The ERE Wheaton Scale

[black_son_of_gray]

@jacob
I've spent like an hour trying to decipher your post, and have started and stopped on replies a number of times. I have some questions.

1. With respect to ERE generally, are you trying to convince people or to explain it to people?
2. With respect to the ERE Wheaton Table:

the table really shows the journey out of Plato's Cave of industrialized consumerism that is the ERE project at its roots.

Does it really show (explain) that though? How many people in this thread would have been able to guess that that was the purpose of the table? I mean, Plato's allegory of the cave, was exactly that: an allegory. It features simple, commonly known elements (a cave, a fire, shadows, prisoners) that anyone can immediately recognize. Consider that even if someone didn't have a clue as to the "deeper meaning" of the allegory, they would still undoubtably be able to communicate the allegory accurately to someone else (who might then recognize the deeper meaning). At no point is the allegory unclear for the average person who hears it.

Speaking of generators, a great table should have the following features.

• Each stage, N, should be written in a way that people on that level would instantly identify with---that's me!---without triggering the Forer effect. If that means different verbiage, perfect!
• The next stage, N+1, should hint at the solution to issues experienced at the current stage if any. It should be inspiring but not revealing since growth is an internal journey, not an external life-hack.

Could you provide an example of a table that does this?
3.

I don't see the explicit need to make the entire table useful for all stages. This would be like rewriting calculus/analysis in a form so it could be operated by 1st graders counting on their fingers.

Do you think ERE is that difficult to understand? Do you think that the general public needs to be considered as 1st graders counting on their fingers with respect to ERE? Where are most forum members on that scale?
4.

I believe overcoming the difficulty is the job of the receiver. […] Learning is the job of the student, not the teacher who can only facilitate the process.

I mean, I agree that you can't force a student to learn, but surely there is a role for pedagogy? Some teachers are clearly better than others, right? and presumably any underperforming teacher could improve, yes?

The issue is hinted at in the Kegan framework. The mass of systems connections one is considering at KeganN is not a*N, where a is some fixed number. It's more like a*N^b, where N>b>1.

Example: I believe that this could have been said in a much more accessible way so that, y'know, people would know what you're talking about. (I have read Kegan. Still a head-scratcher. Should I just scratch harder? )

I'd like to meet the "supreme communicator" who can compress the ERE book much further down while still retaining most of the pertinent message.

I'm not saying I'm a supreme communicator or anything of the sort, but what was wrong with my ~1 page description in Observation 3 above? It's certainly much shorter than your ~200 page book! Did I miss most of the pertinent message in my description that was 0.5% as long? Did I manage to capture more than 0.5% of the pertinent message? (No, but seriously--I don't want to misrepresent what ERE is. If I'm off base, I sincerely want to know.)

Much of this hinges on what you think is "pertinent" to ERE. Personally, I find the personal finance/early retirement angle a wonderful lens through which to "sell" ERE, but otherwise just a rabbit-hole distraction away from the big picture.
___

Regarding your PS: Fun Fact:

if I'm writing about climate change, I'm initially compelled to cover radiation transport in some clever way that even a HS could understand it.

I recently read through this textbook (free!), Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet by Tom Murphy. It does exactly what you've described. I mean, literally. I've only had high school physics. Chapter 9 handles climate change and radiation and all that very clearly and even in an entertaining way. In 20 pages no less. (The whole book is great, actually.)

[black_son_of_gray]

This is interesting to me, and the reason why I asked @jacob: "With respect to ERE generally, are you trying to convince people or to explain it to people?"

Because how you've written it, your post reads as though ERE (or at least part of it) is/was something you need to be convinced of. Now, it could be @jacob's language came out like an argument or it could be that you simply interpreted his explanation as an argument*. In any case, the subtle framing of how something is talked about can dramatically change how or if the message is received!

I completely agree with the difficulty inherent in trying to convince people of, well anything. Of "making people learn".

It's often possible to avoid knee-jerk "I'm right, you're wrong" reactions by framing the explanation or argument as "my experience" or "what has worked for me" or what "I find compelling". Basically, distinguishing between "what the truth looks like to me" and "the capital-T Truth".

