Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

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zbigi
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by zbigi »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 10:53 am
Because the predominant structure of society, based on industrialism, IS a simple one where everybody is the same, e.g. business casual = slacks + collared shirt. A the core design of ERE is complex by construction.
I don't think business causal is people's real values. It's just mimicry (required to fit in the society, so that one can make money and so on) and is also easy and convenient, which is important when one spend majority of energy on work. However, I suspect most middle-class people dream of ultimately living a life of style, e.g. having a quaint, well-decorated house "one day". Full of things like "this cute little coffee table we found during our trip to Morocco" etc.
The problem with ERE here is that there will likely not be a trip to Morocco at all, because it's too expensive to do on an ERE budget, or if, they find the table in a store next state over, it will be too expensive too justify the purchase on an ERE budget. Hence, when people imagine going the ERE route, their dream house becomes severely stripped down. Of course, they could go to local markets for years and years finally find a set of furniture that's perfect for them and is also within the ERE budget (probably after some refurbishing). That sounds like a lot of work though, so again it's easier to just hunker down and grind that good hourly rate in their current job instead. [1]
Theoretically people could make or modify the furtniture themselves as you suggest, but I've never seen a woodworking project posted here that's on the level of what you can find in antique stores. So, people's dream house gets less beautiful and more austere, and thus they decide ERE leads to drab, puritan life, and they' rather work more years and go with FIRE instead. That's one theory anyway :)

[1] This leads again to most people, by temperament, just prefering efficiency to variety + (claimed) robustness of ERE, which is even bigger factor in low ERE adoption than not adressing the need for style and beauty. But that subject has been discussed to death in the past already.

xmj
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by xmj »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 10:53 am
It also depends on the eye of the beholder. For example, given my experience/interest in furniture making, Ikea-style furniture makes my eyes bleed.

Without introducing too much color-theory, status for upper-middle class consumers is essentially measured by [the positional goods one buys. Whereas status for ERE comes down to the demonstrated complexity behind one's choices. Random furniture or clothes from a thrift store shopping spree = bad. Deliberate coordination + personal creation with multiple stories about the various channels from which a given solution was achieved = good. E.g. this piece was from a trip to Germany. I modified this sweater with ... This table used to be a desk before cutting and adding ...

But for ERE it takes one to know one and therein lies the problem.

So I think in order to actually communicate style as widely as possible, it has to have a simple structure. Not a complex structure. Why? Because the predominant structure of society, based on industrialism, IS a simple one where everybody is the same, e.g. business casual = slacks + collared shirt. A the core design of ERE is complex by construction. In order to appeal, it therefore has to be simplified in order to be understood. In that way it's a bit like a sculpture. While Michelangelo may see David in the raw rock ... stone has to be removed before everybody else see it as something different than a rock. (I'm not saying this to be trite. This is literally something I've never given much thought.)
Indeed. Goods do communicate via their optics, the fit of the ensemble then becoming an entire aesthetic. And for someone used to some aesthetic, drilled into him/her via constant exposure, the narrative complexity of some clothing obtained via complex WoG does not matter. The aesthetic as a whole does, and its similarity to the expected / "memetic fit".

Otherwise you're pricing yourself out of markets, which may create a whole different set of problems you did not anticipate.

IlliniDave
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by IlliniDave »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu Jan 19, 2023 11:43 am
...
It occurs to me that the carrot of FIRE is very distracting. The problem is that it is at WL5 ish. So if it really is the carrot of FI that attracts you to ERE, well, you get the reward at WL5. And then for most people there is no other visible carrot. The reasons for going on to WL6 or 7 or whateverthehell 8+ is are... opaque, fuzzy, even repellent to some. So you get the carrot at WL5, and then you're good, and you're basically done.
...

Okay. Criticism? What's naive about this? Are there non-obvious ways this fails?
No criticism really. But sometimes FI of whatever sort/at whatever level, is not the goal in-and-of itself. When I first started thinking about FI it was out of fear and it was the goal, no question. Once the crisis passed I very quickly hatched a plan where FI was a precondition, but it was was just the last task of what is now my prior phase of life. In other words, I created a vision for the autumn of my life (I was almost 50 when I first found ere), a carrot, and FI was just a means to an end.

