An issue I always have with early retirement is whether it is morally acceptable. When retiring early from a skilled profession you are depriving society of a big contribution you could have given, that was also expected and invested in by society. Utilising a power dynamic by having more money and knowledge to capitalise on other people exacerbates this issue.
How are you dealing with this? Are you of the mindset that you do not owe anything to society? That it is completely fair, as you earned that money and there is a perfect market that trades all aspects in a meritocratic fashion (e.g., delayed consumption should be gratified this hard)? Or that you were not just lucky to have the talents to earn so much money?
Firstly, I don’t think your contributions to society are limited to work. Spending time with hobbies also contributes, e.g. art, volunteering, or open source coding. You can also work a more enjoyable “job” in retirement, without feeling strangled by the paycheck.
We also already have enough production in society for everyone to be happy, and many people’s jobs do not actually contribute to society in a meaningful way, e.g. people who work at advertising firms. I think we should target the billionaires sucking up literally all the resources and seeing if “early” retirement is actually a problem at that point. People are working until they’re 70 right now, but maybe everyone could retire closer to 50 if we distributed our resources more fairly.
The issue is that it is immensely difficult to fairly distribute resources, due to not many wanting to lose their wealth for other people. Imo human history has shown that great wealth increase for the poor was often only possible by immense economic growth.
I mean if you have enough money to retire early you have by the definition of capitalism provided more than you are taking by retiring.
Whether it’s moral is entirely separate, and would require judgement outside the confines of capitalism, which is not possible, because we don’t live by any other system.
Why is it not possible to think outside of the capitalistic system? Do you think we do not have enough data? I guess even observing the capitalistic system can show you that it is not just, by observing that there are unjust aspects in capitalism that an early retiree is abusing.
Retirement does not mean you cease to contribute to society. It may allow you to develop new hobbies and passions, build or enhance relationships with family and friends, or give time to your community
Downtime may allow you to think deeply on what kind of world you want to live in, or travel may broaden your horizons and make you aware of issues you would like to address - you could become politically active, or contribute your efforts to a charity
You don’t have to do any of these things, but don’t write off retirement as an empty non-productive life stage. If it doesn’t bring you joy, you can always go back to work ;)
But I think most people will greatly reduce their output for society. Do you think that on average there will be an increase? I could imagine that some projects might only be realisable by retired and independent people, so that might actually outweigh the decrease. There could be a really fat tailed distribution that makes this good.
You’re begging the question, and I mean that in a literal way, it’s not an insult. You have assumed a definition of output as something that happens through participation in capitalistic endeavours
This effectively devalues any other form of output. What of the value to society of a grandparent spending more time with their grandchild. What is the value to the grandparent? The child? The parent who can now work extra hours?
There is enormous value to society in spending time with family, growing your own produce, exercising your body and mind etc. but many people sacrifice their ability to do those things for income during part of their lives, and change focus when the means are available
I did not assume that the output for society only happens through capitalistic endeavours. You are right that it is important to think about what is a contribution to society.
But in my -admittedly fuzzy- definition, and I think this is also the one most people really would apply, is that retired people usually will have less contributions even when considering time with family.
As an example you are saying growing your own produce is an enormous benefit. But in my opinion this is a really small contribution. Farming, even organic, is really cheap and decentralising on the scale of individual households is extremely inefficient and probably not even environmentally friendly due to the increased space and resources used by the inefficiency. It would be better to take a job at a company or NGO trying to improve the sustainability of current farming methods. Your work will impact millions of people and not just a few.
Taking care of your fitness, also won’t have a clear and big benefit for society. You might save the healthcare system some money per year lived, but you also won’t immensely change your fitness level just because you retire early. The money saved here might be optimistically 2000$ per year. 14000$ is the average cost in the US and you need to subtract everything that you can not prevent by your probably small change in fitness (inheritance, age, bad luck). Additionally most benefits here will be by living longer with the same total healthcare cost (with age you will get similar diseases). Therefore the benefit will be mostly reaped by yourself and not the others in society (but you are a part of society so it counts a bit).
Taking care of family might actually convince me :). In a utopian world I would also like everyone to work less and take care of family. But again the question here is how much value does this exactly give to society.
Is it really enough to compensate for the missed work contributions? Does it allow the society to still compete on a global scale so that it will not lose its values over time?
