18 ms·

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)

350 points by tacon 5y ago

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I've noticed an interesting congruity - people in the FIRE community tend to target saving two-thirds of a modern western income, with most finding that living on less than one-third begins to have serious impacts on quality of life. From some studies I came across while studying sustainable energy it also seems as though a well-designed community in which residents make certain lifestyle choices can reduce resource requirements by around two-thirds. Most people in the FIRE community of course work more than the minimum long enough to save money and then join the investor class, without doing paid work at all from that point - but it's fascinating to think that we could all reduce work and lifestyles by two-thirds in a sustainable, ongoing way.
- martincmartin 5y ago
  FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early for those who don't know.
  - pipthepixie 5y ago
    I like the concept. There are even young people experimenting with retirement but for typically one year, also known as a 'gap year' where they don't work/study - they just explore.
    - aiisjustanif 5y ago
      In Europe, a gap year has been a thing for couple decades now, if not more.
      - namdnay 5y ago
        Depends where in Europe. Definitely not common in France. I know it’s common in the UK, not sure about other countries
      - namarie 5y ago
        It's been a thing since at least the 1660s, when people called it a "Grand Tour".
    - mateo- 5y ago
      Can confirm. Am young person considering this. Though I'll be taking it to study, mostly :)
    - 41209 5y ago
      Before Covid made it impossible, I wanted to do this for at least 6 months. I still hope I get the chance to travel for an extended period of time .
    - loftyal 5y ago
      This gap year has been pretty common in Europe/Aus/NZ for a while. Lots of young people do it. We even have visas for it called "working holidays" so they can work a part-time bar job etc, so you dont need to save up much to do it.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      I missed my chance on this. I hope I'll get another after my kids grow up a bit. I believe this is called "sabbatical" (except in this case it'll be self-funded).
- sokoloff 5y ago
  If “we could all” is constrained to households earning 6-figures, I tend to agree. I doubt a household making $30K/yr could realistically live on $10K/yr. (Further, if everyone FIRE’d, growth would slow to the point where you’d need to save more to generate the same income from investments. We’re so far from that being any kind of practical worry, that it can be safely ignored I think, but would be a concern if it became more than vanishingly uncommon almost-fringe behavior.)
  - cntrl 5y ago
    Isn't the FIRE person just delaying it's consumption? At some point the saved up money will be spent, therefore I wouldn't expect it to have a huge negative impact on economic growth
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I think generally no: FIRE adherents are planning to retire early (the “RE” in FIRE) and expect to spend less over their lifetime than a standard American working that same level of job/income for 40 years instead of 10 or 15. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      It's not delaying but also reducing it significantly - the FIRE person lives on 1/3 a typical income and saves the other two over the course of a compressed career. Typically they retire once they've saved 25X their yearly expenses and then draw down at a rate of 4% a year, putting any excess capital gains towards their portfolios to offset inflation. So consumption is reduced by 60% over the course of a lifetime, which by most metrics would shrink the economy by a similar amount - of course, most FIRE people also keep being productive after retiring, so it's probably not so straightforward to account for everything.
    - outworlder 5y ago
      Depends if it's "lean" or "fat" FIRE.
- WhompingWindows 5y ago
  Objectively, a lot of the consumption of modern Western life is unnecessary. We don't have to drive out to dinner, there's edible food at home. We could skip those bucket-list vacation trips, purchasing new items instead of making-do with old, we could live in more modest housing for our income levels. It's kind of trippy to imagine what the large-scale effects would be. If everyone cut their consumption by 1/3, our economy would contract a lot, but long-term it'd be healthier, right? Less waste, more efficiency, less environmental degradation overall, though I'll admit we need new technology to replace old dirty technology in energy. Overall, it's a very interesting subset of Westerners, the FIRE group.
  - notfromhere 5y ago
    Probably an argument that a forty hour workweek makes that kind of unnecessary consumption possible. People with time and groceries would probably make dinner rather than go out
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      I'm not sure about that, even when my wife and I were both working full time we still cooked all our own meals. It's not that much of a burden.
      - sneak 5y ago
        In-person shopping for food (including travel to/from the place of purchase), food prep, cooking, and the associated cleanup is an enormous time sink. Perhaps you have free time or are already used to spending a lot of it on these tasks, but let's not pretend that it's "not that much". It's huge.
        kwhitefoot 5y ago
        Shopping for the four of us in this house takes about three man hours a week. Cooking about 15. That is much less than an hour a day per person. If we felt like it we could optimise the shopping even further by only shopping when we were already passing the supermarket on the way to or from work. If we felt like it we could do the shopping online and cut it down to a few minutes a week. Cooking Sunday dinner for four today took me less than two hours. Would have been faster if I had not prepared everything from scratch.
- throwthere 5y ago
  It’s kind of an interesting thought experiment. Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue. Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same pay. And so on across all jobs producing discretionary goods and services.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    >Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue. I don't think advertising makes that much difference. Most people spend all their earnings. The only thing advertising does is direct where it is spent. >Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same pay. If we all did it then we wouldn't be working longer and harder for the same pay.