So it was a bit more of a considered move than simply a blind rush to fatFFIRE then stopping and saying, "Ok, my carrot is gone, so now what?". I started taking concrete steps towards the future vision 7 years before parting ways with my employer, even cracked open the stash to do it (the only time I've been into it since it was so named). I guess what I'm trying to say is sometimes there are things above and beyond ere WLs, or simply "not working" that people strive for in life.

Being someone whose ere WL is rather low I doubt I'm even at L5. The higher levels posited do seem at best fuzzy. I'm one of those annoying people who always asks himself why. Based on where I started and the direction I intended to steer my future, beyond a certain point it seemed like oversaving was a much more efficient path than over-ereing. That is, ere beyond a certain point became the distraction.

I think the path you outline is fine. I think the weak link is assuming opportunities to scrabble for a few bucks will always be available when you need them in the future. Bird in hand is worth two in a bush sort of thing. But it's not a fatal weak link.

I think it mostly comes down to what someone sees as the pinnacle of their lifestyle and arranging things around pursuit of that. If more/higher ere ascendance is a person's primary long range goal in life, a perfectly noble ambition, then you've laid out a path that is probably a more efficient means-to-end than dwelling longer in the wage earner world. There are probably other ambitions that could indicate superiority of that approach.

One of the things that retirees of all stripes often do a poor job of is giving enough thought to the specifics of what they really want their life to be like. I had ideas that I carried with me for more than 45 years that I made specific and that's where I'm headed. A few years back I even took a month off to give the vision a trial run. When push comes to shove furthering those goals takes priority. But ere still has a place at the table. Mostly in contingency planning, but having done numerous thought experiments with my understanding of things like web-of-goals, yields/flows, system theory, etc., I still find small ways to hone my day-to-day efficiency. That may or may not lead to higher WLs (I think it won't but could be wrong).

I think the real secret sauce is figuring out the most efficient ways to tailor use of the lower level ere tools to construct whatever it is a given individual is aiming for, be it higher levels of ere or something else entirely. I don't know if there is a systematic way of doing that, maybe every individual will have to use trial/error and intuition to solve things for themselves.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by AxelHeyst »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 8:23 am
I'm trying to reread this because I still think I'm missing your point.
Hm let's see if I can clarify.
I am not saying FIRE shouldn't be pursued, or that I think it is not a good strategy. I'm not saying I think it was a mistake to frame ERE in terms of FIRE or use the RE carrot.

I think that anyone who comes across ERE and thinks "oh, cool, I can see how I can FIRE in N years and get on with living a meaningful life" -- I think that's fantastic, full stop, no qualifiers. I don't think the message needs to be changed at all.

For some people, though, due either to circumstances, temperament (or both), they decide to go for a semiERE path. Intermittent work, parttime work, "as-if-FI incidental yield remunerative node activity", some combination of that. So they've chosen the <15yrs total work, but spreading it out instead of getting it over with quickly.

For these people, since 'the space' is so FIRE centric (at the moment, at least, for the reasons you pointed out), it is difficult to think clearly about their own unique strategy, since so much of the rules of thumb and 'typical' (tradERE) ways of thinking about money, work, jobs, investing, portfolios, etc, are centered around the FIRE strategy.

In other words, my OP wasn't an attempt to convince FIRE-centric people to decentralize FI from their thinking, it was an attempt to point out that for people who have already chosen to not explicitly pursue FI quickly, they ought to investigate how much FI-centric thinking has seeped into their strategy simply by osmotic proximity to a huge volume of FI-centric thinking.

AxelHeyst
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by AxelHeyst »

IlliniDave wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 11:35 am
No criticism really. But sometimes FI of whatever sort/at whatever level, is not the goal in-and-of itself. When I first started thinking about FI it was out of fear and it was the goal, no question. Once the crisis passed I very quickly hatched a plan where FI was a precondition, but it was was just the last task of what is now my prior phase of life. In other words, I created a vision for the autumn of my life (I was almost 50 when I first found ere), a carrot, and FI was just a means to an end.

