[jacob]

More broadly, I don't think it's possible to implement huge social change in purely bottom-up manner. What usually happens is that thinkers/activists/early adopters eventually get enough people behind an idea so that it becomes adopted by a major political player, and then implemented at country's scale by that player while in power. For FI/RE, what is definitely lacking before such political adoption can happen, is some credible economists creating a theory of economy and society in a world where most people are following FIRE. Until we have that, mass FIRE will be seen as too much of a risk, no serious politician will touch FIRE, and the state will actively fight it from becoming a mass phenomenon.

Yet what you're describing here is exactly a kind of bottom up form of emergence. It's just that the movement is in its early stages. Perhaps it's just waiting for a new WL9 "live player" to be the right relatable messenger with the right message. Personally, I don't think this person is me. I've been at it for so long that I'm out of touch with the concerns of the masses or even with people who've only been at it for a few years years, like most on forum. I'm getting close to 25 years of experience here. I simply don't think about what people normally think about. More importantly, I don't think I think in the same way. The discussion that revived this thread painfully illustrates this. I simply don't think about money to the extent that people think/project I should do.

I strongly believe that the best messengers are in the "conscious competence"-stage of learning. They still remember the issues of "conscious incompetence" and they also know the "conscious competence" answers. As for me, I've been at the "unconscious competence" stage for [too many] years at this stage. I clearly get annoyed when people want to relitigate stuff I figured out long ago. This is why I should take more a of backseat. I don't think my contributions to this question or similar questions are the best on the forum. Just because I'm "old", doesn't mean that I'm the best teacher. Kinda like how you really want a grad student to teach undergrads rather than an emeritus professor.

Thus far,

1. Thinkers have spread the ideas enough that the movement of early adopters has become self-sustaining. If the OGs left the scene, the scene would not collapse.
2. Activists are not wasting time holding up placards, but actively walking with their feet. They're basically using a financial and moral "loophole" following the laws designed for wealthy people and not doing anything that wealthy people haven't always done(*). There's clearly an "activist" community with a diversity of people now. It's no longer just a crazy guy holding a sign about how you too can be an inspirational guy living in a van down by the river.
3. I've assisted more than one student with papers/projects on the FIRE movement. Typically these are projects where the student chooses the title. However, the student suggestion was not shot down by the teacher. A few years ago, I was going back and forth with a young assistant professor about establishing a 101 course in personal finance. This never went anywhere, but the conditions are there to try again. JD Roth did a 4+ hr lecture for The Great Courses (it's a US thing where professors make a series of lectures for a general audience.) The point being that students, teachers, and professors take this seriously or at least don't dismiss it outright.
4. Professional journals now have articles and papers on FIRE. Professionals finally take it seriously. Fidelity is putting up freeway billboards catering specifically to the FIRE community. Academics and the finance industry realize that they clearly dropped the ball on this one.
5. Some politicians are worried at the level of "what if we all did it", so FIRE does have political attention. From this point I don't think we're far from some other politician saying "we should all do it". Politicians gotta politics.
6. Newspapers now treat FIRE as a phenomena rather than a curios "man bites dog" story for the Sunday funny pages.
7. TV programs ditto---"Here are some people who chose differently"---instead of treating it as a freakshow ala "ultimate frugal hoarders" like they used to not so many years ago.

None of this existed 10 years ago.

(*) In order to kill off FIRE, you basically have to kill off capitalism. I seriously doubt there's much political future in such a strategy. In short, "resistance is futile". Politicians might try to enact laws to the effect of "you must show a 30 year work history instead of 10 years or a heartbeat to collect social security". However, consider how many people would get thrown under the bus by that. Also consider that FIRE people are likely to say "nevermind then, I never expected SS in the first place." Going against FIRE is fundamentally a losing proposition because it also goes against capitalism and capitalism is so deeply ingrained in the world's systems that this is effectively impossible to counteract top-down.

[zbigi]

@jacob

Most social change starts from the bottom up, reaches critical mass and then gets mass implementation via the top-down (state laws and policies). I don't think we're in disagreement here.

To reiterate, apart from spreading the word, I think there's still theoretical work to be done. I really think we need someone credible (a credentialled economist) to tell politicians that mass FIRE will not be the end of the world. Keynes with his offhand musing on 15 hour work week was a good start, but someone needs to develop models on how the transition from here to mass FIRE would impact the economy. Without it, FIRE will be treated like crypto - with extreme suspicion, and tolerated only while it's insignificant enough.

(*) In order to kill off FIRE, you basically have to kill off capitalism. I seriously doubt there's much political future in such a strategy. In short, "resistance is futile". Politicians might try to enact laws to the effect of "you must show a 30 year work history instead of 10 years or a heartbeat to collect social security". However, consider how many people would get thrown under the bus by that. Also consider that FIRE people are likely to say "nevermind then, I never expected SS in the first place." Going against FIRE is fundamentally a losing proposition because it also goes against capitalism and capitalism is so deeply ingrained in the world's systems that this is effectively impossible to counteract top-down.

Nah, I don't think they'll try to get you via SS. Instead, they will use medicare - "from now on, at least 25 years of paid work are required to qualify for medicare insurance". Medicare, to my knowledge, is not something you can simply substitute with money, as it makes no business sense for an insurance company to insure a 75 year old person (unless the policy is like $20k a year or more).
The state can also for example increase the costs of simply existing - via shifting tax burden from income taxes to property and sales tax. The possibilities are endless.