Ego's Journal

[Frita]

…she became fed up with her life and made a very ERE decision to quit. She lowered her expenses significantly and began consulting on the side. She is now on the hunt for a different, lower cost place to live….Perhaps it is time to translate ERE into Chinese.

Interesting find, Ego. As life becomes more frenetic in some industrialized countries, I wonder if this will become a more skillful variant to cope and adapt. Hikikomori https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/P ... r%20years. seems like it’s on the less functional end of the spectrum.

[loutfard]

Also, "cabbage price houses". There is said to be a phenomenon of Chinese people deliberately migrating internally to places like Fuxin, the Chinese equivalent of Flint, buying places in emptying former coal mining cities for a song ("for the price of a cabbage") as an escape route.

[chenda]

There's a great you tube channel called Katherine's journey to the east about an American girl who lives in rural Zhejiang province. I think she WFH for a Chinese environmental organisation. Apparently there has been a trend of urban dwellers moving to rural areas which had hitherto been depopulated due to urban migration. This has resulted in much improvement to the rural areas, bringing modern amenities and preservation of historic settlements.

https://m.youtube.com/@kats_journey_east

China's middle class is as big as the whole US population and India's is the same size.

[Ego]

The retirement age for blue-collar women in China just changed on January 1. Before the change, the retirement age was fifty. It will gradually rise to fifty-five over the next few decades. For men, it went from 60 to 63.

So, the chances are high that one child is supporting (financially by way of the pension system and as well as emotionally) both parents who are on the cusp of retirement as well as four retired grandparents, with no siblings or cousins to help out. About 70% of Chinese retirement wealth is trapped in the real estate bubble that is in the process of deflating.

As life becomes more frenetic in some industrialized countries, I wonder if this will become a more skillful variant to cope and adapt.

The friend we met was a contractor. I read that contractors are given the option to decline paying into the pension system. They see this inverted 4-2-1 pension pyramid and decide that it is unlikely they will ever collect from the system. I wonder if this is adaptation or if it is a simple refusal to participate in a system they see as rigged against them.

Also, "cabbage price houses". There is said to be a phenomenon of Chinese people deliberately migrating internally to places like Fuxin, the Chinese equivalent of Flint, buying places in emptying former coal mining cities for a song ("for the price of a cabbage") as an escape route.

Internal migration is much easier for those who do not speak English. The women in the video all spoke English, as did the woman we met. Right now, English (or Thai) skills are important in Chiang Mai. We are now in Laos and seeing a LOT of Chinese independent travelers (and package tourists) who, it seems, speak only Chinese. They do better here than Thailand. It will be interesting to see how many people escape the Chinese system to places like Laos.

Apparently there has been a trend of urban dwellers moving to rural areas which had hitherto been depopulated due to urban migration. This has resulted in much improvement to the rural areas, bringing modern amenities and preservation of historic settlements.

Interesting. We in the US and EU are many generations removed from living off the land, whereas their subsistence-farming grandparents are still alive. Will they make the round trip in three generations?

[7Wannabe5]

Interesting. We in the US and EU are many generations removed from living off the land, whereas their subsistence-farming grandparents are still alive. Will they make the round trip in three generations?

Yeah, I think this is a key difference, especially if combined with fact that they are also only a few generations from complete chaos in economic system. Both of these would contribute to being more likely to be "savers" which would contribute to early retirement option/perspective. Part of my current fascination with genealogical research is looking at these sort of patterns. For example, along my direct paternal line, my adult kids are at least 6 generations away from farming, but only 2 generations away from farming on their father's direct paternal line. Both of these lines were at least moderately frugal, but the integration of the spectrum from farm stock to grain elevator price quotes to commodities market to stock market to intellectual capital varied.

Sometimes there is a great deal of overlap. For example, in your ancestral Italian realm, the inventor of the telegraph and radio, Marconi, was the grandson of a highly affluent silk farmer, and developed his ideas while at leisure on his grandfather's farm and corresponding with colleagues from his university, and was also able to quickly patent his inventions due to his affluent family's familiarity with the legal system. Also, my 100 millionaire friend grew up as one of 11 kids on a very much not affluent homestead in rural Illinois. He had to walk the cows along the side of the road when he was a kid in attempt to scavenge free strip of pasture, and he said his father maintained the barn much better than the house, because the barn made money and the kids, not so much.

Also, "cabbage price houses". There is said to be a phenomenon of Chinese people deliberately migrating internally to places like Fuxin, the Chinese equivalent of Flint, buying places in emptying former coal mining cities for a song ("for the price of a cabbage") as an escape route.

