5 ms·

It sounds like a problem with a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus for their entire lives

CydeWeys 6mo ago
Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway. Back when people were hunter/gatherers or subsistence farmers, you didn't have the option of retiring. You either kept working or you starved, perished from the elements, etc.
- tensor 6mo ago
  That's not true. There were always different roles for older people. They didn't just keep doing the same job their whole lives.
  - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
    And people who were injured to the point where they couldn't "work" anymore were still cared for by their community.
    - weirdmantis69 6mo ago
      I mean, that just isn't true. There are amazon tribes today where they just send them down the river to die... your ideas are a disney-fied version of a false past that never existed.
      - DangitBobby 6mo ago
        Unspecified Amazon tribes don't represent the lion's share of historical treatment of aging populations. One negative example doesn't undermine the point.
      - ryoshoe 6mo ago
        They're right. We've found remains that show how thousands of years ago people took care of people that would have died without external assistance. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disabled.html https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disa...
      - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
        Yes, humanity is full of various societies that do things differently. These ideas aren't disney-fied - they're just accurate representations of the fact that people care for each other, most of the time. I appreciate your anecdote, but here's a few counter-examples: - Neanderthals took care of their elderly: https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-other-and-survived-into-old-age-new-research-93110 https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-othe... - Neanderthals took care of a child that likely had a developmental condition: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 - other Hominids also did this at some point in the last few million years: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-skull-of-prehistoric-child-suggests-that-early-humans-cared-for-disabled-children https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-... - 2500 year old woman had a jaw prosthetic made: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron-age-woman-survived-brutal-jaw-surgery/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron... - 15k years ago, someone with a broken femur was cared for well enough to heal: https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-human-bone-could-help-you-through-the--coronavirus/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a... - Neanderthals pre-chewed food or provided soft foods for someone who lost their teeth: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils - 4000 years ago, a man who was almost certainly a quadraplegic was still being cared for: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/878896381/ancient-bones-offer-clues-to-how-long-ago-humans-cared-for-the-vulnerable https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/8788963...
      - brokenmachine 6mo ago
        I thought that a major reason humans were so successful is because the older members of the tribe could protect the children while the others hunted.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  > Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway So are computers but we accept that they are a core part of our reality now. I'm not interested in "back in the day" arguments. We should always be striving to do better than "back in the day"
JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
    The US has one of the highest median incomes adjusted for cost of living in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income (You're welcome to complain. I'm just clarifying that insofar as this is a problem, it is very much not exclusive to the United States.)
    - rsynnott 6mo ago
      One caution there; if you read the small print, they're using PPP figures. Which is definitely better than using nominal figures, but doesn't account for anything. In particular, it doesn't account for transfers, either direct (social welfare payments) or indirect (subsidised healthcare, housing, childcare etc etc). Not to say it's a useless figure, but it can mislead (especially for lower income people, where healthcare costs and childcare costs, say, might be literally 0 in some countries, and a huge part of their income in others). And obviously for people trying to do the FIRE thing in particular, healthcare costs are likely to be a very big deal; for those in countries like the US where most people get healthcare through their job, that's an additional consideration that people in countries where it's done by income-based subsidised insurance, or free-at-point-of-use systems, don't have.
breezybottom 6mo ago
That's literally every society

CydeWeys 6mo ago

Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway. Back when people were hunter/gatherers or subsistence farmers, you didn't have the option of retiring. You either kept working or you starved, perished from the elements, etc.

tensor 6mo ago
That's not true. There were always different roles for older people. They didn't just keep doing the same job their whole lives.
- pavel_lishin 6mo ago
  And people who were injured to the point where they couldn't "work" anymore were still cared for by their community.
  - weirdmantis69 6mo ago
    I mean, that just isn't true. There are amazon tribes today where they just send them down the river to die... your ideas are a disney-fied version of a false past that never existed.
    - DangitBobby 6mo ago
      Unspecified Amazon tribes don't represent the lion's share of historical treatment of aging populations. One negative example doesn't undermine the point.
    - ryoshoe 6mo ago
      They're right. We've found remains that show how thousands of years ago people took care of people that would have died without external assistance. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disabled.html https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ancient-patagonian-hunter-disa...
    - pavel_lishin 6mo ago
      Yes, humanity is full of various societies that do things differently. These ideas aren't disney-fied - they're just accurate representations of the fact that people care for each other, most of the time. I appreciate your anecdote, but here's a few counter-examples: - Neanderthals took care of their elderly: https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-other-and-survived-into-old-age-new-research-93110 https://theconversation.com/neanderthals-cared-for-each-othe... - Neanderthals took care of a child that likely had a developmental condition: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn9310 - other Hominids also did this at some point in the last few million years: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-skull-of-prehistoric-child-suggests-that-early-humans-cared-for-disabled-children https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/deformed-... - 2500 year old woman had a jaw prosthetic made: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron-age-woman-survived-brutal-jaw-surgery/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/mummified-skull-reveals-iron... - 15k years ago, someone with a broken femur was cared for well enough to heal: https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-human-bone-could-help-you-through-the--coronavirus/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a... - Neanderthals pre-chewed food or provided soft foods for someone who lost their teeth: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils https://www.sciencenews.org/article/care-worn-fossils - 4000 years ago, a man who was almost certainly a quadraplegic was still being cared for: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/878896381/ancient-bones-offer-clues-to-how-long-ago-humans-cared-for-the-vulnerable https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/8788963...
    - brokenmachine 6mo ago
      I thought that a major reason humans were so successful is because the older members of the tribe could protect the children while the others hunted.
bluefirebrand 6mo ago
> Or maybe that's just the human condition? Retirement is a pretty recent concept anyway So are computers but we accept that they are a core part of our reality now. I'm not interested in "back in the day" arguments. We should always be striving to do better than "back in the day"

JumpCrisscross 6mo ago

> a society that more or less forces people to make work their only focus Modern American society really doesn't force anyone to do this. Targeting work-life balance requires making trade-offs. But in a country where the median wage is around $45k, some significant fraction of half of Americans can dial down their work if they reduce lifestyle and consumption.

bluefirebrand 6mo ago
Not when basics like rent, food, and healthcare eat up the majority of that 45k There's only so much you can reduce your lifestyle before you're literally just living to work anyways
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- 0xDEAFBEAD 6mo ago
  The US has one of the highest median incomes adjusted for cost of living in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income (You're welcome to complain. I'm just clarifying that insofar as this is a problem, it is very much not exclusive to the United States.)
  - rsynnott 6mo ago
    One caution there; if you read the small print, they're using PPP figures. Which is definitely better than using nominal figures, but doesn't account for anything. In particular, it doesn't account for transfers, either direct (social welfare payments) or indirect (subsidised healthcare, housing, childcare etc etc). Not to say it's a useless figure, but it can mislead (especially for lower income people, where healthcare costs and childcare costs, say, might be literally 0 in some countries, and a huge part of their income in others). And obviously for people trying to do the FIRE thing in particular, healthcare costs are likely to be a very big deal; for those in countries like the US where most people get healthcare through their job, that's an additional consideration that people in countries where it's done by income-based subsidised insurance, or free-at-point-of-use systems, don't have.

breezybottom 6mo ago

That's literally every society