How is the FIRE movement doing?

[Jean]

actually, i have, but i would say the tipping point is about 8th grade, at 14yo. 13yo are still quiet.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jean:

Interesting. Must be indicative of a pretty huge cultural difference, because in my neck of the woods, I observe that they don't quiet down until Second Grade, then they get noisy (and stinky) again starting in 5th grade, and then they don't quiet down again until around 11th grade (in part due to compulsory education ending at age 16.)

[7Wannabe5]

However, it's definitely not just the young Greens, who would describe capitalism as "evil/selfish" who are objecting to the "rich men north of Richmond." Just a maybe-thinning-line difference between focus on "evil" profits or "evil" taxation impacting the working stiff's paycheck/grocery bill. In my neck of the woods, I'm seeing more Barista/Militia solidarity among the economically struggling young, but MMV.

In this morning's NYT, Nate Cohn confirms that among the young, who usually lean quite liberal, current polls indicate a dead-heat between Biden/Trump.

NOTE: This is NOT a post about politics. This is a post about how an intuitive (Ne) weirdo who understands math and reads the NYT and listens to local country radio in rust-belt realm where she resides just might get it right. IOW, this is a post about amateur Bayesian prediction methodology.

[The Old Man]

So what's going on with the FIRE movement these days? Still strong?

"The Truth about FIRE - Is Early Retirement Actually Possible" by The Plain Bagel
https://youtu.be/SEItn9Csitg?si=IEhcAKyeDdAcSD4O

FIRE has entered the mainstream and remains so. However, just because people are aware of it does not mean people are taking the steps to actually achieve it. People have other priorities and early retirement financial independence is not one of them. FIRE has never been a priority and probably never will.

ERE because it is a more extreme form of FIRE, because of the name if not the practice, also suffers for the same reason.

[Western Red Cedar]

+1 to everything @The Old Man said. The video is a solid response to the OP and the comments provide some insight into how people think about FIRE.

[jacob]

It's the same answer as:

Q: Wouldn't the economy collapse if everybody FIRE'd?
A: FIRE is simple but not easy. We'll never be in a situation where everybody does it.

[Western Red Cedar]

I feel like nobody realizes the wealth that's available to them! It's the tragedy of comparing yourself only to those around you. We still have access to unimaginable wealth by almost any geographic or historical standard. And yet we don't seem to be that much happier... almost like having more money isn't the key to happiness...

I think the Tocqueville paradox relates to some of the observations and dialogue in this thread. Even though by many metrics living standards have improved, our expectations and resentment have increased with them.

The Tocqueville effect (also known as the Tocqueville paradox) is the phenomenon in which, as social conditions and opportunities improve, social frustration grows more quickly. The effect is based on Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on the French Revolution and later reforms in Europe and the United States.

[guitarplayer]

I had this thought a couple of days back: you sometimes talk about that proverbial person that wins a lottery and is left with one million dollars only to squander it out of lack of skills and imagination. But today this is the human condition for very many people - it is effectively the same.

[zbigi]

I think the Tocqueville paradox relates to some of the observations and dialogue in this thread. Even though by many metrics living standards have improved, our expectations and resentment have increased with them.

The Tocqueville effect (also known as the Tocqueville paradox) is the phenomenon in which, as social conditions and opportunities improve, social frustration grows more quickly. The effect is based on Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on the French Revolution and later reforms in Europe and the United States.

Also, I think we are actually much happier thanks to the money we have. I've spoken a lot about it with my grandma, who lived in miserable, medieval deprivation in her youth, and she was so much happier to not be hungry, to not be cold in the winters etc.
In the past, people who lived in conditions of deprivation were unhappy enough to actually start rebelions (which would likely result in their specific conditions getting worse, not better - as they would end up imprisoned, killed or just fired from job - but they didn't care, they were so desperate), while nowadays "unhappy" people just randomly bitch on r/antiwork.

[chenda]

I've spoken a lot about it with my grandma, who lived in miserable, medieval deprivation in her youth, and she was so much happier to not be hungry, to not be cold in the winters etc.

Funny but my grandmother who also grew up in rural squalor and spent her last years doing Caribbean cruises was by all accounts much more miserable in her affluent old age. Never expressed an ounce of gratitude for her running water and central heating which I always found strange.

@WRC - yeah this phenomena is observed in many developing countries today. Political violence and popular discontent happens less in conditions of absolute poverty but more so in countries which are starting to prosper and the pace of development doesn't keep up with people's expectations, especially young mens expectations.

[zbigi]

Funny but my grandmother who also grew up in rural squalor and spent her last years doing Caribbean cruises was by all accounts much more miserable in her affluent old age. Never expressed an ounce of gratitude for her running water and central heating which I always found strange.

I didn't hear explicit gratitude from her for her much-improved living conditions (that would be very uncommon, esp. coming from Eastern European), but it could be read between the lines - she had hatred for the regime which ruled Poland in her youth and which did nothing to help her, and also was very fond of Communist government, who gave her a flat with central heating, running water, electricity etc.

[chenda]

she had hatred for the regime which ruled Poland in her youth and which did nothing to help her, and also was very fond of Communist government, who gave her a flat with central heating, running water, electricity etc.