Example 1) "Some people think that it makes more sense to just work a little longer at a higher paying job than to do certain chores themselves, but they're wrong." This is (perhaps exaggerated) stating of a Truth, and in a subtle way, comes off as an argument. And if you hear it as an argument--even if it wasn't intended as one, then you're looking to be convinced. You'll take the other side by default.

Example 2) "Some people think that it makes more sense for them to just work a little longer at a higher paying job than to do certain chores themselves, and I can see where they are coming from and hell I even thought that way myself for a long time, but over time my own experience hasn't borne that out and that isn't what I think any more. In fact, I've come to see it the opposite."

The brilliance of this framing is that, while someone might disagree about a Truth hinted at in the statement (that DIY is better than comparative advantage), they can't disagree with the truth of your personal experience (that DIY hasn't been a better experience for, say, Jacob than comparative advantage). And that opens the window of doubt that, "huh, maybe if it worked for them, it could work for me, even if I highly doubt it." Sure, some people are still going to write it off as being wrong, but it's just a little bit harder.**

I don't really read much of the forums anymore, but in the parts I do see, I often see a lot of posts that come off (to my ear at least), as "capital-T Truth" explaining. I'm SURE I'm guilty of this. Hell, this post is probably 100% obnoxiously guilty of this. (sorry ) It does annoy me a little, and does give me that little knee-jerk sometimes, even if that probably isn't the intention of the poster. It could very well be just the style of the various personalities that are concentrated here. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences.

As far as ERE goes, I wonder how the forums and how people interacting with the concepts would be different depending on whether ERE was framed as a Truth or simply as what Jacob (or any other forum member for that matter) has found to be true for him. Would one framing be much better at spreading the message?

*And sometimes it's ambiguous. And explanations are sometimes covertly trying to convince! And sometimes it's just a dialectic argument which is really just trying to explain!
**This works particular well in emotional exchanges, because no one who isn't you has good argumentative ground to tell you how you feel.

[jacob]

I recently read through this textbook (free!), Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet by Tom Murphy. It does exactly what you've described. I mean, literally. I've only had high school physics. Chapter 9 handles climate change and radiation and all that very clearly and even in an entertaining way. In 20 pages no less. (The whole book is great, actually.)

I suppose that illustrates the point I'm trying to make. That entire book is 465(!) pages long. W/o being given a specific issue of radiation transport, you'd have to have read all of it to know. Yet, still it does NOT go into sufficient depth with radiation transport to reject the standard denialist CO2/saturation effect-claim by explaining thermal Doppler effects or the quantum mechanical reason why CO2 et al are greenhouse gases and O2 et al are not. (My apologies if it did. I did not see it when skimming through.) It just handwaves the greenhouse effect with some absorption spectra while explaining the energy balance.

However, it does go into enough detail that we could have avoided many many pages of dumb arguments during the forum climate wars of 2014--2018 IF AND ONLY IF even a few others would have read it or something like it. But they didn't. Getting anyone to read a textbook on the physics was like pulling teeth. The preference was to try to support previously formed opinions by googling for confirmation often ending up on sites providing compartmentalized talking points to the effect that climate change is a hoax, etc.

What you have with CC is basically a field that has remained largely unchanged in its scientific conclusions for over 40 years yet somehow thousands of humans who have worked furiously at trying to communicate the problem in the best way possible has still not managed to make much of any headway with the rest of humanity by "raising awareness" or "educating" them. This strongly indicates there's more to the pedagogical problem than the insufficient application of intelligence. Perhaps the problem is not actually pedagogical in nature(!) Perhaps trying to explain things better is not going to move the needle.

The problem is not that we don't know or don't have the information. It's that we don't agree.
We're our own worst enemy.

There's a similar dynamics, albeit obviously less consequential, dynamics with ERE. I'd say the average forumite is around WL5ish and usually arrives from elsewhere IF AND ONLY IF they're experiencing some personal "crisis of faith"/framework that is not resolvable within the FIRE sphere, say on reddit or whatever. It's always been like this with ERE being the place people go to after running out of things to learn elsewhere---so technically that's always been the starting point. Still, strongly held opinions that needed to be self-questioned, given up and changed are stuff like comparative advantage, eternal economic growth, the lifelong experience that the service economy doesn't always provide, that spending less does not equal suffering, ...