So it was a bit more of a considered move than simply a blind rush to fatFFIRE then stopping and saying, "Ok, my carrot is gone, so now what?".
Yes, absolutely, and I don't mean to strawman FI-centricity. What I mean by FI-centricity is, for some people, FI/RE is seen as a central means (aka tool) to whatever end it is they want (freedom to do meaningful activity from a resilient stance, presumably).

The semiERE approach, or what I'm discussing here, is one where FI/RE is less critical, less central, less emphasized, as a means by which resilient freedom is attained. Other means/tools increase in importance in the semiERE strategy mindset, or toolkit.

loutfard
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by loutfard »

Some random remarks in the hopes of inspiring further thought:

- A minimalist aesthetic might shave off some of the sharp edges of ERE. That can be useful, but will only get a potential convert so far.

- I see genuine individuals eager to build community as ERE's unique selling points. As an ERE minded individual, I kill waste of money and time to actually do something I care about. At least part of that means more and more genuine contact with potentially likeminded individuals, and less shopping or couch potato surfing or television watching.

- It's difficult not to see parallels and analogies:
- no TV parents in the '80s. I was in school mostly with children from very privileged backgrounds. Some of my classmates consciously did not have television sets at home.
- the free and open source community
- Mennonite or Amish communities
- the 1968 Prague spring's socialism with a human face. ERE is probably as close as it gets to capitalism with a human face.

- Thank you for introducing me to the concept of "positional goods". The ultimate positional good might be a number on a bank statement. I wonder if actually publishing one's net worth could lure some people towards ERE.

avalok
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by avalok »

zbigi wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 11:06 am
The problem with ERE here is that there will likely not be a trip to Morocco at all, because it's too expensive to do on an ERE budget
That trip to Morocco may occur on an ERE budget, but it'd more likely arise from the greater optionality FI grants (e.g. a project comes up, relocation option), rather than booked though a travel agent. The normal approach is to opt for the certainty that money provides (as in, I can tell you how much it takes to get to Morocco and therefore how long to work, that's all there is to it) instead of the serendipity (and therefore uncertainty) of ERE. With ERE, maybe Morocco would happen, maybe it wouldn't, but a great many other things will happen that could not have if heavily coupled to a job. I guess it is accepting some downside for much greater upside potential.

EDIT: forgot to throw in that this thread is fantastic, some great ideas and thoughts here; struggled to get to sleep last night.

Jin+Guice
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by Jin+Guice »

Interesting.

What ERE did for me is square the circle of "kid who really liked Rage Against The Machine" "young adult who realized that nice things are actually sometimes nice" and "person concerned about the on-going slavery/ environmental slaughter system we are all born into."

Personally I've never felt more like I'm raging against the machine than I do right now. The machine is very tactile and not well defined though, as any construct of your own imagination is destined to be. Still, I think one of its main characteristics is how insidiously it reacts to attempts to rage against it and how well it envelops everyone around you.

Imagine being in the matrix but having to keep relocating the escape pill as everyone and everything around you is constantly re-consumed.



Less abstractly, humans value aesthetics. Ignoring aesthetics in a lifestyle design is like ignoring taste in food, imo.

However the industrial/ consumer machine has infected aesthetics on various levels. The suit thread is mine and consumers consume suits with the same skill as furniture. They mostly buy Ikea level trash. For all of our societies religious fervor for consumerism, we fail to do it well. Consumers also lack style.

But if you are born into Plato's cave of industrialized consumerism, you will also lack style, and what little you know how to achieve will be bought.

Visual aesthetics are a skill like anything else. And like many other things, it's nice to take the minimalist approach and disregard them, until that isn't working out for you anymore. It's then possible to integrate them into a WoG, but if they have been ignored all together, it's important to realize you may be at the "which end of the screwdriver do I use?" level.


I disagree that WL6+ is unappealing bc of aesthetics actually. I think the aesthetic appeal is great bc of creating an individualized lifestyle and way of doing and consuming things. That is HIGHLY appealing. People don't necessarily want to build their own furniture bc of comparative advantage, but they still respect those who do to a very high degree. And this can be applied to consuming furniture as well, where furniture that is well built and maintained is more appealing than that which is not. Knowing about why it is better is still considered valuable and appealing.

I think the aesthetic problem may come in bc at the point where money is optimized, getting to the next level would be viewed as giving up more. But at the point of optimization, you've already given everything up. You are, in fact, at the lowest point of aesthetic appeal and the perception is that aesthetics will be further decreased, when in fact they will likely remain steady or be increased.