Super-interesting to me since I literally (and also metaphorically due to my tendency to think in terms of "cabbages" and "potatoes") attempted this and failed. I wonder what the crime and human scavenger situation is like in Fuxin? I read an excellent novel about human scavengers in China (can't recall title), so I would guess that the scavenger competition would be even tougher than in Flint, but maybe crime would be better? For example, I would suspect that if you were filling a dumpster container with debris from your "cabbage house" in Fuxin, human scavengers might be simultaneously digging through it for anything they perceived to be of value, but maybe the scavengers wouldn't be two 30-ish carny-vibing white guys driving up in a low-riding vehicle, hitting a meth pipe, and then flashing gold grillz as they walk right on into your garage after checking out your dumpster.

China's middle class is as big as the whole US population and India's is the same size.

Is this the proportion of their population that is comparable to middle class in US or more towards the proportion that exceeds Global Middle Class income which is approximately 1/2 Jacob per capita? Global Middle Class is set to be the income level where if you acheive it, fall back down to living on the edge of starvation is unlikely. The U.S. poverty level is set much more in alignment with competition for code-compliant shelter. In my childhood, there were still humans in the U.S. who died of starvation and malnutrition (outside of the still possible, more rare terrible abuse/neglect situation), mostly in Appalachia or similar situations. Rural poor can usually find some kind of shelter due to low code enforcement and urban poor can usually find some kind of access to free food. It's odd but true due to distribution patterns that food is generally less available where it is actually grown, especially in scratch subsistence realms. And this is true at all levels; the grocery store that is closest to the tofu factory which is central to the soy fields is less likely to carry a variety of tofu products than the urban market centered on more varied, affluent population.

Therefore, it's much easier to function as a human scavenger (like Ego and I do ) in affluent, urban realm. Where I am currently located, I literally just have to take an elevator to the basement and wait in line for twenty minutes chatting with the other residents of the senior center (which is not even a low-income center, except for a few apartments in the basement!) to pick up discarded salads, treats, and other gourmet selections from Whole Foods, Fresh Thyme, Plum Market, Trader Joes, and other similar outlets. In Flint, none of these kinds of upscale markets exist, and my frugal 60-something landlady pointed out the church food handout shed on the rural outskirts where she sometimes picked up discarded meat for her dogs, but only when she deemed it not of human scavenger quality. It doesn't feel right to scavenge as a middle-class (or middle-class income potential) human when you are living somewhere so low income that almost all the kids get breakfast, lunch, snack, and a couple bags of groceries to take home for the weekend, and their teachers sometimes have to provide them with socks and underwear they buy in bulk on Amazon Prime Days. I only very rarely saw anything of any value left on the side of the road on trash day in Flint; just maybe some sad broken pressed wood shelving or a dirty broken off-brand plastic kid toy or a sofa with torched cushions sitting out in the rain.

[chenda]

Is this the proportion of their population that is comparable to middle class in US or more towards the proportion that exceeds Global Middle Class income which is approximately 1/2 Jacob per capita?

The former I believe, though it's obviously a smaller % of their overall populations. Anecdotal but when I was in Jordan the large number of Chinese tourists was notable, as were the number of signs translated into both English and Mandarin.

A rural poor person who does food runs into the city would make for an interesting dystopian novel. Stockpiling for the winter.

[7Wannabe5]

A rural poor person who does food runs into the city would make for an interesting dystopian novel. Stockpiling for the winter.

That would be interesting! I'm always kind of baffled by how infrequently humans do cross territories in this fashion. I mean, even upper and middle class globe trotters tend to land in the same kinds of areas just located elsewhere. For example, if I told you that my youngest sister lives in Brooklyn, went to school in Austin and Chicago, and lived in London and Costa Rica for at least 6 months, you could probably guess in which city in Michigan she graduated from high school in less than 4 guesses.

[jacob]

That would be interesting! I'm always kind of baffled by how infrequently humans do cross territories in this fashion. I mean, even upper and middle class globe trotters tend to land in the same kinds of areas just located elsewhere.

Traveling to the same kind (class) of neighborhood, even on the other side of the planet, is only 6-12 hours away, whereas traveling to a different kind class of neighborhood is years if not a lifetime removed even if it's located less than a mile away. Cheap air travel rendered physical distance null and void. A few clicks and you're instantly relocated---you don't even have to see one of those exotic "travel agents" anymore---to a place where it's possible to do pretty much the same thing you did at home with the same kind of people and the same values.