    - throwthere 5y ago
      > I don't think advertising makes that much difference. Most people spend all their earnings. The only thing advertising does is direct where it is spent. Even if it were true that advertising only directed where money was spent, there'd still be 2/3 less money to go to advertising or anything else if everyone was making 1/3 pay. > If we all did it then we wouldn't be working longer and harder for the same pay. I don't understand what you're trying to say. Economies of scale mean that you're more productive with more consumption. IE) If you write code for a living, you're generating more value the more people who use it. If less people use it, you have to work harder to get the same level of value and the same pay.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Most people in the FIRE community are still under 50. I'm watching to see how this plays out.
- clydethefrog 5y ago
  A big part of FIRE is putting your income i to index funds that get profit from mindless consumption, unlimited growth and capital extraction. I think if everyone would do that there wouldn't be any return on the investments.
sdumi 5y ago
I liked the post and I'm afraid that the author is right on so many points. Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal development", is this by some design or just natural evolution of modern society? I guess it was always like this, but I can also imagine that there are entities (ie, companies, governments, people) that are doing some thing or the other trying to keep the status quo: keep the people in the right state to consume as much as possible...
- ImaCake 5y ago
  >Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal development" I don't think being uninterested in disengaging from consumer capitalism is akin to being uninterested in personal development. Being pro-mindfullness and anti-consumer is valid, but so is being pro-consumer and uninterested in mindfullness (because they are chasing other goals, which could be considered part of personal development). The mistake the author makes is assuming their goals are the best way to go, and then prescribing solutions for that. The author's point of view is actually just fairly narrow. There is nothing wrong with their view, or the ideas they suggest for improving one's life if you share his perspective. But a lot of people simply don't share that view. As a counterpoint, some people (not mine) think the highest goal in life is to work as much as possible. They will do so, and probably consume a lot in order to maximise their time working. That goal and lifestyle might seem unsavoury to me or you, but it is another way to personal development: that you can, personally, be a really good worker.
- closeparen 5y ago
  It's a consequence of our unprecedented prosperity that we can fret about such things as "personal development." See how much you worry about personal development when you're trying to bring in enough of a harvest to meet your caloric needs.
ilamont 5y ago
Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of such pleasures have proved to be remarkably adept at creating & providing these opportunities.
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  It's just a planned economy not by government men but by mega corporations. Then they put up some facade to pretend that you have the freedom of choice.
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    It's more akin to evolution operating on culture rather than genes. Corporations are trying various things to differentiate themselves and be profitable. The ones that consumers like either due to real interest or due to marketing keep getting made/refined, the rest die off. And the process repeats from there.
    - bordercases 5y ago
      Markets are distorted by subsidies, lobbying, credit lines and old-boy networks to (a) remain solvent beyond their actual consumer revenue, and (b) act on information or distort the flow of information in a way that's independent from consumer choice, and in fact frames consumer choices. Large corporations also act anti-competitively through acquisitions without market development, which in the evolutionary metaphor is like an invasive species suffocating the diversity of ecosystem by digesting other species only for what they need and excreting nothing valuable back into the whole. So you're articulating an idealization that's only true in free markets, and we are not, and almost never, in a free market.
    - ruined 5y ago
      That's the ideal conception of it, but practically, power also plays a very large role. Firms don't get to "try things" without lots of resources already, any novel startups may simply be acquired and assimilated or even shut down, large existing organizations are capable of sustaining failures despite market conditions, extra-market rules may be implemented by firms with political access, and if enough of the supply enforces a choice, consumer interest doesn't matter and may even adapt to what is available.
scaleng 5y ago
I disagree that the authors return to wastefulness/consumption is a result of systemic forces. I think it’s more likely the case that when you have a higher rate of income you spend money to convenience yourself and save time/energy because you value your time/energy at that higher rate of income.
- Mandelmus 5y ago
  > you spend money to convenience yourself and save time/energy because you value your time/energy at that higher rate of income. Agreed, but the way I put it is that the higher consumption is done to compensate for the stresses that come with the work life(style). I have a lot less patience and mental energy to do impulse control or to judiciously weigh the pros and cons of this versus that purchase when in a stressful work environment compared to when I'm not. I'd say that counts as "a result of systemic forces".
Sebb767 5y ago
