FIRE reaching Critical Mass
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
The new version of YMOYL is currently ranked in the mid-three-figs on amazon sales rank and has been for a while (some months). That's a lot of books. I'd say (with some degree of uncertainty) that this translates into a hundred copies per day.
Yes, I'd expect some Kondratieff wave/fourth turning to be going on here(*). YMOYL was the most popular/famous outcome of the 1970s, but if I look over what I read and which inspired me, all the good stuff came out of the 1970s. Also 1930s, 1890s, and 1850s ... Enjoy while you can. Otherwise, see you again in 2050.
(*) To steal Sclass's words, ... all those eras were riding the exponentials of the preceding decade (2000, 1960, 1920, ...)
Yes, I'd expect some Kondratieff wave/fourth turning to be going on here(*). YMOYL was the most popular/famous outcome of the 1970s, but if I look over what I read and which inspired me, all the good stuff came out of the 1970s. Also 1930s, 1890s, and 1850s ... Enjoy while you can. Otherwise, see you again in 2050.
(*) To steal Sclass's words, ... all those eras were riding the exponentials of the preceding decade (2000, 1960, 1920, ...)
- Mister Imperceptible
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
@thisdinosaur
“This generation is, as a group, anti-materialist and has no sense of civic responsibility or company loyalty. Yes, this could be a cyclical thing. But the cycle will last a generation. A generation of overpriced financial assets and reduced earnings from a lazier workforce and anti-consumerist customers.”
I think seeing our fathers and grandfathers get the shaft from Corporate America and corrupt do-nothing politicians will fail to inspire many of us “lazy millennials” to “put the team first,” because for some of us, the accumulated family memories are of other people getting rich off of our hard work.
The best of us will work hard, but as it’s been borne over time, it’s more rewarding to game the system than it is to work hard. So the best and smartest of us will work hard but we will NOT put the team first, and we WILL game the system, and not because we have no morals or integrity, but rather because we have seen the world for the game that it is.
“This generation is, as a group, anti-materialist and has no sense of civic responsibility or company loyalty. Yes, this could be a cyclical thing. But the cycle will last a generation. A generation of overpriced financial assets and reduced earnings from a lazier workforce and anti-consumerist customers.”
I think seeing our fathers and grandfathers get the shaft from Corporate America and corrupt do-nothing politicians will fail to inspire many of us “lazy millennials” to “put the team first,” because for some of us, the accumulated family memories are of other people getting rich off of our hard work.
The best of us will work hard, but as it’s been borne over time, it’s more rewarding to game the system than it is to work hard. So the best and smartest of us will work hard but we will NOT put the team first, and we WILL game the system, and not because we have no morals or integrity, but rather because we have seen the world for the game that it is.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
If that was unnecessarily inflammatory, I apologize.
“Millennials are lazy” is a tiring bit. I think effects are being mistaken as causes.
By that I mean, a disaffected generation is not going to be gung ho about student debt/indentured servitude.
The notion of “company loyalty” is laughable. We are barcodes. One of enjoyable parts of How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World is when Browne writes that he fired all of his employees, and then negotiated contracts with them each individually. Pure, honest exchange. “Company loyalty” to me means “willing to be underpaid.” If you want me to stay in your employ, I need compensation commensurate with my worth. Otherwise, you will find me with your competitor. I can’t feed “company loyalty” to my future children.
“Millennials are lazy” is a tiring bit. I think effects are being mistaken as causes.
By that I mean, a disaffected generation is not going to be gung ho about student debt/indentured servitude.
The notion of “company loyalty” is laughable. We are barcodes. One of enjoyable parts of How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World is when Browne writes that he fired all of his employees, and then negotiated contracts with them each individually. Pure, honest exchange. “Company loyalty” to me means “willing to be underpaid.” If you want me to stay in your employ, I need compensation commensurate with my worth. Otherwise, you will find me with your competitor. I can’t feed “company loyalty” to my future children.
Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
"youger generations are lazy" is basically what humanity has been saying for centuries, so I would not worry too much abut the trend (I am not a millennial).
I personally do not understand what "company loyalty" means. I feel I owe my company hard work, honesty and integrity, and in exchange I get a certain amount of money.
It's a transaction that has to take place within a rules based framework that both parties have to respect.
OTOH I also do not understand how "we" should "game the system"?
I'm maybe wrong, but I see a slightly negative/dishonest/selfish aspect in the word "game", sounds similar to "cheat".
I don't see it that way, we are just using the money in a different, more efficient way.
I personally do not understand what "company loyalty" means. I feel I owe my company hard work, honesty and integrity, and in exchange I get a certain amount of money.
It's a transaction that has to take place within a rules based framework that both parties have to respect.
OTOH I also do not understand how "we" should "game the system"?
I'm maybe wrong, but I see a slightly negative/dishonest/selfish aspect in the word "game", sounds similar to "cheat".
I don't see it that way, we are just using the money in a different, more efficient way.
Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
"The Sin of Wages" was a book that really helped me to cope with my corporate existence. Maybe that is what you are looking for in "gaming the system"?
To summarize what I got from the book was thinking of yourself as an individual contractor - not a corporate employee. That transformation opened a lot of new options for me and helped me to maximize my earning while in the system.
Without that new understanding, I would have remained the typical disgruntled, under motivated, underpaid corporate employee. Stuck in a dead end job without the energy to escape or the courage to try something novel.
To summarize what I got from the book was thinking of yourself as an individual contractor - not a corporate employee. That transformation opened a lot of new options for me and helped me to maximize my earning while in the system.
Without that new understanding, I would have remained the typical disgruntled, under motivated, underpaid corporate employee. Stuck in a dead end job without the energy to escape or the courage to try something novel.
- jennypenny
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
So true. It's funny that we (GenXers) are so critical of Millennials since we hated being labeled as 'slackers' when we were younger. At least Millennials are upbeat despite the derision; GenXers are pretty cranky as a group.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
Not inflammatory. I am a millennial. My point in that comment wasn't to trash talk my generation. It was to suggest that certain traits and values are common in this group. And this could have the effect of crowding me out of my preferred niche. In nature and in investing, you're better off when there is less competition.Mister Imperceptible wrote: ↑Thu May 24, 2018 1:33 amIf that was unnecessarily inflammatory, I apologize.
“Millennials are lazy” is a tiring bit. I think effects are being mistaken as causes.
From jacob's recent journal entry:
There are a swath of journalists interested in this topic. Because the market of readers is demanding more of this content. Jacob is overwhelmed with the calls, so he is diverting them to his competition (each of which have thousands of readers) because BUSINESS IS JUST TOO GOOD.jacob wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 4:53 pmThis spring, I've talked to more TV journalists than I can keep track off. So somewhere around 5-7 Most of them Danish and one US based. This has meant doing 0-2 skype sessions per week. I used to have a no-TV policy, but the climate on that front has definitely changed from "looking for freaks for our freak show" to "lots of people are talking about this as a solution to stress, sustainability, ...". Yeah, no shit. For 10 years already, ...
...diverted some successfully to other bloggers.
Alright, no SWR is safe. Better get a little more aggressive on the homesteading thing so that....
...dammit. Maybe I should get around to reading the Fourth Turning so I can adopt the next generation's values ahead of schedule.
- Mister Imperceptible
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
I have a sensitive and perhaps misguided notion of justice. I am doing well in the corporate arena, not only by virtue of outworking people, but also by being charming and playing politics. The idealist in me does not consider being a charming politician to be a virtue. I should not outearn someone unearthing secrets about neutron stars. In that way it feels to me as though I am gaming the system.
Seeing my father and my grandfather before him, physically used up and broken men, comparing my success to their struggles, assisted by my being a charming politician, it does feel like *cheating*. But seeing them does not inspire much confidence in the traditional middle class life, either. There is just too much personal anecdotal evidence to do anything in exchange for promises that will not be kept. I am nobody’s fool.