To give an example and sort of turn this on its head... artists almost always live some sort of ERE life at the beginning of their career, yet are highly atuned to aesthetics. Unless they become wildly successful, they often live an ERE life for their entire lives.

I feel sort of bad for the single tech-bros who discover FIRE and get trapped at WL5. WL5 is the least sexually appealing WL. WL6 is much sexier, largely bc you begin to start designing your own aesthetic, you finally discover strawberry when everyone else only has 40 flavors of vanilla. At first they get confused bc vanilla is ofc the only flavor, everyone knows this, duh, why are so weird? But eventually they get curious and want a taste.

So while aesthetics is very important towards convincing people, imo, it is not a weakness of >WL5, it is a strength. I still think the difficulty is in convincing people not to use money as the main vector they think, act, socialize and emote in. I think that is what @AH was getting at when saying the FI carrot can be dangerous. It makes sense why you build a path out using first what you know. It makes sense that in convincing others to follow that path, you would also use what they know. But the danger is that you are asking people to go further down a path of using what they know (money) and then pivot away from that path to turn towards the unknown. IMO, that is the hard part. That's what was hard for me and that's where I see others get stuck at least. It's also why it is hard for me to explain ERE to almost anyone I know, where as FIRE is relatively easy to explain.

IlliniDave
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by IlliniDave »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:11 pm
Yes, absolutely, and I don't mean to strawman FI-centricity. What I mean by FI-centricity is, for some people, FI/RE is seen as a central means (aka tool) to whatever end it is they want (freedom to do meaningful activity from a resilient stance, presumably).

The semiERE approach, or what I'm discussing here, is one where FI/RE is less critical, less central, less emphasized, as a means by which resilient freedom is attained. Other means/tools increase in importance in the semiERE strategy mindset, or toolkit.
Okay, sorry about the derail then. Sure, there's a continuum between extreme fatFIRE and near cashless pioneer-style homesteading. I suppose it comes down to how individuals define things like freedom and meaningful where in the continuum they might fall. For me freedom from trading life energy for money was a significant secondary desire. Was thinking about an observation I had regarding the Fiction MMG where there seems to be some emphasis on turning fiction into money, versus me just writing because I enjoy it for it's own sake. If I had to invest effort and energy into profiting from it, I would almost certainly enjoy it less, maybe not at all. Same for most of my leisure pursuits that could theoretically be monetized. But I'm an odd duck.

Still, pretty much a matching of methods with who/what/how one wants to be in the future is what I see it boiling down too. Your semi-ere certainly seems like a valid way for some folks to get to some places.

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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by theanimal »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 1:06 pm
I think the aesthetic problem may come in bc at the point where money is optimized, getting to the next level would be viewed as giving up more. But at the point of optimization, you've already given everything up. You are, in fact, at the lowest point of aesthetic appeal and the perception is that aesthetics will be further decreased, when in fact they will likely remain steady or be increased.
Exactly this. It is perceived as a sacrifice because the financial hammer is still the only hammer so one can only obtain aesthetic things by buying them and are not going to do that because it goes against the optimization mindset. Perceived sacrifice ensues. It'll be extremely difficult to comprehend if someone can't conceptualize that there are more areas than financial from which to draw capital. And even if you explain it to them, they'll see it in a financial lens. Whereas, someone who operates outside of that framework develops more skills and has more hammers in which to create that aesthetic. Whether scavenged, from their social circle, restoring a broken piece and so on. One only needs look at houses from people like Dick Proenneke, Dan Price, William Copperwaithe (A Handmade Life) and Rob Greenfield to realize there is plenty of beauty to be enjoyed at very low spending levels.

avalok
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by avalok »

@theanimal @J+G I believe this is the greatest barrier between WL5 and 6. It requires a leap of faith that other capital sources are out there to be drawn upon, but to do so requires letting go somewhat of the (attachment to) financial capital. This loops back into what Ego said about uncertainty and insecurity at the top of the thread. By invoking necessity, mother of invention, perhaps semiERE would do for WLs and modes of thinking what It did for @AH's expenses.

loutfard
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by loutfard »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 1:06 pm
the danger is that you are asking people to go further down a path of using what they know (money) and then pivot away from that path to turn towards the unknown. IMO, that is the hard part. That's what was hard for me and that's where I see others get stuck at least. It's also why it is hard for me to explain ERE to almost anyone I know, where as FIRE is relatively easy to explain.
This. The sharp turn after FIRE is part of the general direction how I understand a successful ERE. Less sharp turns. Less stress. More efficient.

white belt
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by white belt »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 10:38 am
With ERE people have to create their own style whereas consumers just hire out the problem (comparative advantage again) and buy the Target/Ikea-style.