> The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. I slightly disagree with this point. The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day of. The trend actually goes in the direction of reducing it further (at least here in Germany), where 35 or 32 hour weeks are getting more common (depending on the job, of course). Plus, there are alternative models, such as 4x 10h days + 3 days off. Sure, the current model serves corporations, but it is by no means their invention. And while they are a big part of why it still is so large, the reason is most likely that they need the labor hours, not the specific consumption behavior.
- tresil 5y ago
  Agreed. There’s quite a bit of evidence that the 40hr work week has a lot to do with our human tendency to compete. Here’s a relevant 3min podcast on the topic (also transcribed). https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be-working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we...
- noir_lord 5y ago
  > The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day of. At a point in time, hours worked where often lower in pre-industrial times. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...
- slv77 5y ago
  Longer work weeks we’re mostly confined to Industrial Age city populations that didn’t have access to land to farm. Few laborers working in early industrial mills was doing so because it was easier then farming. Agfa, Foraging and hunter-gatherer populations, work about 20 hours per week and transitioning to farming increased working hours. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.h... !Kung spend 40 to 45 hours on food gathering and prep between women and men. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fistfulofscience.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/the-affluence-of-the-kung-san-has-been-greatly-exaggerated/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/fistfulofscience.wordpress.com/...
cushychicken 5y ago
As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife and I have a dog. This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in a phase of my life where the shortage is very apparent. And it's hard for me to deal with. I feel a bit like I've been robbed of the space to have meaningful personal experiences outside of the corporate space or my immediate famy.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago
  Just wait till you have kids. You'll look back on this time as a paradise of freedom.
  - postoak 5y ago
    Or don't have them =)
    - nautilius 5y ago
      Comments like this always remind me of the interview with some kids dumpster diving behind some grocery store that I read many years ago: “Look at all those suckers going into the store to buy stuff with money, when you can just pick it up for free behind the store. Idiots!”
      - postoak 5y ago
        That is a funny quote, but I don't think it's the same as questioning the idea that everyone needs to have kids. Going to the dumpster is a bad idea if you value your health for everyone, but not having kids isn't clearly bad unless you only think of having kids in economic/religious terms (need to produce more workers/believers, or having support in old age).
        5y ago
Invictus0 5y ago
I am a man and I own 13 pairs of shoes. They're mostly specialized--water shoes, snow boots, steel toe, fancy shoes, flip flops, running shoes, and several pairs of dress shoes. But when I was backpacking in Europe, I only carried one pair of black Timberland boots with me, which took me from the nightclub to the top of the Tatras to the catacombs of Paris. It's amazing how effortlessly I accumulate junk and how every item seems so important and necessary, until I go traveling with only a 30L backpack and I seem to have everything I need. I have 1 dresser. In my mind, 1 is a nice small number of dressers to have. But in physical spacetime, one dresser takes up a hell of a lot of volume. I wonder if many of our possessions are like this: they occupy little space in our mind, even as they occupy evermore physical volume in our homes.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  The trend towards larger homes and storage probably contributes to accumulation. I’m in a ~450 sq ft studio and having to consciously think about where a new purchase will go cuts down on buying “junk” and makes me a lot quicker to sell or dispose of things that are just taking up space. Similarly, when I moved to a city with hideously expensive parking, I sold my car when I wasn’t using it enough to justify the expense.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  I've found that moving house can really make you take an extra look at all the stuff you have, and is a great opportunity to get rid of some of the accumulated junk. I've been living in this apartment for 13 years now, so I feel it's about time :-) One thing that I think everyone should do once a year is take out all of their clothes, sort it into types and then go through it piece by piece. Identify everything that doesn't fit anymore, anything you haven't worn in a long time or maybe ever, anything you just don't like/love. Give it away to charity, or if it's something really nice, put it up for sale. Clothes you never wear are of absolutely no use.
  - IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    Sounds super simple but I've literally never done this in 30 years. Will be moving homes in a month (if all goes to plan), and I'll certainly do this before I move!
ergest 5y ago
I agree that the 40h workweek is not technically “designed” per se but rather it’s the best confluence of factors such as keeping competition at bay, keeping society productive, making people feel useful, making life purposeful for many, etc. It’s the current local minima. If we could work 60 or 80 hours and still get the same benefits, we’d do so. However, nobody has experimented with working less while others work more because competition will eat you up.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
RandomLensman 5y ago
"Unnecessary" is such an odd category: humans could live in caves, for example. Who determines what is necessary? Is art necessary? Music? Nice food? This seems often tangled in some odd moral/theological origin, i.e. possessions are frowned upon. I like to be shown new things to try, for example. So some advertising I actually like. Is my life planned by large corporations? From my work there I would say not, as most campaigns tend to fail even in the short term.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  The author seems to indicate that what makes something "unnecessary" in this context is when it very temporarily scratches an itch but does nothing to meaningfully improve your quality of life in the longterm. What would really improve your life is less money, fewer purchases, and more free time.