If we are talking Gervais types, I am enough of a sociopath to succeed, but enough of a loser to find this distasteful. Distasteful enough to want to get out.
It was exactly the blog post JLF linked to that I was thinking of when I said “gaming the system.” I am a Gamesman who has Jungle Fighter origins, but aspires to be a Craftsman. As JLF wrote somewhere else, I would rather say “I have done that,” rather than “I was a part of that.”
Seeing my father and my grandfather before him, physically used up and broken men, comparing my success to their struggles, assisted by my being a charming politician, it does feel like *cheating*. But seeing them does not inspire much confidence in the traditional middle class life, either. There is just too much personal anecdotal evidence to do anything in exchange for promises that will not be kept. I am nobody’s fool.
If we are talking Gervais types, I am enough of a sociopath to succeed, but enough of a loser to find this distasteful. Distasteful enough to want to get out.
It was exactly the blog post JLF linked to that I was thinking of when I said “gaming the system.” I am a Gamesman who has Jungle Fighter origins, but aspires to be a Craftsman. As JLF wrote somewhere else, I would rather say “I have done that,” rather than “I was a part of that.”
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
@jacob
So me and the 350,000 readers of FIRE blogs are disgruntled Company Men following Gamesman bloggers who preach lifestyle optimization. We are a step behind them as they embark on a Craftsman experiment, which they will fail at. This implies I should focus on becoming a Jungle Fighter, profiting somehow off of all these failed early retirees sulking back into the workforce once they've overestimated their SWR and underestimated their future spending.
Am I close?
Possibly related: I've heard my middle aged bosses gripe about interviewees mentioning "work-life balance." Idiots.
Also possibly related: our sitting President sells himself as a Jungle Fighter.
So me and the 350,000 readers of FIRE blogs are disgruntled Company Men following Gamesman bloggers who preach lifestyle optimization. We are a step behind them as they embark on a Craftsman experiment, which they will fail at. This implies I should focus on becoming a Jungle Fighter, profiting somehow off of all these failed early retirees sulking back into the workforce once they've overestimated their SWR and underestimated their future spending.
Am I close?
Possibly related: I've heard my middle aged bosses gripe about interviewees mentioning "work-life balance." Idiots.
Also possibly related: our sitting President sells himself as a Jungle Fighter.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
@TD - Yeah close ... or perhaps underestimating the danger of "eat the rich"-sentiments which might destroy the W of the SWR (see the 9.9%- and the is frugality is for the rich-thread). To which degree will voters let a substantial portion of society become a rentier-class if it begins to look too unobtainable(*) for those who don't already have it? Is this something we need to worry about?
(*) For example, yields on everything are extremely low right now (you can tell because people are talking of investing in emerging markets, which is normally a sign of desperation/last resort, to get returns). In a world where faith in the 4% rule didn't reign supreme, this means that FIRE is already ~twice as expensive as it has been on average in history. If people went with the crossover-algorithm promoted in YMOYL, it is currently twice as hard to FIRE as it was.
Whoa! I didn't know that's how that happened. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh? In all fairness, they did give all their book money away and lived their values (whereas I've kept all mine and lived mine), but it does somewhat speak to whether this is something everybody can do or whether frugality is really only for the rich or those with rich relatives, at least in practice.http://time.com/money/5241566/vicki-robin-financial-independence-retire-early/ wrote: Having paved the original FIRE path decades ago, Robin hasn’t worked for a traditional paycheck in 50 years. After stints as an actress and in film production in New York City, she parlayed an inheritance at age 23 into a modest income that sustained a groovy 1970s lifestyle in which she lived in an “intentional community,” which is kind of like a commune, but less marginalized and more centered around mutual values—”the sharing economy before it was the sharing economy,” she says.