There's lot and lots of material in people's minds that need to be expanded, deleted, revised.

I've been trying to explain this in various podcasts. Especially when it comes to the "what if everybody did it" or "can poor people do it too". My answer is that ERE is not all that difficult. That all this philosophy or diagramming is just a way to communicate to people who are susceptible to such messaging---these are not coincidentally the same types who are also capable of intellectually grasping complexity. However, It's not much different what what our great/grandparents did and understood intuitively and experientially insofar they could just copy the culture they lived in. Modern consumers can't because they have nobody to copy. Their motivation has to be internal. What's difficult is swimming AGAINST the stream that has become industrialized consumerism. Being able to live differently when everybody around you is telling you otherwise. Your internal reinforcement has to be >> than the external reinforcement that mostly works against you not with you. It takes a certain person with lots of agency as well as some competence to decide to break out of that herd mentality and decide to start doing things differently. Therein lies the hard part! The ERE philosophy provides the "spine" to do so. That is not to say that the things one needs to learn can be learned in an afternoon or grokked by reading a life-hack book. It takes 5-20 years to get really good at "alternative adulting" just like it takes 5-20 years of growing up to become good at regular career/consumer-oriented adulting. However, ERE is not rocket science. As the saying goes, "it's simple but not easy"... and one of the things making it hard, as with any human development, is that people's conditioning tend to be their own greatest enemy.

The sticking point is not so much in the learning as it is in the unlearning.

If I was presented with a blank slate that didn't suffer the headwind of previously conceived notions of the rest of society + the problem of being constantly surrounded by advertising and "this is how we usually do stuff", it would be much easier. That's almost never the case though. I reached the point where I no longer want to be people's enemy or sparring partner quite a while ago. I'm okay with that.

Insofar you actually have/find the magical communication key to unlock human behavior on this scale, please please do so! It would be possible to solve not only climate change but also the rest of the world's ecological issues as well as likely most financial issues (debt, liabilities, bankruptcies) not to mention health (lifestyle diseases, ... ) and meaning-crises. I suspect, however, that your main challenge might not be so much in crafting the "perfect message" as it will be to get people to "read/listen and act on it."

Anyway, ... here's the final update.

[black_son_of_gray]

@jacob Thanks for the response.

[Scott 2]

Because how you've written it, your post reads as though ERE (or at least part of it) is/was something you need to be convinced of.

I would describe it as a need to learn in layers. My model of reality did not yet intersect that portion of Jacob's. I could not grasp the message. It's not that I was intentionally obtuse, eager to prove him an idiot, or had any other malicious perspective. I just wasn't ready.

Speaking to my personal experience of learning - this is a frequent event. By my nature, when engaging with a new topic, I'm drawn to a comprehensive system. I'll read the whole story, then start doing the thing. A year later, I'll come back and re-read it. It becomes obvious I've misunderstood large portions of the picture. I simply did not have the capacity, lacking lived experience.

A few times, I've found after years immersed in a topic, the right expert guidance can uncover fundamental misunderstanding. The challenge is, without running into the barrier created by those errors, I've had no reason to see them. When they are severe enough, I might not even be able to see the barrier! How does the expert reach me, when I don't even know to look for help?


I've taken an upwards looking perspective here, because it's hard to approach this topic from the other direction. It comes across as arrogant and condescending. IRL, as the downwards looking expert in a topic, I continually struggle with this. It's really easy to be an asshole. People shut down, the communication is lost.

I did not recognize each person runs their own model of reality, until my late 20's. I was fully grounded in the "objective" basis of the scientific method. It is the indoctrination of a Western liberal education, after all. Anyone who didn't get it, was dumb or irrational - totally out of touch with reality. Operating on faith was completely laughable to me - ironic given my unwavering confidence in formal education.

Even now, I struggle to accurately assess someone else's model. Meeting them there is even harder. I suspect this is the framing you reference. My experience - the bigger the gap, the more difficult this communication. If they aren't also making the same effort, any significant gap becomes impossible to cross. My strong intuition is to write them off as individuals, or even entire classes of people. I am working on that, but it remains a forced behavior - Type 2 thinking.