  - RandomLensman 5y ago
    Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily.
    - meiraleal 5y ago
      Nobody said it is wrong, but a life optimized for work and short-term pleasures is the lifestyle corporations have carved for you. Many people enjoy it, nothing wrong with that. But for some, it is meaningless.
      - RandomLensman 5y ago
        People have been pleasure seeking long before corporations existed, so I think the causal chains runs the other way: corporations exist because they cater to that. My life does not revolve around work, so that part isn't for me. I'd be happy not to work at all.
    - codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
SavantIdiot 5y ago
The part in the article about finding time to work out hit hard. He's right: there is so little time to work out because it takes 1hr to work out and 1hr to travel/clean up: 2hrs is a big deal when you only have ~4 hours free hours per day to take care of life. That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. You have to exercise a lot to alter your physique, and cramming that into normal life with a 10hr/day job and kids is brutal. What's worse: this is from 2010. Pre-microtransation in video games, pre-dozens of $10 TV channels fighting over a few film copyrights, pre-subscription-razors, subscription juice, subscription groceries, subscription everything... I can't believe people who pay $15/month for one TV channel (Disney+) are shelling out $30 to rent (not own!) the latest blockbuster. Blows my mind. I'm old enough to remember in the 80's when conservatives blamed poor kids for saving up to buy $100 Air Jordans as some kind of societal ill, when in reality it was just the correct operation of the American consumerism. Marketing has really upped its game in 40 years.
- irremediable 5y ago
  > That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. FWIW most weight change is due to diet. If you're overweight, exercise is probably a much lower priority than finding a way to sustainably eat less. I'm not just sounding off here; I lost 20+ kg by tracking what I ate and eating less.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Weight change happens depending on whether calories consumed - calories burned is positive or negative. Diet tends to be more effective for weight loss because it's a lot easier to cut excess empty calories than it is to burn them off with exercise. Jogging a mile might burn 150 calories. Eating a Big Mac adds 600.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Summarized memorably as “you can’t outrun the fork” or “the most effective exercise for weight loss is an early tricep extension at the table”
fierro 5y ago
I understand this perspective, but I take a different view on life. I don't worry about spending money. I have high leverage skills, so I focus on making more money. Life is more enjoyable to me when I can spend without care knowing I'm always increasing my skills, fulfillment, and by consequence earning potential.
- tedjdziuba 5y ago
  > Life is more enjoyable to me when I can spend without care knowing I'm always increasing my skills, fulfillment, and by consequence earning potential. "Believing" is more accurate than "knowing". There is no certainty that your skills today will be profitable in the future.
Animats 5y ago
Weak article. Mostly virtue signaling. Yes, your lifestyle was once "designed". That probably peaked in the late 1950s. See "American Look". [1] That's the high point of industrial design. Also the era of tailfins. That was when the US first had far much manufacturing capacity than it really needed. As for fashion, go watch this clip from The Devil Wears Prada.[2] All this used to be coordinated from New York, when Madison Avenue and the Manhattan garment district had real power. Now it's much more random, with manufacturers struggling to keep up with trends, rather than dictating them. [1] https://archive.org/details/american_look https://archive.org/details/american_look [2] https://youtu.be/KqaOY6al-ZQ https://youtu.be/KqaOY6al-ZQ
- ImaCake 5y ago
  I think the article has worth if you are unfamiliar with these ideas. You don't think to question your fasion until someone exposes you to the right concepts. For someone who is interested in anti-consumer mindfullness then this article is probably really good. But if you are not that kind of person it is indeed a weak article.
sharadov 5y ago
The author exactly captured my experience - when I moved from an in person job to a remote job 4 years back I realized that I had more time to indulge in hobbies that I enjoyed in the past - reading, working out, cooking. I gradually lost interest in eating out as much, drinking at bars. During Covid, it accelerated more as the one indulgence I had of eating out once a week, also disappeared. I rather get fresh ingredients, make a nice meal, fix a nice cocktail or open a nice bottle of wine for me and the wife.
JamesAdir 5y ago
The "travel mentality" that has been circulating in the last ten years portraits travel as the ultimate goal for many tech workers. It sells the ultimate concept of freedom and zero responsibility. Social media extended this with the van life blogs, pictures and clips. This of course a big fallacy. When you're traveling you have zero planning ahead. You don't need to think about major decisions in your life, you usually don't invest in hobbies (how could you go to your gym if you're not in the same place every month) and of course it usually correlates with no spouse or kids, that require major decisions of their own. When you live on your backpack you avoid many major decisions and that's ok. but you can't compare the two situations.
- ausbah 5y ago
  I don't think that's a fair portrayal. These people are still planning where to travel, how to maintain their hobbies and fitness, how to maintain a social life, and all the other things people normally do. They're just doing it w a change of scenery every so often in mind. Like you can still workout without a gym.
  - JamesAdir 5y ago
    That's a good point. I think I was aiming at people that dedicate most of the day to travel. If you are working, have social life, got to the gym and just change scenery from time to time (a digital nomad) I would consider you less of a "traveler".
lobocinza 5y ago
Work as a contractor.