(*) For example, yields on everything are extremely low right now (you can tell because people are talking of investing in emerging markets, which is normally a sign of desperation/last resort, to get returns). In a world where faith in the 4% rule didn't reign supreme, this means that FIRE is already ~twice as expensive as it has been on average in history. If people went with the crossover-algorithm promoted in YMOYL, it is currently twice as hard to FIRE as it was.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
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Last edited by classical_Liberal on Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
- Mister Imperceptible
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
I doubt even President Oprah will be able to raise capital gains, interest, and dividend taxes on those in the lower tax brackets, where ERE people live. For standard middle class consumers and retirees, they desperately need to keep what little they have accumulated. If it gets to that point, we have a full-blown dictatorship and confiscation of personal property. Not sure how you can prepare for that.
I would actually expect ERE folks to benefit from law changes that are in favor of the low income strata. We spend little and need only a modest income stream. It may require an adjustment but it would just be a matter of identifying the optimal path. But at the end of the day, President Oprah and her cohorts are capitalists and the new bosses will be the same as old bosses. I don’t think we have to worry about that. I’m actually worried about the opposite happening- if the barriers to obtaining higher wealth become too great.
I would actually expect ERE folks to benefit from law changes that are in favor of the low income strata. We spend little and need only a modest income stream. It may require an adjustment but it would just be a matter of identifying the optimal path. But at the end of the day, President Oprah and her cohorts are capitalists and the new bosses will be the same as old bosses. I don’t think we have to worry about that. I’m actually worried about the opposite happening- if the barriers to obtaining higher wealth become too great.
Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
@MI- there is already talk of additional taxation on the ERE nest egg. The latest that comes to mind is the FIFO scene that prevents investors from skirting taxes by unloading losers.
The myth that we can tax the hell out of the rich to pay the poor always comes unwound to tax the poor too to pay the poor! It's a spending problem...
The myth that we can tax the hell out of the rich to pay the poor always comes unwound to tax the poor too to pay the poor! It's a spending problem...
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
Based on a conversation I had today, I wonder if it's not that there are more people interested in FIRE, only that there are more people interested in blogging about FIRE. The proliferation of FIRE blogs doesn't necessarily translate to a proliferation of people actively working towards FIRE. The same was true in the prepping world (blogging without prepping IRL) and is now also true in the food blogger realm.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
All I know is that I'm the only person I know interested in FIRE, though as I don't tend to bring it up unprompted there might be some other fellow travellers flying under the radar without me knowing.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
@Jacob
Good list
I do have a bit of a nit to pick. While my children think I am ancient enough to remember all of these firsthand I can only speak to the last two. While the concepts YMOYL are solidly built and accumulated in the 1970s the book wasn’t actually published til 1992. I bought it in paperback circa 1994. Sort of like you accumulated money and ideas in the early 2000’s and published a bit later.
The Nearing stuff was mighty popular in the 1970s with the back to the landers, Mother Earth News). They are talking about an earlier era too. I remember “reading” Dad’s Mother Earth magazines and Foxfire books back before I could actually read.
Good list
I do have a bit of a nit to pick. While my children think I am ancient enough to remember all of these firsthand I can only speak to the last two. While the concepts YMOYL are solidly built and accumulated in the 1970s the book wasn’t actually published til 1992. I bought it in paperback circa 1994. Sort of like you accumulated money and ideas in the early 2000’s and published a bit later.
The Nearing stuff was mighty popular in the 1970s with the back to the landers, Mother Earth News). They are talking about an earlier era too. I remember “reading” Dad’s Mother Earth magazines and Foxfire books back before I could actually read.
jacob wrote: ↑Thu May 17, 2018 9:54 am2010s (dot com/RE crash) 4HWW, ERE, MMM, ... FIRE-bloggers, 4%-rule, minimalism, index funds.
1970 (go go investing crash, oil crisis) - YMOYL/Roadmap, Robin/Dominguez, Callenbach, Elgin, Luhrs, Simple Living, .. lots of ecology stuff.