This is the problem Jacob faces, attempting to make his material accessible to a Level 2 player.


Something I find interesting, is how this realization changes a statement like "agree to disagree". 10 years ago, I saw that person as a passive aggressive jerk. They were too stupid or stubborn to understand, probably refusing to admit they were wrong. Now - I see there's a good chance they recognize our models don't intersect, and are willing to move on without resolving it.

This doesn't solve the problem of a person whose model is causing very real harm, either to themselves or something I care about. But, at least I can attempt to understand why it is happening. That makes deciding what to do next a little easier. Reaching that person remains a HARD problem.

I find Jacob's attempt to attack climate change (with ERE) a fascinating approach to this class of problem. He didn't avert the disaster, but he directly reached tens of thousands. The ripple effect could be orders of magnitude larger. Many of those influenced were so far from Jacob's understanding, that they didn't even recognize climate change as a problem space. That's a fantastic bridging of the gap.

[Fish]

@jacob - I dropped my objections after seeing the title change from “levels of personal finance” to “process of leaving industrialized consumerism.” Nice move.

Also, thanks for clarifying stages 8-9 in your response to me earlier. There’s a lot more insight to be gained looking at the table with the benefit of your perspective.

Is the stage 6 savings rate intentionally left blank?

[BWND]

Perhaps the savings rates at the bottom could all be nudged back 1 level to:

L6 - 75%
L7 - 100%
L8 - N/A
L9 - N/A

L7 being 100% seems right as this is where there might be a runaway.

FWIW, I think this table 'fogs' well:

I'd place myself firmly in L5. I can visualise how my life might look different at L6 and can sort of grasp for the vision of L7.

I find it difficult to split the difference between 7 and 8. I was even going to ask why there were two distinct levels but now I think this shows it's working.

Re L9, I had to google what a 'live player' is and now have a vague idea of what it is outside a leaving Plato's Cave context. In this context it's very much a mountain peak shrouded in mist. I know it's there and can feel its presence, but I can't see it, don't know what it looks like, haven't yet found the trail head from here.

[7Wannabe5]

That is not to say that the things one needs to learn can be learned in an afternoon or grokked by reading a life-hack book. It takes 5-20 years to get really good at "alternative adulting" just like it takes 5-20 years of growing up to become good at regular career/consumer-oriented adulting.

Oddly, or ironically, I think this is what makes the chart somewhat confusing for those of us who have been at least intermittently “alternative adulting” since adolescence. Taking on a full time salaryman job and associated lifestyle seems to me like some horrible commonplace nightmare where you find yourself back in high school due to a technicality. In my case, the technicality would be “Oops, I forgot to save up a bunch of money from the salaryman career which I only held briefly and mostly regarded as a distraction.”

Also, I am just old enough to remember when a very large proportion of the adult female population did not have careers even after their children were grown. That’s why I am able to integrate financial support from affluent Boomer era men into my scheme. Obviously, I would have to find one who was a farmer, blacksmith, or general store owner, in order for my scheme to go another 40 years back in energy level.

[IlliniDave]

This table fascinates me even though it's unwieldy, its applicability is unclear, and it seems a little strained. Some thoughts from someone that lacks the prerequisites for much of the jargon.

Regarding the new title, it's likely the process exchanges one Plato's Cave for another. How does the table track the increasing benefit of the new cave? Originally I thought reduced spending requirements was the through-line until I saw the footnote.

The table nearly makes the assertion, "Systems Theory = 42". My background in systems comes through engineering where there's a vision to be implemented subject to constraints and requirements. The tension between requirements and constraints often turn it into an optimization problem. It's hard to see where the table's going. I get the sense the table switches subjects partway through, transitioning from personal finance into ideology.

Any reason not to discard the "Vacation and Experiences" column? Any reason the table can't be compressed into 5-6 rows? For a project I am working on (similar in the sense it shares a theme of personal finance) I've compressed to a zero state plus five stages of progression. The intent was to focus on the key mode transitions. Also is there anything iteratively cyclic that can be leveraged to make the illustration clearer?