350 points by tacon 5y ago

I've noticed an interesting congruity - people in the FIRE community tend to target saving two-thirds of a modern western income, with most finding that living on less than one-third begins to have serious impacts on quality of life. From some studies I came across while studying sustainable energy it also seems as though a well-designed community in which residents make certain lifestyle choices can reduce resource requirements by around two-thirds. Most people in the FIRE community of course work more than the minimum long enough to save money and then join the investor class, without doing paid work at all from that point - but it's fascinating to think that we could all reduce work and lifestyles by two-thirds in a sustainable, ongoing way.

martincmartin 5y ago
FIRE = Financial Independence, Retire Early for those who don't know.
- pipthepixie 5y ago
  I like the concept. There are even young people experimenting with retirement but for typically one year, also known as a 'gap year' where they don't work/study - they just explore.
  - aiisjustanif 5y ago
    In Europe, a gap year has been a thing for couple decades now, if not more.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      Depends where in Europe. Definitely not common in France. I know it’s common in the UK, not sure about other countries
    - namarie 5y ago
      It's been a thing since at least the 1660s, when people called it a "Grand Tour".
  - mateo- 5y ago
    Can confirm. Am young person considering this. Though I'll be taking it to study, mostly :)
  - 41209 5y ago
    Before Covid made it impossible, I wanted to do this for at least 6 months. I still hope I get the chance to travel for an extended period of time .
  - loftyal 5y ago
    This gap year has been pretty common in Europe/Aus/NZ for a while. Lots of young people do it. We even have visas for it called "working holidays" so they can work a part-time bar job etc, so you dont need to save up much to do it.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    I missed my chance on this. I hope I'll get another after my kids grow up a bit. I believe this is called "sabbatical" (except in this case it'll be self-funded).
sokoloff 5y ago
If “we could all” is constrained to households earning 6-figures, I tend to agree. I doubt a household making $30K/yr could realistically live on $10K/yr. (Further, if everyone FIRE’d, growth would slow to the point where you’d need to save more to generate the same income from investments. We’re so far from that being any kind of practical worry, that it can be safely ignored I think, but would be a concern if it became more than vanishingly uncommon almost-fringe behavior.)
- cntrl 5y ago
  Isn't the FIRE person just delaying it's consumption? At some point the saved up money will be spent, therefore I wouldn't expect it to have a huge negative impact on economic growth
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I think generally no: FIRE adherents are planning to retire early (the “RE” in FIRE) and expect to spend less over their lifetime than a standard American working that same level of job/income for 40 years instead of 10 or 15. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    It's not delaying but also reducing it significantly - the FIRE person lives on 1/3 a typical income and saves the other two over the course of a compressed career. Typically they retire once they've saved 25X their yearly expenses and then draw down at a rate of 4% a year, putting any excess capital gains towards their portfolios to offset inflation. So consumption is reduced by 60% over the course of a lifetime, which by most metrics would shrink the economy by a similar amount - of course, most FIRE people also keep being productive after retiring, so it's probably not so straightforward to account for everything.
  - outworlder 5y ago
    Depends if it's "lean" or "fat" FIRE.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
Objectively, a lot of the consumption of modern Western life is unnecessary. We don't have to drive out to dinner, there's edible food at home. We could skip those bucket-list vacation trips, purchasing new items instead of making-do with old, we could live in more modest housing for our income levels. It's kind of trippy to imagine what the large-scale effects would be. If everyone cut their consumption by 1/3, our economy would contract a lot, but long-term it'd be healthier, right? Less waste, more efficiency, less environmental degradation overall, though I'll admit we need new technology to replace old dirty technology in energy. Overall, it's a very interesting subset of Westerners, the FIRE group.
- notfromhere 5y ago
  Probably an argument that a forty hour workweek makes that kind of unnecessary consumption possible. People with time and groceries would probably make dinner rather than go out
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I'm not sure about that, even when my wife and I were both working full time we still cooked all our own meals. It's not that much of a burden.
    - sneak 5y ago
      In-person shopping for food (including travel to/from the place of purchase), food prep, cooking, and the associated cleanup is an enormous time sink. Perhaps you have free time or are already used to spending a lot of it on these tasks, but let's not pretend that it's "not that much". It's huge.
      - kwhitefoot 5y ago
        Shopping for the four of us in this house takes about three man hours a week. Cooking about 15. That is much less than an hour a day per person. If we felt like it we could optimise the shopping even further by only shopping when we were already passing the supermarket on the way to or from work. If we felt like it we could do the shopping online and cut it down to a few minutes a week. Cooking Sunday dinner for four today took me less than two hours. Would have been faster if I had not prepared everything from scratch.
throwthere 5y ago
It’s kind of an interesting thought experiment. Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue. Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same pay. And so on across all jobs producing discretionary goods and services.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >Think for a second how much many of our incomes depend on ad revenue. I don't think advertising makes that much difference. Most people spend all their earnings. The only thing advertising does is direct where it is spent. >Certainly if a large contingent of consumers massively cut their spending we have to work harder and longer for the same pay. If we all did it then we wouldn't be working longer and harder for the same pay.
  - throwthere 5y ago
    > I don't think advertising makes that much difference. Most people spend all their earnings. The only thing advertising does is direct where it is spent. Even if it were true that advertising only directed where money was spent, there'd still be 2/3 less money to go to advertising or anything else if everyone was making 1/3 pay. > If we all did it then we wouldn't be working longer and harder for the same pay. I don't understand what you're trying to say. Economies of scale mean that you're more productive with more consumption. IE) If you write code for a living, you're generating more value the more people who use it. If less people use it, you have to work harder to get the same level of value and the same pay.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Most people in the FIRE community are still under 50. I'm watching to see how this plays out.
clydethefrog 5y ago
A big part of FIRE is putting your income i to index funds that get profit from mindless consumption, unlimited growth and capital extraction. I think if everyone would do that there wouldn't be any return on the investments.

