Early Retirement Extreme Forums

ertyu wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:10 am

What are the current cohort's takes? Why are -you- currently on this path?

Because life on the other side is much better than I can even put into words and type out. Maybe it's not for everyone, but for DW and I the total autonomy and not being beholden to anyone else's requirements to house/feed/schedule ourselves is providing a sense of freedom that after you've tasted, is hard to replicate any other way.

I'm too busy to work a job!

I want to work on the flotilla.
I want to move in the direction of decoupling from industrial consumer society.
I want to free up my time and attention to work on transitioning to the successor cultures that will co-arise out of the dissolution of the hegemonic current arrangement.
Moderate legal tax conscience abstention is a nice side effect.
I love testing theoretical frameworks (aka "ideas") in the real world and seeing how they shake out.
GEBR as a rough consumption target from systems-moral perspective makes sense to me as one approach among several possibilities.
+1 basuragomi: ain't nobody got time for that j*b nonsense!

I like to introduce the right people to the philosophy. That is much easier to do as an actual eremite.

jacob wrote:"I have a dream... that some day ..." ... students graduating from HS will be offered ERE as an alternative to Plato's Cave. Perhaps as a course in "advanced adulting" during the last semester.

When I was in high school, a one semester Consumer Economics course was required for graduation. Everybody also took a year of Home Economics and a year of Shop Class in junior high. I was excused from Shop Class due to allergies, so took two years of Home Economics, and this was somewhat influential, because I became more skilled than my own mother. I taught myself some Shop Class skills as an adult.

One thing that is odd about schooling in the U.S. (given base ethos) is that beyond the occasional Junior Achievement extracurricular club, entrepreneurial and/or small business skills are also generally not taught. So, I had no clue about how easy it was to start a small business in the U.S. until I actually attempted it in my 30s. So, I would posit that the path to ERE or "out of the cave" is more information/exposure/psychologically blocked in terms of linear vs. nonlinear rather than loose vs. tight coupling, although both are increasingly rare for middle/upper-middle-class students as the college prep/salaryman path has become tighter due to increased over-production-of-the-elite-class.

In fact, I would suggest that over-production of the elite class is likely an underlying reason why many of us have landed at ERE. Hanzi also somewhat speaks to this with his concept of "sublime mediocrity", although this would likely be towards a different corner than ERE in a different diagram, because ERE would be more like "austere heights" than "sublime mediocrity. " This diagram would have the miserable-top-10%-edge/moat as more like a central blob island with space for various alternatives around it within the grim, gray sink representing the 90%. Actually, now that I think about it, very much like AxelHeyst's visualization of a flotilla.

@7w5 - It's been noted that entrepreneurship tends to decline as societies get wealthier, contrary to what megacorp narratives would suggest. Victorian trade directories put yellow pages to shame in terms of the phelthora of sole traders.

Yeah, not much grows in the shade of a big, fast-growing, weak-timbered tree until the coming storm knocks it over and the decomposers commence to munch at its underbelly and the weeds spring up all about in the clearing.

In case of business world, when the giant tree falls, other giant trees (competition) take over available space. Often they decompose the giant's dead body, by buying bits of the failed business or even merging with/acquiring it altogether. In any case, it does not produce room for small players.