These days, "exotic travel" would be going from e.g. white collar environment to blue or pink collar or vice versa. From living in a $500k neighborhood with $500k problems to a $50k neighborhood with 50k problems or vice versa. Homebody to barfly. Shopaholic to DIY. Working for a living to passive income. Switching to the other political party. Going from meat&potatoes to vegan. Couch potato to gymrat. Aliterate to bookworm.

It's rare because it requires too much effort. Most prefer the quick&easy way of tagging some "experiences" onto their existing selves as opposed to a hard personal transformation or exploration of who or what they are/in relation to others/where they come from.

[7Wannabe5]

These days, "exotic travel" would be going from e.g. white collar environment to blue or pink collar or vice versa. From living in a $500k neighborhood with $500k problems to a $50k neighborhood with 50k problems or vice versa. Homebody to barfly. Shopaholic to DIY. Working for a living to passive income. Switching to the other political party. Going from meat&potatoes to vegan. Couch potato to gymrat. Aliterate to bookworm.

Yeah, I agree, but for those of us towards XNXP it can often be more like "rough play" than "hard work." I've been intermittently "slumming" and "skitching" and other varieties on the theme such as you listed since I was old enough (14) to hitch-hike to a different-enough neighborhood's roller-rink to meet-up with blue collar boys named Rex and Ace. I think it goes along with naturally tending more towards being a trader and/or an out-breeder.

Also, this kind of playful exploration is rarely 100% immersive. There's always the part of you that is simply observing the fact that you are wearing a pink hijab and entering the women's room at the Islamic center or strutting into a casino with a semi-pro gambler or eating deep-fried pickles with a Republican on election day or munching shrooms with somebody who headed up UFO investigation group or the only white woman under 80 in your water aerobics class or having sex in a corporate IT server room with a former Presbyterian minister or cuddling with bi-polar Greek guy in neighborhood where you can hear gunfire at night or always being referred to as "the tall blonde" rather than by your name by the yacht club boys, etc. etc. etc.

However, I would estimate that forming a relationship with somebody from a significantly different socio-economic or environmental culture is kind of the same as living and working in that culture for a similar duration, as opposed to just touring or visiting. Also, doing anything like this solo is bound to be much more psychologically immersive than doing it in the company of peers from your own "culture" of origin. For kind of scary example, if you are hitchiking out of the suburbs with 2 of your teeny-bopper friends, then there are 3 of you who are clear on "who you really are" if old guy in his early 40s who picks you up says "You see that lottery ticket? That's one way to make easy money. You wanna know another way to make some easy money, sunshine?"

[Ego]

Traveling to the same kind (class) of neighborhood, even on the other side of the planet, is only 6-12 hours away, whereas traveling to a different kind class of neighborhood is years if not a lifetime removed even if it's located less than a mile away. Cheap air travel rendered physical distance null and void. A few clicks and you're instantly relocated---you don't even have to see one of those exotic "travel agents" anymore---to a place where it's possible to do pretty much the same thing you did at home with the same kind of people and the same values.

I can't argue with that. The last time we were here in Laos we crossed from Thailand with our bikes, took a river boat down the Mekong, then cycled from Luang Prabang to the border with Vietnam at the DMZ.



I remember reading about how the US carpet bombed rural Laos during the Vietnam War. The planes flew so high that they could not be seen by the villagers who believed that their world was just randomly exploding.

----

This time around we are certainly not being as challenging as we were the last, but there are moments every day where I get challenged. This morning I had to choose between ten different fruit sellers to buy our fruit for breakfast. I had to figure out which one would not take advantage of my ignorance. I couldn't use language or common cultural cues. Reading people is a critical skill in life and figuring out how to do it in a place like this is not easy. I think of it as a good thing to practice.

[C40]

I feel like Japan has to be ripe for ERE principles. A huge mass of the population is exhausted from work, with their entire lives being working and then socializing with co-workers after work....

And there is a seemingly endless supply of cheap and even free houses out in the rural areas where there aren't jobs

There are already a lot of people who want to and do actually check out. Though it seems to me that they do it in a way that is not deliberate or not fulfilling. They seem to mostly/entirely stay indoors, laying around consuming media and playing games

[zbigi]

From what I've read the hikkikomoris are mostly "fail to launch" cases, i.e. people who couldn't make it in the job market, are now depressed because of it, and live off their parents till their parents die. This is increasingly becoming a problem, as hikkikomoris coincide with Japanese economic stagnation, which is now over 30 years old, and so the early hikkikomoris are in their fifties and are now increasingly losing their parents/livelyhood. In any case, at least from outside this culture seems so collectivistic that I don't thing ERE will take root there. Anyone who's not having a job or other role in society (i.e. a mother) seems to be as unhappy and lost as a solitary honeybee.

