Whoaaa! I came back to this thread and found a handful of new pages w/in hours. I got up to the point of agreeing w/ Purron and realized there were 2 more pages to go. I don't know what stash of uppers the "shut down the thread" police have gotten into.. but ya know, the thread would be SHORTER w/o people repeatedly calling for shutting down the thread or speculating on such, and then (some of 'em) posting anew. [Can't such pleas go to the mods as PMs if really necessary?]
At seven pages (well, maybe only 4-5 minus the shutdown BS and wacky animals) it seems WAY worth pursuing and I'm game (like TickTock -- tho'.. I will be away for a while after today) but I think it's a core ER philosophic issue and worth discussion for those who want to participate, and I'd be interested in seeing where it evolves in a week (or more).
Responding to one of Bongo2's posts:
Spending time on leisure when you are obligated..
Obligated by whom? I'm not being facetious here. Name the entity. If the entity, for you, is anyone but God, I would reserve the right to question that authority. [Don't want to step on God's toes.. but "lilies of the field" and all that.. yeh?] Skipping out on your kid's child support to kick up your feet and buy a plasma TV is not exactly what's promoted on this board. Once you can say to yourself, honestly, that your obligations are fulfilled, then feel free to ER; if you can't say that to yourself, don't ... or contribute in other ways besides punching a clock. If you think obligations to the world at large are lifelong and infinite.. then the corporate workplace is the LAST place you should be, and I would recommend the priesthood. Seriously.
If you are spiritually committed to Service, why choose to Serve Mammon?
I think we can all agree on that, and just haggle about the details.
Let's get into 'em! People who have ER w/in their grasp, like Purron and others, are there solely because of hard work and careful planning. Should hard work and careful planning mean nothing..? Just sign 'em up for the same arbitrary number of years in the yoke as anyone else? Despite whether they have been prudent or profligate?
In this society you are expected to work more or less full time from, say, age 20-60. This is just a convention – so can we reject it if we don’t like it?
Um? YES?
Just as it is a "convention", oftentimes, WHAT it is that you work at. Nurse. doctor, PT? Hedge-fund manager? Wal*Mart "greeter"? Tokyo subway pusher? Pointless Italian notary that makes millions, having essentially no valid or concrete societal role beyond inherited prestige? Prince (of Wales)? Britney Spears? The lattermost of these are pointless conventions.
I've often talked to a close friend of a close friend here; the guy is an international patent lawyer in his late 60s, married to an international patent lawyer in her sixties. THEY ARE IN HARNESS. They could buy me ten, twenty times over, at least. They don't "get" ER (as someone said elsewhere, correctly, it is a question of prestige). Both His and Her fathers were international patent lawyers, so the die was cast, they must be international patent lawyers-- and despite whether they are INCLINED to be international patent lawyers.. or whether they are particularly INTELLIGENT or INSIGHTFUL or GOOD international patent lawyers matters nothing.. they just ARE such, and keep working at it. WHAT exactly are they contributing towards? WHO are they doing this for? Their clients? Already super-rich. Their kids? Already rich. Themselves? Already rich beyond the dreams of most here. Yet the wife wears dresses better left to GoodWill (and *I* dress in 1980s Limited Express "vintage" with all its holes after 20+ years, so you can imagine).. and brings RAW TURNIPS (more than once) to dinner parties I have hosted!! Shades of BlackAdder, my dears. At SOME point one DOES ask oneself "why"?
I mean, why TURNIPS?
"OH,.. thank you for the -em- RAW TURNIPS!!"
There is a philosophical term for this that escapes me, but there are some moral rules that exist in every society – like murder – and some that exist as a matter of convention – like parking restrictions.
Maybe delve into some Plato or something.. I am not super-well-versed in it myself, but he does posit a universal notion of Good and Justice. I try to follow the Golden Rule, and beyond that I just try to stay out of everybody else's way!
If you park in the handicapped spot then that is selfish. Another society might have different parking rules, ... but that doesn’t necessarily make breaking the conventions OK.