1930 (great depression) - Nearing (again), Borsodi, frugality, self-reliance.
1890 (long depression) - Helen & Scott Nearing, As Man Thinketh, ... homesteading(*), self-sufficiency, thrift.
1850 (panic of 1837+) - Thoreau
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
https://youtu.be/kD8uNm5ck0Q
Playing with FIRE documentary preview that does not mention ERE. My inner permabear says this is more evidence of an impending market crash.
Would there be a FIRE movement without the ERE blog or book?
The Company Man version of FIRE represented in the above trailer seems to only depend on the Trinity Study (4% rule) and the past success of index funds. The message is :"Anyone can do this. No need to compete."
Whereas Jungle Fighter FI evangelists (Financial Samurai, Rich Dad) imply that some skill is required. Kind of like poker, where skill and luck are both necessary for success.
Playing with FIRE documentary preview that does not mention ERE. My inner permabear says this is more evidence of an impending market crash.
Would there be a FIRE movement without the ERE blog or book?
The Company Man version of FIRE represented in the above trailer seems to only depend on the Trinity Study (4% rule) and the past success of index funds. The message is :"Anyone can do this. No need to compete."
Whereas Jungle Fighter FI evangelists (Financial Samurai, Rich Dad) imply that some skill is required. Kind of like poker, where skill and luck are both necessary for success.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
I think the main reason is that it's mostly that the ones in the documentary show a pleasant version of FIRE more palatable to the mainstream.
Most people even in the mainstream will say I could never do that, but it's impressive when looking at people like MMM or the Frugalwoods. Most in the mainstream would look at Jacob and simply write him off as impossible/crazy(no offence intended Jacob).
So I think it's more about optics than anything else.
However more people getting into FIRE brings them a step closer to ERE.
Most people even in the mainstream will say I could never do that, but it's impressive when looking at people like MMM or the Frugalwoods. Most in the mainstream would look at Jacob and simply write him off as impossible/crazy(no offence intended Jacob).
So I think it's more about optics than anything else.
However more people getting into FIRE brings them a step closer to ERE.
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Re: FIRE reaching Critical Mass
I've actually been in contact with them since May and was supposed to go to Austin, TX for an interview in June but then they cancelled on me a few weeks before it was scheduled citing money issues. Based on the kickstarter text it looks like they're wrapping up, so it doesn't look like there will be any ERE input there. But I don't know ...
It might just be my inner Wheaton level feeling but the way the FIRE-movement is currently being portrayed/recruiting (outside the ERE bubble) seems to be more along the lines of:
I might be wrong though. Another reason why I wasn't included is that I'm not exactly part of the FIRE/PF in-crowd so they got a hold of me relatively late in the shooting/process (apparently this project started a couple of years ago). I'm somewhat of a recluse on the FIRE scene.
Add: @prognastat - When I talked to Travis some months ago I might also have expressed some reservations based on my experiences with mainstream exposure back in the 2010. I'm not exactly wearing my upbeat happy face when I talk about the "hows" and "whys" of going mainstream. Also I might have made a joke about including people who weren't all software engineers
It might just be my inner Wheaton level feeling but the way the FIRE-movement is currently being portrayed/recruiting (outside the ERE bubble) seems to be more along the lines of:
- First, acquire a $150-250k+ annual salary.
- Learn to live like a normal consumer at $30-50k per year.
- FIRE in 10 years with $1-2M in savings.
I might be wrong though. Another reason why I wasn't included is that I'm not exactly part of the FIRE/PF in-crowd so they got a hold of me relatively late in the shooting/process (apparently this project started a couple of years ago). I'm somewhat of a recluse on the FIRE scene.
Add: @prognastat - When I talked to Travis some months ago I might also have expressed some reservations based on my experiences with mainstream exposure back in the 2010. I'm not exactly wearing my upbeat happy face when I talk about the "hows" and "whys" of going mainstream. Also I might have made a joke about including people who weren't all software engineers