Well I suppose that's understandable. Now you mention it I do remember her speaking highly of the government building affordable housing for rural workers.

[Jin+Guice]

I think it can both be true that people like to live in better conditions and that people fail to appreciate just how much better their conditions are.

Increase (decrease) in happiness < increase (decrease) in standard of living.

But they will both still move in the same direction.


It seems to me that this trait is so ubiquitous that it's intrinsically human, not like, "oh my god people these days are so ungrateful."

The interesting questions to me are:

1) Is it even humanely possible to actually fully appreciate how easily we can meet our basic physiological needs without the threat of violence?

and

2) Can we use the realization that basic survival is actually so much easier today that we get out of our own way?... Bc we are highly committed to making everything harder on ourselves.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jin+Guice:

Some might argue that Corporate-Bureaucratic Capitalism is structural violence.

Also, do you always find it easy to scavenge, dumpster dive, in New Orleans without risk of violence (from other humans or rats)? Dumpster diving seems mostly like a lark in affluent areas I've lived, but it seems like I would have some seriously scary competition in my current neck of the woods.

[Jin+Guice]

@7: I think it helps a lot to be an able bodied man.

Sometimes there are homeless people who act weird, but the rats are usually more violent.

The majority of people I meet in the dumpster are friendly and helpful.

One time I walked up on a dude shooting up behind a dumpster, but he was oddly calm about it. I even ended up dumpster diving in the dumpster while he shot up.

New Orleans is pretty violent, but I think where you live is more violent?

I also live next to a very affluent part of New Orleans where scavenging stuff is easy. It's pretty common that I find something useful on my daily walk.

[zbigi]

Dumpster diving seems mostly like a lark in affluent areas I've lived, but it seems like I would have some seriously scary competition in my current neck of the woods.

Similar around here [1]. It's hard to take a walk around the city without noticing someone pushing a cart full of scrap metal. These people aren't neccessarily scary, but they're just efficient competition. Forget about picking up an useful piece of furniture or electronics - just a couple days ago, I was walking around a construction site where the city renovates an old tram line. Among the construction workers doing there thing, there was one guy with just a hammer, pounding on a large downed traction pole, made of reinforced concrete (funnily enough, he somehow got himself a security vest just like the rest of the guys at the construction, so he was blending in quite nicely). His goal was to crush those tonnes of concrete by hand, to get to the steel rebar. When I walked there again two days later, he was still going at it... I can't match that kind of dedication - I'm not hungry or uncomfortable enough.


[1] My city had similar history to Detroit area - also extremely sudden and rapid deinstrustrialization, with a lot of mining-caused building damage on top - see some pictures below:

[guitarplayer]

@J&G maybe if you are already doing dumpster diving I.e. hanging out around supermarkets, maybe you could get folk in the supermarkets interested in the Olio app. It is dumpster diving civilised edition and a win win situation in that supermarkets don’t have to pay for dumpster services that much and people get free food. I get about $500 worth of food every month cycling around town and chatting to nice people. In a city with historical background slimar to the afore mentioned ones.

[7Wannabe5]

New Orleans is pretty violent, but I think where you live is more violent?

I also live next to a very affluent part of New Orleans where scavenging stuff is easy. It's pretty common that I find something useful on my daily walk.

I'm pretty familiar with New Orleans, because my DD32 went to school there in one of the uber-affluent areas and when I visited her I stayed in very basic hostel in not so affluent area. It's kind of like if you took the revitalized parts of downtown Detroit and the university district, one of the nearest very affluent suburbs, and some of the dilapidated, dangerous neighborhoods in between, but made it more cosmopolitan/touristy. When I lived in Detroit, I was actually in a teeny-tiny very poor city full of recent, refugee, immigrant families from the Middle-East (previously Bosnia and Poland) that is surrounded by Detroit's dilapidated, and dangerous neighborhoods, but easy biking distance to affluent/revitalizing realms. So, scavenging was possible there.

Where I am now (previous paragraph edited due to being waaaaay too much of a negator)...probably has some totally cool stuff going on too, but since I moved here I've been still in lock-down, extremely ill, and/or engaged in brain-in-box marathon of STEM grad degree at age 58, so my social connections have largely been limited to other middle-class teachers who drive in from affluent realms, and people are strange when you're a stranger.

[Jin+Guice]

Ah ya, that is pretty different than New Orleans. There is money here, it is just mostly fickle tourist money and not evenly distributed. Also no economic crash, just occasional hurricane devastation, which creates opportunity for some as it destroys opportunity for others.

@guitarplayer: I have some reservations about messing up the good dumpsters. I'll check out that app for stores that have compactors (which is 99% of them).

[7Wannabe5]

@Jin+Guice:

Speaking of hurricanes, one of the reasons (besides beyond dirt cheap) why I chose my current semi-collapsed urban on the edge of semi-blighted rural location for permaculture project was that, contrary to popular belief, the river is very clean, and it is ideal site for Global Climate Change Gateway to the North. Unfortunately, I think I may have bought in too early for the migration and too late for my own physiology.