Like 7Wb5 mentioned, the difficult thing is that people will encounter this from all manner of starting points. The jargon-intense later stages would prompt me to be skeptical/dismissive if I just randomly encountered it somewhere. In other words it seems like a guide for converts/acolytes. Maybe that's the purpose. The original Wheaton scale (at least as conveyed in the illustrated slides Google led me to) tells a story with a happy ending that doesn't require years or decades of preparation just to talk about.

Edit for typos.

[RoamingFrancis]

It takes 5-20 years to get really good at "alternative adulting" just like it takes 5-20 years of growing up to become good at regular career/consumer-oriented adulting.

This really resonates with me. I have also been "alternative adulting" since adolescence, and thus have been struggling upon entering the "real adult business world." It reminds me to have patience, that I am young and have time to master living life on my own terms.

[daylen]

We are all in a Plato's Cave in the sense that our ability to attend to our environment is constrained by our physiology. There is always something "more" to see. Yet, when you leave a cave for a new one you still retain a silhouette of the old cave. The way you did things before is still part of how you do things now, except that now you can do more. More nuance allows you to zoom in, but it is also helpful to zoom out and this is where the table requires some form of ideological directionality to stand up straight. In other words, it needs to point to something even if that something is vague. In this case it happens to be something like an "infinite game", "game B", or a world where we do not have to worry so much about finite resources and growth because we have collectively chosen to live within our boundaries and respect that we are part of nature and not distinct from it. ERE is in some sense a series of milestones attempting to lead to that outcome. It seems that the table does a good job at being what it is and there are always more tables to go around, allowing us to differentiate our differentiating.

[Jin+Guice]

My $0.02 on the table from my perspective:

I think that ERE is subject to some limitations that make the upper levels difficult to explain/ grasp. The limitations I see are:

1) A lack of explicit use of other people/ "social capital"
2) Limitations of the financial lens
3) Imposed ecological morality.

My explanation:

1) ERE mainly attracts introverts. Social skills are no our strong suit and I don't think most of us are used to seeing other people as resources. People in 2021 exist in a world that is largely dominated by social and cultural institutions. The world we were born into and likely die in is this way. All of the discussion on "unlearning" is because of ideas imposed by these institutions, rituals and social norms.

Navigating social capital is useful for every level in the table yet it is not well addressed. It is very difficult to learn all skills yourself, no matter how many books are read, hours are spent learning or systems are implemented. Being able to identify and utilize other people who are like-minded or have a skill set you would like to learn/ utilize is a giant skill.

IMO, it would be a huge mistake (especially for the personality types here) to abandon financial capital and rely solely on social capital. However, ignoring social capital *almost* entirely, leaves what is effectively our main resource, almost entirely untapped.

2) The financial lens is useful for attracting people at lower levels, but it's limiting for spotting other "upper-level" people. In one sense, escaping the cave of Industrial Consumerism for those raised under it is a process that takes 5-20 years. In another sense, accepting ERE or even just plain FIRE, immediately frees you from the cave immediately. ERE (and to a lesser extent FIRE) is a shared belief system that is at odds with many regularly accepted cultural norms.

Jacob has said several times that the ERE Wheaton Table is a path that leads to the top of a mountain which is reachable through other paths. It's unlikely that people who reach the top of this mountain will share the same wildly unpopular belief structure that we do. IMO, as you get closer to the top, other inspirational figures will be easier to spot if you stop thinking in financial/ savings terms.

A few pages ago Jacob said something like "it's rare for high-income earners to not be high spenders." I agree. In our society, the motivation for generating/ accumulating a large pool of wealth is having a high rate of personal expenditure. If someone hasn't been asked to question that in some meaningful way (unlikely if you are surrounded by other motivated, high-income earners), then they're going to keep having a high rate of personal expenditure. This is true even if they have internalized "$$ on tap when needed," consciously or subconsciously.

3) Saving humanity from self-generated energy and climate crisis are not the only reasons to leave industrial consumer society. This is an assumed moral imperative imposed on the table from above (I think Jacob views this as his life work). Personally, the ecological imperative is strong for me, though I (again personally) doubt the feasibility and all-consuming moral imperative of avoiding climate and energy disaster.