In terms of core-design, I note that ERE1 has no mention of style-capital(*) (and also no spiritual-capital) as I (myself) didn't really need them for ERE1. They are, therefore, rather undeveloped. We have had a bunch of "how to buy a nice suit" discussions on the forum, but I don't recall a single "how to create a nice home" on the forum. Nice in the sense that it appeals to normie-values instead of "eccentric geniuses".
I think the style-capital and spiritual-capital are almost completely unexplored. What if someone wants to pursue an ERE life not because of low-resource or financial impact, but because it allows them to live in accordance with their own aesthetics? What about if they want to pursue an ERE life because they feel it enables them to more closely pursue spiritual enlightenment?

It still seems that the majority of people come to ERE1 from a personal finance perspective, although there are many exceptions (J+G, Ego, 7WB5 just to name a few). As Jacob has pointed out, that's because he primarily marketed ERE with the carrot of freedom provided by financial independence. This appeals most to people who don't like their salaryman jobs, although also carries appeal to others in low-paying fields if they can get through the drab aesthetics of the forums, book, and endless discussions about financial minutiae.*

If Mr. Money Mustache was the one that popularized ERE concepts to the salaryman masses, who is the one that is/will popularize it to those pursing aesthetic or spiritual purposes?

* = Not a knock on any of the great content in these places. I'm just pointing out that these type of things appeals to a certain type of a person, whereas a large coffee table book illustrating ERE concepts or ERE pinterest boards would appeal to a different type of a person.

Frita
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by Frita »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 8:23 am
IOW, in order to people to drop their 150k jobs and amazon delivery service, ERE or its replacement has to present something that LOOKS more appealing to careerists than "consumer success". That's difficult. The un-consumer aesthetics Ego suggested is going to backfire spectacularly. I used to not care what ERE looked like, but I've learned the hard way that "appearing normal to normal" is more effective than appearing "worse than normal to normal". I don't know what "appearing better to normal than normal" looks like. When most of consumer society fantasize about it, they think about more travel and more restaurants, IOW spending their entire life around what they currently consider rewards/recreation.
Fair disclosure, I showed up to ERE already FI and doing my own thing. Many of my ways are copied from my turn-of-the-century grandparents, observing and questioning observed behaviors in others, and valuing not being owned or controlled.

Regarding the “better than normal” question in our neck of the woods; it is being well-educated, super fit, being outdoorsy and environmentally
conscious, looking younger, and not giving a damn. In reply to people’s “What do you do?,” my spouse replying “retired” REALLY chaps people. (I just like to be evasive as anything else activates my sense of vainglorious guilt.) Not that most folk want to do anything more than be jealous…not my people and I am certainly lonely at times here.

Versus FI/RE, is ERE actually recruitable? It seems like an attraction versus promotion thing regardless of the WL.

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Ego
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by Ego »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 1:06 pm
Personally I've never felt more like I'm raging against the machine than I do right now. The machine is very tactile and not well defined though, as any construct of your own imagination is destined to be. Still, I think one of its main characteristics is how insidiously it reacts to attempts to rage against it and how well it envelops everyone around you.
The machine's capacity to subsume its critics is insatiable. Woodstock (the movie) made millions. It changed the culture so that the freaks who were once monkeywrenching the machine suddenly morphed into the machine. Since the pandemonium the public positions of Rage (the band) have been nearly indistinguishable from those of MSNBC. Fuck you, do what they tell you!

Aesthetics have shifted from appearance (Boomers) to reality (Xers) to feelings (Zs). Those with minds that are still capable of change are not as interested in how it makes them look or even how well they actually are. They are interested in how it makes them feel.