If I go to Home Depot and there are 57 handicapped spaces (the handicapped being notorious gutter- plumbing- and tile-installers) -(sorry!), my parking there -
which I wouldn't- is slightly, and materially, different from my arrogantly occupying the one measly and insultingly-insufficient pkg. space or -if lucky- spaces, plural, in front of the public Post Office / courthouse / library / hospital or whatever. There, the same 'abuse' has a greater significant negative impact. Following blind 'convention' is not the same as following 'common sense' OR maintaining a proper respect for one's co-citizens.
Why is this convention needed? Because you need producers to have the things society needs.
Here, bongo, you sound like my Right-Wing Sis. Consumers have a "duty" to consume in order to prop up mfg. .. as though mfg. of who-cares-what Christmas-Tree-Shoppe-drecque were some be-all end-all good -in-and-of-itself.. Your assumption is that 'society" NEEDS everything it produces. Look around you and you'll see that's not true, not even by a long shot.. We could equally occupy people producing FAR less, MUCH BETTER. "We" just don't usually choose to.. globally (or as a nation or local society, either, most often).
You can try as hard as you like to pay for something, but if no one is making it, then it won’t be there.
Fantastic.. if there really is this market, then you've got a new business plan!! Have at it, my lad..
If paying our most productive people more causes them to work less rather than more, then the whole system pretty much breaks down, right? The ER is exploiting a flaw in the system.
To me, ER is in no way "the flaw".. but the endgame, the PRIZE of "The System". "The System" needs willing and eager and needy recruits.. but the point of working one's way up the pyramid, or lucking-out (even in part), or investing the sweat of one's brow. or using one's brain-cells to come up with the better mousetrap... should not necessitate one's finding oneself once again at the absolute bottom just to start all over again.
If one takes away ER (which one can.. in theory) then the only option left is indentured servitude at best, slavery at worst.
I'm not sure what bongo2's proposal is here: pay "the most productive people" LESS rather than more? How will that play out, exactly? I see in that a 'breakdown' far greater than what he currently fears. We are talking wholesale ballerina-chaining as per Vonnegut. Can anyone effectively sell this notion?
There are many on this board who have ER'd by dint of their six-figure salaries (let's say techies and lawyers and finance people). There are others, at LEAST equally, objectively, 'worthy/necessary' (let's say nurses, landlords, soldiers, duct-installers) who have made do with far less, and still reached the same goal. Good on all of them!
In Bongo2-world.. do we "need" a nurse LESS than a Megacorp lawyer/engineer/PR flack paid 5x as much?? Yes? No? Why? Should we press the average nurse/soldier into necessary, extended, service? Or, (as the HBS Bulletin would have it) are the Robert Mertons and Richard Prices of the world more 'valuable'? koff koff koff) and thus it is THEY who must never retire.. in order that they continue sprinkling their bounty upon us, like so much ticker-tape at Michael Milken's HONORARY F****** PARADE.
There are SOME people I would heartily WISH into ER.. and I won't mention them for fear of taking this thread "too political".
Otherwise, I must note that this is the first thread in which I have agreed with both samclem and donheff!!
But I don't even want to get into what HFWR finds 'erotic'!!! ...
Codicil:
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People may know me here as a "liberal" and I still am. ("Liberal" does not equal "communist ballerina-chainer", BTW). it just means I'm interested in Platonic Justice and Fairness as well as the idea of 'pay-to-play'.. Any big corporation you can name pays a relative pittance to muck about in our supposedly-free-market capital playground, and many reap an immensurate profit compared with what they extract and return.. I just want an even playing field... a mom&pop enterprise should get the same breaks as ADM or Wal*Mart or a timber/mining operation, or some dead-useless sports franchise.. or a light-fingered energy/financial behemoth:
Greenspan, 1963:
In a 1963 essay for Ms. [Ayn] Rand’s newsletter, Mr. Greenspan dismissed as a “collectivist” myth the idea that businessmen, left to their own devices, “would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings.” On the contrary, he declared, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.”
OOOHHHHHH PERISH THE THOUGHT!!!!!
Greenspan today:
..now that it has all gone bad, people with ties to the financial industry are rethinking their belief in the perfection of free markets. Mr. Greenspan has come out in favor of, yes, a government bailout. “Cash is available,” he says — meaning taxpayer money — “and we should use that in larger amounts, as is necessary, to solve the problems of the stress of this.”
Blindly Into the Bubble - New York Times
