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.
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?
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.
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.