sdumi 5y ago

I liked the post and I'm afraid that the author is right on so many points. Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal development", is this by some design or just natural evolution of modern society? I guess it was always like this, but I can also imagine that there are entities (ie, companies, governments, people) that are doing some thing or the other trying to keep the status quo: keep the people in the right state to consume as much as possible...

ImaCake 5y ago
>Lots of persons seem to be "uninterested in serious personal development" I don't think being uninterested in disengaging from consumer capitalism is akin to being uninterested in personal development. Being pro-mindfullness and anti-consumer is valid, but so is being pro-consumer and uninterested in mindfullness (because they are chasing other goals, which could be considered part of personal development). The mistake the author makes is assuming their goals are the best way to go, and then prescribing solutions for that. The author's point of view is actually just fairly narrow. There is nothing wrong with their view, or the ideas they suggest for improving one's life if you share his perspective. But a lot of people simply don't share that view. As a counterpoint, some people (not mine) think the highest goal in life is to work as much as possible. They will do so, and probably consume a lot in order to maximise their time working. That goal and lifestyle might seem unsavoury to me or you, but it is another way to personal development: that you can, personally, be a really good worker.
closeparen 5y ago
It's a consequence of our unprecedented prosperity that we can fret about such things as "personal development." See how much you worry about personal development when you're trying to bring in enough of a harvest to meet your caloric needs.

ilamont 5y ago

Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. Calculated, like in planned-economy, directive-from-the-top? I disagree. A lot of the "fluff," as the author describes it, is excess capital finding its way to things people find pleasurable, whether it be dope, travel, beauty, or rock and roll. Purveyors of such pleasures have proved to be remarkably adept at creating & providing these opportunities.

markus_zhang 5y ago
It's just a planned economy not by government men but by mega corporations. Then they put up some facade to pretend that you have the freedom of choice.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  It's more akin to evolution operating on culture rather than genes. Corporations are trying various things to differentiate themselves and be profitable. The ones that consumers like either due to real interest or due to marketing keep getting made/refined, the rest die off. And the process repeats from there.
  - bordercases 5y ago
    Markets are distorted by subsidies, lobbying, credit lines and old-boy networks to (a) remain solvent beyond their actual consumer revenue, and (b) act on information or distort the flow of information in a way that's independent from consumer choice, and in fact frames consumer choices. Large corporations also act anti-competitively through acquisitions without market development, which in the evolutionary metaphor is like an invasive species suffocating the diversity of ecosystem by digesting other species only for what they need and excreting nothing valuable back into the whole. So you're articulating an idealization that's only true in free markets, and we are not, and almost never, in a free market.
  - ruined 5y ago
    That's the ideal conception of it, but practically, power also plays a very large role. Firms don't get to "try things" without lots of resources already, any novel startups may simply be acquired and assimilated or even shut down, large existing organizations are capable of sustaining failures despite market conditions, extra-market rules may be implemented by firms with political access, and if enough of the supply enforces a choice, consumer interest doesn't matter and may even adapt to what is available.

scaleng 5y ago

I disagree that the authors return to wastefulness/consumption is a result of systemic forces. I think it’s more likely the case that when you have a higher rate of income you spend money to convenience yourself and save time/energy because you value your time/energy at that higher rate of income.

Mandelmus 5y ago
> you spend money to convenience yourself and save time/energy because you value your time/energy at that higher rate of income. Agreed, but the way I put it is that the higher consumption is done to compensate for the stresses that come with the work life(style). I have a lot less patience and mental energy to do impulse control or to judiciously weigh the pros and cons of this versus that purchase when in a stressful work environment compared to when I'm not. I'd say that counts as "a result of systemic forces".

Sebb767 5y ago

> The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. I slightly disagree with this point. The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day of. The trend actually goes in the direction of reducing it further (at least here in Germany), where 35 or 32 hour weeks are getting more common (depending on the job, of course). Plus, there are alternative models, such as 4x 10h days + 3 days off. Sure, the current model serves corporations, but it is by no means their invention. And while they are a big part of why it still is so large, the reason is most likely that they need the labor hours, not the specific consumption behavior.