Those with more sensitive dispositions can often feel something is wrong long before they know it or understand it. Is it possible that those who believe themselves to be at about WL5 or 6 are beginning to feel like they have gone from being a part of a machine to actually being an optimized machine?

Does the psychological process of climbing the hierarchy subsume the art from living, leaving only more complex levels with the ultimate goal, an amorphous, ecopsychological nirvana where the blissful inhabitants chop wood and carry water?

ertyu
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by ertyu »

about WL6 and aesthetics: we only need to observe how much of human craft is designed to make our environment not just serviceable but pleasing to us. This is true both for traditionally "female" fiber craft, which has evolved to great sophistication -- embroidering both of clothes and various household items, colorful knitting -- im thinking of these cushions my gandmother crocheted for the chairs, for instance -- and for traditionally "male" craft: see metalworking, wood carvings, etcetera. Humans have a need to not just make a table but make a beautiful table and will put in the additional work needed to eg. carve the legs into shapes if they have the skill. Or, not just spend an hour making a pillow case, but 5 more hours embroidering flowers on it.

xmj
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by xmj »

Frita wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 7:56 pm
Regarding the “better than normal” question in our neck of the woods; it is being well-educated, super fit, being outdoorsy and environmentally conscious, looking younger, and not giving a damn. In reply to people’s “What do you do?,” my spouse replying “retired” REALLY chaps people.
That's a pretty damn good sales pitch for early retirement.
Frita wrote:
Sun Jan 22, 2023 7:56 pm
Versus FI/RE, is ERE actually recruitable? It seems like an attraction versus promotion thing regardless of the WL.
Maybe the case to be made is for levelling up much like in the OP; I know a few biographies to which this seems to apply.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

There's always a way to confound what passes for style or status in a given setting. For instance, instead of attempting to blend in or compete with typical upper-middle-class-educated-suburban values, be the one who brings 6'5" guy who used to play bass with Parliament as your date to the party :lol:

OTOH, it is important to consider the full range of preferred aesthetics, spirituality and similar when "marketing" a general lifestyle design tool-box. For instance, I recently attended a social gathering which involved holding hands in a circle and singing. It's not that this is better or worse than what I might imagine possibly going on at any random ERE forum gathering, it's just that it's so different, so much towards fulfilling different wants or needs.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by classical_Liberal »

General thoughts on this discussion:

Point: Requiring some form of capital acquisition via job (or whatever) generates a form of hormesis that benefits an individual. ie more robust human means more robust situation for WOG development, stay warm.

Counter Point: This same requirement provides a life energy drain (even if activity is fully developed for personal enjoyment in WOG) which actually closes doors that would otherwise be open, and may be limited in scope due to human entropy over time. ie less chance for moonshoot because WOG requires this component

Integration: Form of capital acquisition becomes an integral node in moonshoot. ie practical knowledge/skill acquisition, networking, which are needed for a moonshot are gained most effectively by participating in this activity.
__________

Point: There seems to be a social phenomenon in which an individuals (skills, ideas, labor, knowledge, etc) is valued more when it is not given totally freely. Some form of pareto-like distribution of efficiency that is lost. Active participation in organizations or multi-human activities, in which the humans are forced to sacrifice for someone else participation (like pay $$), significantly improves the effectiveness of the multi-human system in play, and all the individual actors. Maybe a form of group Hormesis?

Counterpoint: A self motivated individual does not require outside capital requirement motivation. They understand this phenomenon and require compensation when working within these multi-human entities simply for the benefit.

Integration: Know thyself, but also know human nature and do not view oneself outside of it. If capital acquisition has no meaning, other motivators are a prerequisite. Don't assume they will serendipitously appear. IOW, often times it's best to use our most basic denominators as a motivating factors instead of trying to rewrite evolutionary biology and sociology.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Decentralizing FI for strategic reasons?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

“classical_Liberal” wrote: There seems to be a social phenomenon in which an individuals (skills, ideas, labor, knowledge, etc) is valued more when it is not given totally freely
Great point. However, I would note that somebody seen as willing to show up for low pay may be less respected than a volunteer in some situations. Also, there is a tendency to be suspicious that “free” really means “some cost not made clear.”

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