It sounds like we both value the intangibles, but are still slightly disagreeing on what they mean in this discussion. Having said that, it’s your discussion, your question, and I’m just trying to answer in a way that adds value
I don’t mind how you’ve picked apart my examples, but you have to acknowledge it’s still primarily through economic analysis. Output, competition, and cost benefit analysis all imply an economic lense
The discussion is getting pretty long, so I’ll keep myself to these 5 points:
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I don’t think everyone should grow their own produce. It comes across as a straw man (because I never said we should decentralise) and we always have to be careful not to say that what is good for one is good for all (see Idle Kantianism)
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Non-economic benefits are devalued through economic analysis. My mental health is improved, it’s physical exercise, the nutrient value is likely higher, it contributes to a local ecosystem etc. I agree that none of these has much economic value
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In the same way that economies of scale have efficiency value, specialisation and expertise in scientific and policy fields has efficiency value. Transitioning to research and policy simply because you have amassed capital will likely generate diminishing returns (even if you remain close to your industry/experience)
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Government can and should allocate resources to important issues. If we require more resources for these goals we can raise taxes, keeping more people working for longer, and achieving some measure of additional economic contribution per person
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A competitive society implies some other society against which we compete. Humanity has enough resources to raise the living standards of all. Why do we need to keep maximising productivity within separate societies if the problem is distributive?
I tried not to only focus on economic value in my counter arguments. I just wanted to use monetary value as a proxy for general value for society.
Regarding the transition to research and policy my argument would be that you will have more impact when taking a full time research position instead of retiring from the working world. I would still consider most research positions a part of the working world.
With a competitive society I actually meant that there are groups that will not support early retirees. These groups will dominate society after some time. An example might be China vs US. If many people in the US retire early, the US will not be able to compete and in the long run will stop existing together with all its values.
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I’ve got different moral issues with it, the same as TheButtonJustSpins, but in terms of not providing value I don’t think is an issue because
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Just because the value you provide to society isn’t captured by capitalism in the form of renumeration doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. Caring for the sick/injured, volunteering, guerrilla gardening, open source work all provide value even if you’re not paid.
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I strongly believe that by and large, people want to provide value for others. If you’re at the end of FIRE, you’re not likely just sitting around drinking alcohol all day. You’re probably painting, or helping out a community.
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People like to do things they’re good at, so they’ll probably provide value in a way they’re well equipped to do.
Just because the value you provide to society isn’t captured by capitalism in the form of renumeration doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable
I couldn’t agree more. I think equating the value you provide to society entirely to remuneration is sure to backfire.
So much of our salaries are purely dependent on the industry we’re in. My job doesn’t demand anything particularly special from me - the field as a whole just has a lot of money sloshing around and can afford to let more of it trickle down to me. I could do the same job in another industry, or another location, and get paid 1/3 of my salary.
You could argue that my field has this money because they are providing so much value to society, but I don’t think that always holds, at least in the short term. We live in a world of corruption, regulatory capture, investor bubbles etc. - while a market should find an optimal balance in the long run, in the short term I think there’s a lot of room to make an outsized salary considering the contribution you actually make, just by being in the right place at the right time.
Is this fair? I don’t really think so. But it’s all too easy to overthink things and tie yourself up in knots. I just try and live life, have fun and do what I think is right at the time.
I’m in a similar boat, I think of it as “rich people have a lot of money to throw around, so their needs get overemphasized and industries that should be niche become massive.”
Markets accommodation is indifferent to usefulness, it cares about money and the larger the wealth gap is, the further those terms become divorced from each other.
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You’re still contributing to society just be existing and spending money.
No, no, you are not. Money doesn’t make anything.
It provides the mechanism by which people are motivated to do things. It’s like a lubricant for the engine that is society. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong I’m just saying this artificial store of value is used to motivate productive activities by people.
If your capturing rents from productive people your not lubricating society, your starving the engine of oil.
Good point, however, the way our social structure of accumulation currently works involves saving money in order to spend on goods and services. He will still be productive by existing, maybe through art or volunteering or some other indirect economic productivity. Does that mean he shouldn’t be allowed to pursue this indirect productivity because it is funded through self-developed economic rents, rather than the state granting him the right to pursue his non-direct societal value?
The goal should be to have us all work less hours so we can all pursue our personal interests, but that struggle is still ongoing.
Thats all good and fine, but no one helps society by just spending money, as stated in the original comment.
It should be the goal of society to share the burden of necessary work. To reduce that burden. Is it ok to add more load to others to escape yourself? How much moral responsibility do we each have to improve things now?