tresil 5y ago
Agreed. There’s quite a bit of evidence that the 40hr work week has a lot to do with our human tendency to compete. Here’s a relevant 3min podcast on the topic (also transcribed). https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be-working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we...
noir_lord 5y ago
> The 40 hour work week is a rather recent development; in the past, people had to work a lot longer with no or only one day of. At a point in time, hours worked where often lower in pre-industrial times. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...
slv77 5y ago
Longer work weeks we’re mostly confined to Industrial Age city populations that didn’t have access to land to farm. Few laborers working in early industrial mills was doing so because it was easier then farming. Agfa, Foraging and hunter-gatherer populations, work about 20 hours per week and transitioning to farming increased working hours. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190520115646.h... !Kung spend 40 to 45 hours on food gathering and prep between women and men. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fistfulofscience.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/the-affluence-of-the-kung-san-has-been-greatly-exaggerated/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/fistfulofscience.wordpress.com/...

cushychicken 5y ago

As a 30-something tech worker, time is definitely the scarcest and most valuable thing I possess. Even more so now that my wife and I have a dog. This statement gets orders of magnitude truer once you factor in the scarce overlapping time I have with my friends, all of whom are like me: 30-somethings with tech careers and young families. Whether the shortage of time is by corporate design or no, I'm in a phase of my life where the shortage is very apparent. And it's hard for me to deal with. I feel a bit like I've been robbed of the space to have meaningful personal experiences outside of the corporate space or my immediate famy.

ProjectArcturis 5y ago
Just wait till you have kids. You'll look back on this time as a paradise of freedom.
- postoak 5y ago
  Or don't have them =)
  - nautilius 5y ago
    Comments like this always remind me of the interview with some kids dumpster diving behind some grocery store that I read many years ago: “Look at all those suckers going into the store to buy stuff with money, when you can just pick it up for free behind the store. Idiots!”
    - postoak 5y ago
      That is a funny quote, but I don't think it's the same as questioning the idea that everyone needs to have kids. Going to the dumpster is a bad idea if you value your health for everyone, but not having kids isn't clearly bad unless you only think of having kids in economic/religious terms (need to produce more workers/believers, or having support in old age).
      - 5y ago

Invictus0 5y ago

I am a man and I own 13 pairs of shoes. They're mostly specialized--water shoes, snow boots, steel toe, fancy shoes, flip flops, running shoes, and several pairs of dress shoes. But when I was backpacking in Europe, I only carried one pair of black Timberland boots with me, which took me from the nightclub to the top of the Tatras to the catacombs of Paris. It's amazing how effortlessly I accumulate junk and how every item seems so important and necessary, until I go traveling with only a 30L backpack and I seem to have everything I need. I have 1 dresser. In my mind, 1 is a nice small number of dressers to have. But in physical spacetime, one dresser takes up a hell of a lot of volume. I wonder if many of our possessions are like this: they occupy little space in our mind, even as they occupy evermore physical volume in our homes.

n8cpdx 5y ago
The trend towards larger homes and storage probably contributes to accumulation. I’m in a ~450 sq ft studio and having to consciously think about where a new purchase will go cuts down on buying “junk” and makes me a lot quicker to sell or dispose of things that are just taking up space. Similarly, when I moved to a city with hideously expensive parking, I sold my car when I wasn’t using it enough to justify the expense.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
I've found that moving house can really make you take an extra look at all the stuff you have, and is a great opportunity to get rid of some of the accumulated junk. I've been living in this apartment for 13 years now, so I feel it's about time :-) One thing that I think everyone should do once a year is take out all of their clothes, sort it into types and then go through it piece by piece. Identify everything that doesn't fit anymore, anything you haven't worn in a long time or maybe ever, anything you just don't like/love. Give it away to charity, or if it's something really nice, put it up for sale. Clothes you never wear are of absolutely no use.
- IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  Sounds super simple but I've literally never done this in 30 years. Will be moving homes in a month (if all goes to plan), and I'll certainly do this before I move!

ergest 5y ago

I agree that the 40h workweek is not technically “designed” per se but rather it’s the best confluence of factors such as keeping competition at bay, keeping society productive, making people feel useful, making life purposeful for many, etc. It’s the current local minima. If we could work 60 or 80 hours and still get the same benefits, we’d do so. However, nobody has experimented with working less while others work more because competition will eat you up.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

RandomLensman 5y ago

"Unnecessary" is such an odd category: humans could live in caves, for example. Who determines what is necessary? Is art necessary? Music? Nice food? This seems often tangled in some odd moral/theological origin, i.e. possessions are frowned upon. I like to be shown new things to try, for example. So some advertising I actually like. Is my life planned by large corporations? From my work there I would say not, as most campaigns tend to fail even in the short term.