[C40]

I didn't explain my thoughts well in my post.. in my head I was not thinking specifically/only about the hikkikomoris as the ones who would ERE - but moreso I'm noting that there are massive groups of Japanese people who opt out of normal society - some involuntarily and some of a more voluntary/deliberate type - like the 'herbivore men' who don't bother with dating/sex/relationships. That grass-eater group, afaik, are much different than the Incels of the western world because they (grass-eaters) don't hold animosity towards women or relationships, they just seem to not be interested in it enough to put in effort

Thus,.. I gotta think there are people who would rather not work to the death... And some of those guys who wake up from being blacked out on the sidewalk on a workday morning and mumbles the magic words "there's gotta be more to life than this" (a phrase made more famous by Mrs. Ego on that TV commercial)

But.. also I definitely don't understand the Japanese culture much, so I could be wrong about a long career being something people there would opt out of

[7Wannabe5]

I once had cause to discuss similarity/differences American/Iranian/Japanese culture. My takeaway was that the core mission ofJapanese culture is "be useful to society", and this makes it less in alignment with American culture "be successful, be liked/loved" than Iranian culture "be liked/loved, be successful." OTOH, this makes Japanese culture more towards the collectivist version of highly individualistic FIRE/ERE culture. The core mission of FIRE/ERE1* culture approximating, "I am extremely useful to myself.", very much in alignment with the extreme individualist at Level Green/Western Culture having core mission of "I very much like/love me."

The data-researcher who wrote "Generations", a recent study of generational culture in the U.S. (which refutes prior studies suggesting generational cycles), noted that self-referential phrases like this only very rarely appear in any published works prior to the late 20th century and would have seemed very odd and smelling of onanism to earlier generations. IOW, even the earlier humans who seem very individualistic to us didn't seem that way to themselves. Daniel Boone wasn't likely thinking "I gotta put on my own oxygen mask first." Humans have always behaved in alignment with a spectrum of individualistic and collectivist motivations, but it's only recently that we have clearly abstracted these options. Still, there's always a level of collectivism assumed as the water in which we can functionally swim as individuals. For example, most Libertarians assume respect for private property, and even the most outre Anarchists must assume a natural human tendency towards parental care of young and similar, if their perfect society is to be generative.

*Of course, in the case of ERE, the collectivist mission can also be framed as "resource conservation for future generations", and even in terms of FIRE, there is at least the in-group collectivism of the somewhat oxymoronic "helping other individuals to be more individualistically useful to themselves", which is also towards the mission of U.S. educational system if "and their corporate overlords." is tacked on to the end vs. "through the process of achieving appropriate level of corporate overlordship themselves." When I first joined this forum, one of the ways I pictured its culture was an image of Peanuts characters sitting in a half circle of leather armchairs and smoking cigars.

[Frita]

Incredible pictures, very vibrant and dynamic.

This morning I had to choose between ten different fruit sellers to buy our fruit for breakfast. I had to figure out which one would not take advantage of my ignorance. I couldn't use language or common cultural cues. Reading people is a critical skill in life and figuring out how to do it in a place like this is not easy. I think of it as a good thing to practice.

Yes, and sometimes language is distracting from the non-verbals and observation of other-centered interactions. The cultural cues can always be problematic for me as my own are ingrained and vary slightly between areas, even one village to the next.

[Ego]

Yes, and sometimes language is distracting from the non-verbals and observation of other-centered interactions.

Thank you Frita! This sentence bounced around in my head as I ran this morning.

It made me think about some of the serendipitous interactions that altered the course of our lives. For instance, our first meeting where Mrs. Ego, who could have made me wait outside alone, kindly allowed me into the office when I arrived early for a job interview. Our subsequent conversation warmed me up for the interview, which I aced.

Reading people quickly and making good decisions on the fly with minimal information is an important skill. I feel like we have both become fairly good at this because we do it a lot. We interact with a wide variety of different people who we have never met before and will never meet again. This morning, I was listening to Tyler Cowen's interview with Dwarkesh where he briefly discussed how the non-verbals and other visual cues provide about 75% of the meaning, while a transcript of the conversation would only provide about 25%. I believe it is an underappreciated skill.