So, when looking for outside inspiration of others who have wholly or partially abandoned industrial consumerism, consider that they may be doing it for reasons other than saving humanity from itself. When selling it to others, remember this is not the only or necessarily highest reason (though brilliant design, making it unavoidable even for those who aren't convinced).



tl;dr: Consider for reasons of personal growth, outside inspiration and salesmanship that higher Wheaton Level individuals may exist in terms not specified by the table. Three areas/ types of people I see unidentified are (1) Those who primarily use social capital; (2) those who are not motivated by maximally decreasing personal expenditure* and (3) those who do not view the ecological imperative as the primary component of their personal morality.

*This could be used as an excuse. IF you agree that a primary reason for leaving industrial capitalism is to mitigate climate change I think driving personal expenditure as low as you can is very important. As has been pointed out several times, personal expenditure is a very good proxy for personal environmental impact.

The intention of this post is not to criticize or even suggest a change to the table. It's my own personal notes to the table and my current thinking on ERE in general.


Another unrelated comment: As someone who's no longer expressly trying to FIRE as my main ERE goal, I've found the overall table as a description of mentality/ "generally where I'm trying to go" to be very useful, but the individual columns of the table to be less accurate to how I experience the individual ERE Wheaton levels.

[Frita]

There is something about these progressive theories that makes me bristle. I think it’s because people use it to 1) play the one up-one down game, 2) identify and copy markers to signal status.

Oddly, or ironically, I think this is what makes the chart somewhat confusing for those of us who have been at least intermittently “alternative adulting” since adolescence...

Also, I am just old enough to remember when a very large proportion of the adult female population did not have careers even after their children were grown. That’s why I am able to integrate financial support from affluent Boomer era men into my scheme...

What about those of us who were raised by alternative adults? I grew up on a farm, eating what we raised (veg, fruit, minimal animal products, no grains) and harvested protein (game and fish), fixing everything, wearing/using mostly used items, lots of outdoor time/activity, no TV, lots of library books, saved most of our earned income. We owned everything, purchased in cash. My dad was raised this way too. So many things people think are weird, I considered normal from a young age. Of course, there are some other challenges with that and then how to raise one’s own children (perhaps more later).

Also my parents, especially my dad, had a lot of social capital. But I came to see that as a veneer, covering many friends of mutual utility (Aristotle). When my dad died rather young, some of his friends stole most of his tools and tack to just disappear. These “close friends” were suddenly strangers on the street. Only a handful of people were there for us. When things hit the fan, social capital is not what many imagine. That is where being strong, independent, creative, and resilient are vital.

[Miss Lonelyhearts]

I like it much better than the original. Level 10 strikes me as Laughing Buddha level and quite worthy of aspiration.
I think the removal of personal finance acronyms was wise and I might even suggest removal of dollar amounts as the reminder of $$cash money$$ raises defensiveness and all the other emotional maelstrom of frank money talk.

Also the forum link. It has good viral potential.

[Alphaville]

There is something about these progressive theories that makes me bristle. I think it’s because people use it to 1) play the one up-one down game, 2) identify and copy markers to signal status.

i think that's the problem when thinking tools get taken religiously.

this is not @jacob's fault but i see how he could be moses and this scale the ten commandments.

then we have forgive me father for i have sinned, i'm not ere enough, the kingdom of ere be with us, etc. and the in/out group: i am ere--are you ere? my ere is bigger than yours. who's ere is bigger? ends up almost a george carlin routine about religion. that's just people being people though. groups.

sorry about your dad having died early, i had no idea. and i can confirm your observations re: social capital, having seen many moochers in my rural social circle.

e.g. a number of people owe me work for things i gave them with the promise of returned labor, but chasing after them to pay would make me seem the a-hole and spoil things.

and when shtf, yeah, one can count on only a handful.

the reason the amish can do their barn raisings is due to strong social codes/ pressure, etc. in other settings people just try to get on the winning/taking side of reciprocity and make the other side a sucker.