I suppose that would depend on your definition of necessary work. If OP is working in advertising or entertainment it might not be seen as necessary. OTOH that might be what’s needed for people to be entertained or find the optimal product. Likewise I would consider weapons production to be unnecessary work but others would see it as fundamental. Who’s to say that OP spending his time now painting pictures and organizing outdoor hikes with his friends is less necessary than someone cleaning a street or working in an office? The economic value may be different but there are other intangible values that would contribute to society.
Could be argued it is an over surplus of workers that has led to salary imbalances that aren’t adequate for a lot of people, since there’s so many desperate people in a position where they are willing or forced to take less. Scarcity hasn’t been the problem of the labor market, which has led to increased exploitation.
The problem is that these positions are often not the ones the early retirees are leaving. For those positions there is often a real scarcity. That’s why the salaries for these positions are that high.
Most work is pointless. You don’t deprive society of anything by not providing your work. I know I sure as hell won’t be making the world a worse place by no longer creating software that helps rich assholes take money from other rich assholes.
EDIT: That said, I do have some moral issues with retiring based on owning stocks. It’s not going to stop me, but it does go against my antiwork stance. I don’t want to be owning class, even if I’m a little fish in it.
Look at it from the opposite angle, I’m opening up that position for the next person.
I personally never feel like I owe society anything. I’m fortunate to have a well paying job, but that doesn’t saddle me with guilt, but instead gratitude. I’m grateful for the opportunities I have, and I try to make the best I can with them. However, I do intend to become very active in causes without any expectation of pay. I also intend to start businesses and whatnot free from the obligation to make money, not because I feel obligated, but because it makes me happy.
Here are some causes I intend to work on:
- decentralized applications, like a decentralized (not federated) lemmy
- help people get out of debt
- make video games
- invest in small businesses on very favorable terms
And so on. I expect to be very busy once FI, but I don’t be busy with a regular 9-5. I don’t want to do it now because I’ll need to find a way to profit from it; once FI, profit isn’t necessary and perhaps unwanted.
Did you think about if the decentralised applications will have an impact as high as you are currently providing for society? I would be really careful when evaluating if something does have an impact. If your decentralised platform never has any realistic chance to be adopted by mainstream the impact might be really low. Even for lemmy the impact might not be enough, as it might be too complicated for a normal person.
Making video games and helping small business by investing also seem like they have a low benefit for society and are more to be psychologically fulfilling for the early retiree.
My goal isn’t to maximize my beneficial impact on society, it’s to not be a burden on society while pursuing things that interest me. The decentralized platform interests me, and it’s not going to cause harm.
I could do a lot more, but I don’t feel obligated to. Once I’m FI, I’ll spend some of my time giving back, and all of my time will be spent on things that interest me.
Thank you for this mindset as someone who works under a person that could easily retire early but won’t (which is fine by me, mostly). My career’s vertical mobility and associated higher pay is stunted by this, as I do not wish to seek a different employer.
If society valued my contribution they would give me working conditions that were decent enough that I didn’t desperately want to leave. “Society” is currently extracting way more than a fair share of what people like me (on an average wage) produce so that the rich can indulge in excessive consumption. I don’t know how you get the idea that everyone who plans to retire early has a valuable skilled profession and high social power. For a lot of people the focus is on extreme frugility to try to scrape enough money together to have some freedom to spend time doing things you find valuable.
Basically yes, I am of the mindset that I don’t owe anything to society. I’m “lucky” to have an average wage and not minimum wage I suppose, especially given that the current argument in society is that minimum wage is not supposed to be high enough to support yourself independently. “Society” has been telling me for years that my essential job that they are so grateful to me for doing is also a drain on “taxpayer money” and that I don’t deserve pay rises that keep pace with inflation, let alone average wages.
I think it should be fairly uncontroversial here to point out that lowering your expenses is good for society in many ways.
I thought this was going to be a question about effective altruism.
Frankly, I don’t see my job as being some huge contribution to society. It largely doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
I’d take this a step further and say I have existential dread when I think of all the talented / smart people that get pulled into my industry and provide very little if any societal good.
If I leave, I potentially free up a great promotion opportunity for someone on my team, which creates another promotion opportunity, and so on. I would consider that a valuable contribution to many people. Alternatively, they might eliminate my position, which reduces the company’s cost, which may save a job or two later by reducing the need for layoffs. I will be happy to make that contribution to my team when I am ready to retire.
I consider my contribution to be teaching and mentoring others in my profession.
I literally couldn’t give two shits about some supposed moral obligation to society I may or may not have.