[Frita]

This morning, I was listening to Tyler Cowen's interview with Dwarkesh where he briefly discussed how the non-verbals and other visual cues provide about 75% of the meaning, while a transcript of the conversation would only provide about 25%. I believe it is an underappreciated skill.

Cool, I will have to give it a listen. Being a holistic listener myself (factory setting coupled with education/work experience), I find stuff like the forum and Zoom/video chats taxing due to lack non-verbals.

[Ego]

Sounds beautiful looking, Ego, and as someone who can be a bit visually turned off by the brown mush that can be lentils, I'm a bit jealous! <-- finishing with fresh herbs is a great trick for that visual contrast / deeply saturated colors. Can I request a pic, if you're so inclined?

Absolutely! I pulled it over here because my response is not specifically about beans.

We have been eating a version of this meal almost every day for the past few months. The stir fry consists of shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, tofu, bok choy, peppers, beans, sprouts, onion and garlic on a bed of black rice. This morning I made the rice while we were eating breakfast. The night before last, Mrs. Ego had soaked the black and red beans, and also cooked them in the morning while we were having breakfast. Yesterday I made a double portion of the stir fry so we had it leftover today. I had boiled a big batch of sweet potatoes a few days ago and we've had one or two each day since. When we were ready for lunch, the only thing I had to do was boil the corn on the cob and warm things up. Oh, those are small vegetable spring rolls as well.

Every few days we shop at the open market where the produce prices are about 40-60% of the large mega-supermarket.

[thef0x]

That wild rice is just stunning, same for the purple yam, yum. Thanks for the share, gorgeous food, and looks like a welcoming and abundant market. I'm suddenly hungry!

Goes without saying but I'm loving the photos in general; no matter the place, new adventure is inspiring! Hope you both are still loving the 'uprooted' lifestyle just as much if not more than day 1.

[Ego]

Thank you, Fox.

My great-grandmother left Western Ukraine (then the Austro-Hungarian empire) for Ellis Island just a few weeks before the outbreak of WWI. After she died, we discovered she had left behind a four-year-old daughter who she never saw again. My grandmother found letters and this photo of the daughter (her sister) among her mother's belongings.



We plan to spend some time in the archives in Lviv to see if we can learn more about her life and ancestors.

A few weeks ago I met with the offspring of my great-grandmother's first daughter who was left behind in Ukraine when my great-grandmother emigrated to the US just weeks before the outbreak of WWI. It felt a little like the results of an A/B test showing what life would have been like if not for the fact that she found a way out.

My grandmother's sister lived in a village that was the crossroads of nearly every major war to hit Europe in the past hundred years. The grandparents who cared for her died during World War I. She was taken in by an unkind uncle and lived in an independent Ukraine for a year before Poland invaded. Then the Bolsheviks invaded. Under the Bolsheviks they experienced the Holodomor famine where between 7-10 million Ukrainians died. Then WWII. After WWII she lived under the Soviet Union but since her husband fought for independence with the Poles he was unable to return to the village. She was left with daughters. Unthinkably hard life.

When we visited Ukraine in 2019, just before the war began, we spent some time with my newly discovered family there. One of her grandsons, (my second-cousin) a thirty-something, married father of three, was running for a seat in parliament. A whirlwind of energy, he greeted us with gusto, then without missing a beat, asked if we would mind following him in our rental car to the local post office before it closed. Once there, he wheeled dolly after dolly full of boxes of campaign flyers to the cars. Each box had a flier plastered to the side with his serious-faced, dignified portrait beaming out at us. We filled both cars to the roof, drove them home and unloaded them into his parent's garage. A half-dozen or so of the fliers had disconnected from the side of the boxes and we still have them in our storage today.

Five years earlier, he had been imprisoned by the previous government for protesting in Kyiv's Independence Square during the Maidan Uprising and was freed from prison after the overturned government fled to Moscow.

While he did not win the parliamentary election, he went on to have two more children with his wife. We have a recent family photo of a sun-burn, beaming father with military crew cut, nervous wife on his arm, four sons climbing on him from all sides, and the eldest, a daughter, up close to the camera, snapping the selfie. It is a sun-drenched, breathtaking photo.

Fathers of three or more children are exempt from serving in the military, but he insisted on doing what he felt was his duty to his fledgling nation. We learned today that he was killed in the war.

I only met him that one time, but I have thought of him and his family often since. My mind goes to them and the unimaginable suffering they are experiencing. Then it wanders selfishly and I can't help think, there but for the grit of one tough sinewy woman and a thousand fucking miracles go I.