DangitBobby 5y ago
The author seems to indicate that what makes something "unnecessary" in this context is when it very temporarily scratches an itch but does nothing to meaningfully improve your quality of life in the longterm. What would really improve your life is less money, fewer purchases, and more free time.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  Again, why is short-term pleasure wrong? My life would not be improved by less money, by the way. More free time, yes, fewer purchases, not necessarily.
  - meiraleal 5y ago
    Nobody said it is wrong, but a life optimized for work and short-term pleasures is the lifestyle corporations have carved for you. Many people enjoy it, nothing wrong with that. But for some, it is meaningless.
    - RandomLensman 5y ago
      People have been pleasure seeking long before corporations existed, so I think the causal chains runs the other way: corporations exist because they cater to that. My life does not revolve around work, so that part isn't for me. I'd be happy not to work at all.
  - codemonkey-zeta 5y ago

SavantIdiot 5y ago

The part in the article about finding time to work out hit hard. He's right: there is so little time to work out because it takes 1hr to work out and 1hr to travel/clean up: 2hrs is a big deal when you only have ~4 hours free hours per day to take care of life. That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. You have to exercise a lot to alter your physique, and cramming that into normal life with a 10hr/day job and kids is brutal. What's worse: this is from 2010. Pre-microtransation in video games, pre-dozens of $10 TV channels fighting over a few film copyrights, pre-subscription-razors, subscription juice, subscription groceries, subscription everything... I can't believe people who pay $15/month for one TV channel (Disney+) are shelling out $30 to rent (not own!) the latest blockbuster. Blows my mind. I'm old enough to remember in the 80's when conservatives blamed poor kids for saving up to buy $100 Air Jordans as some kind of societal ill, when in reality it was just the correct operation of the American consumerism. Marketing has really upped its game in 40 years.

irremediable 5y ago
> That made me pretty depressed, not just for me but for every overweight person who is being shamed about not exercising. FWIW most weight change is due to diet. If you're overweight, exercise is probably a much lower priority than finding a way to sustainably eat less. I'm not just sounding off here; I lost 20+ kg by tracking what I ate and eating less.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Weight change happens depending on whether calories consumed - calories burned is positive or negative. Diet tends to be more effective for weight loss because it's a lot easier to cut excess empty calories than it is to burn them off with exercise. Jogging a mile might burn 150 calories. Eating a Big Mac adds 600.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Summarized memorably as “you can’t outrun the fork” or “the most effective exercise for weight loss is an early tricep extension at the table”

fierro 5y ago

I understand this perspective, but I take a different view on life. I don't worry about spending money. I have high leverage skills, so I focus on making more money. Life is more enjoyable to me when I can spend without care knowing I'm always increasing my skills, fulfillment, and by consequence earning potential.

tedjdziuba 5y ago
> Life is more enjoyable to me when I can spend without care knowing I'm always increasing my skills, fulfillment, and by consequence earning potential. "Believing" is more accurate than "knowing". There is no certainty that your skills today will be profitable in the future.

Animats 5y ago

Weak article. Mostly virtue signaling. Yes, your lifestyle was once "designed". That probably peaked in the late 1950s. See "American Look". [1] That's the high point of industrial design. Also the era of tailfins. That was when the US first had far much manufacturing capacity than it really needed. As for fashion, go watch this clip from The Devil Wears Prada.[2] All this used to be coordinated from New York, when Madison Avenue and the Manhattan garment district had real power. Now it's much more random, with manufacturers struggling to keep up with trends, rather than dictating them. [1] https://archive.org/details/american_look https://archive.org/details/american_look [2] https://youtu.be/KqaOY6al-ZQ https://youtu.be/KqaOY6al-ZQ

ImaCake 5y ago
I think the article has worth if you are unfamiliar with these ideas. You don't think to question your fasion until someone exposes you to the right concepts. For someone who is interested in anti-consumer mindfullness then this article is probably really good. But if you are not that kind of person it is indeed a weak article.

sharadov 5y ago

The author exactly captured my experience - when I moved from an in person job to a remote job 4 years back I realized that I had more time to indulge in hobbies that I enjoyed in the past - reading, working out, cooking. I gradually lost interest in eating out as much, drinking at bars. During Covid, it accelerated more as the one indulgence I had of eating out once a week, also disappeared. I rather get fresh ingredients, make a nice meal, fix a nice cocktail or open a nice bottle of wine for me and the wife.

JamesAdir 5y ago

The "travel mentality" that has been circulating in the last ten years portraits travel as the ultimate goal for many tech workers. It sells the ultimate concept of freedom and zero responsibility. Social media extended this with the van life blogs, pictures and clips. This of course a big fallacy. When you're traveling you have zero planning ahead. You don't need to think about major decisions in your life, you usually don't invest in hobbies (how could you go to your gym if you're not in the same place every month) and of course it usually correlates with no spouse or kids, that require major decisions of their own. When you live on your backpack you avoid many major decisions and that's ok. but you can't compare the two situations.

ausbah 5y ago
I don't think that's a fair portrayal. These people are still planning where to travel, how to maintain their hobbies and fitness, how to maintain a social life, and all the other things people normally do. They're just doing it w a change of scenery every so often in mind. Like you can still workout without a gym.
- JamesAdir 5y ago
  That's a good point. I think I was aiming at people that dedicate most of the day to travel. If you are working, have social life, got to the gym and just change scenery from time to time (a digital nomad) I would consider you less of a "traveler".

lobocinza 5y ago

Work as a contractor.