[wolf]

What do you think of changing "desired household spending" to "desired spending per person", because in my observation spending is almost always discussed per Person? @jacob, why did you decide for a household?
Secondly, what do you think of calibrating it then on L7 to 1 JAFI, because, I guess, that was the level when @jacob wrote the ERE book.

[jacob]

I do empathize (somewhat) with the concerns expressed above, but, again, it's just a table with the innate limits of a table. A table is a map. The map is not the territory. And any map of the territory has to leave some things out. Reading a map will never become a magic pill to enlightenment. It does not substitute for actual travel---it will never turn into a handbill that provides complete engineering blueprints for a given level in a way that is comprehensible to any level yet won't be used as a prescription, a cheat-sheet, or a labeling mechanism by those who don't want to read the manual. These issues also exist for "college degrees", IQ scores, GPAs, personality tests, maturity development models, ... or really anything that risks turning into the measure once feedback mechanisms are enacted. Some of you are asking too much.

DW (currently identifies as WL6/post-consumer which was also my guess, score another +1 for the table) painted this picture of Plato's Cave. (It's a copy/interpretation of another one floating around on the interwebs, but I think it illustrates another point raised above.) The table describes the particular cave-system of someone who grew up under industrial/consumerism and wants to leave. You'll see the painting has 4 groups of people. 90% of people are the chained folks in the bottom lair. (In the painting it's only 3 out of 8, but IRL the fraction is much much higher.) They're trained to sit, stare, and value the world in terms of dollars, pounds, and euros. A useful table therefore has $$ as a column-component even though $$ becomes less relevant as one leaves the cave. Behind them in the next group are the wealth/oligarchy/governing-class. These are the people running the systems those born into the bottom lair are conditioned to believe in and define themselves by. The chained people get their framework from them. This is somewhat ironic because this group does not see the world in terms of money. Money for them is just a tool to control the shadows on the wall. People who work the lair in high-finance, fancy-law, upper-management, ... might encounter them on their way out. In the third group, behind the fire, there are people raised in "alternate adulting". They're somewhat blinded by the fire when looking towards the career/consumer lairs further underground but also by the strong light from above. They're the most lost or blinded of all groups but also have the least baggage to unlearn. One appears to be praying. I don't know what that's about. I'll have to ask DW And then outside (WL9-10) the whole world opens up. This is also why I don't want to constrain those descriptions in terms of capital whether social or financial. Bill Gates would fit WL9 even if he doesn't have the typical spending of most WL9s.

More cave-talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPvftqB-WXk

PS: Yes, the spending and savings rate column are shite at the later levels... but it's required at the early ones. The limit of both rows and columns is an innate issue with "global" tables. Also why they don't make a good key. (A key needs to "connect" to the entire table.)


There are 8 humans in this picture. Which one are you? Free as a bird...

[nomadscientist]

I like that the pound(?) is actually a US pound sign (which is called a hash in the UK).

[Jin+Guice]

Perhaps calling social capital, capital is a misnomer. It's much more difficult to store, inherit or pass on than financial/ economic capital. It's also more difficult to steal or lose social capital. I still think it serves an important function, especially for those skilled in "exploiting" it. I don't think that most people are inherently trying to take advantage of each other or get on the "winning side of reciprocity." I think that most people will take advantage of people and try to be on the right side of reciprocity when they see an easy opportunity.

I think when shtf, social capital is the most reliable form of capital. Part of being good at social capital is knowing which people do which things. The people who are pretty funny when you're watching them do cocaine are probably not the same people who emotionally support you when your mom dies. Having "only a handful of people who are really there for you when your life falls apart" is pretty good social capital. How many people can you afford to be there for when their lives fall apart?

I agree that unless you are imbedded in a community with a large degree of social cohesion/ codes/ pressures (which will also necessarily curtail social freedom/ independence), it is unwise to totally rely on social capital (though probably fun to try). Financial capital is more reliable and more flexible and it knows when to shut up. But, it's usually cheaper to have a friend with a pool than own one.

[jacob]

More like this whole focus on non-monetary capitals mainly happens around WL6-8. Before that, there's only one capital, namely $$ which is why there's a "spending column". At WL9-10 the "capital lens" fades away again because at that point all capital are all there... like water to the fish. Tap water. Oxygen.