A common topic in the community is friends and family getting envious when you tell them how much you’ve saved.
This reminds me of Romani communities in my country. Imagine villages full of poor people, most of them unemployed. Once in a month they get social benefits—then they organize a huge party with lots of food and alcohol, spend all their money during two or three days, and starve for the rest of the month.
Obvious idea: “why doesn’t someone skip the party, save the money instead, and buy some food later?”
But the problem is, this strategy doesn’t work if you are the only person in the village who tries it. As soon as the others find out that you have enough food in the middle of the month, your starving neighbors will come asking for some. Your only options are to share… or to make enemies of the whole village. So at the end, you skipped the party, and now you are starving anyway. Next time, you join the party instead.
I am not saying there are no other problems involved, such as racism etc., but this mechanism alone is sufficient to keep the entire village poor. And I see some similarity between this—and how the communities of middle-class people keep each other away from early retirement.
Uh… I see some relation, but connotationally… The Wikipedia page describes it as “if I can’t have it, neither can you”, which is quite uncharitable for humans… and I suspect even for the actual crabs.
For the Romani village, the feeling from inside is “we have an obligation to help each other”. Which, in abstract, is a good thing. Most people would say it is a central example of morality. Indeed, from certain perspective, those Romani villages are more moral than the civilization that surrounds them! Taking the food away from those who saved the money to make them also starve is not the intended goal; the goal is to alleviate the starving of the others, at least for a day.
The horrible thing is the Nash equilibrium of “having a huge party on the payday” in the community without strong norms for private property, and without competent leadership—because a strong competent leader could e.g. tax everyone, and ration the money for food during the month; and keeping the village non-starving would give legitimacy to their rule. The Romani here have lost their old cultural norms, and didn’t acquire the cultural norms of the majority, leaving them in the worst of both worlds. Culture can solve problems individuals can’t on their own; especially things about coordination.
With early retirement for middle class, the pressure that I see is twofold. First, it’s something like “don’t trade good things you could enjoy now for uncertain hypothetical benefits decades later”. Less charitably, short-term thinking. But in some sense, yeah, rationally you should discount the future a bit. You may die before reaching the date of your early retirement; or a revolution in your country may take your savings away. Also, doing some things will probably bring less enjoyment in old age. -- Here, my response is that I actually don’t enjoy some of those things I give up too much, and that I passionately hate spending 8 hours a day in a job. So, maybe other people just have different preferences than me, so their optimums are different? Dunno.
The second concern is something like “not spending proportionally to your income is low-status”. In abstract, sounds kinda stupid. But is it completely wrong? Status has an impact on your life outcomes. To put it to extreme, living literally like a homeless person would save you some expenses, but it would probably also prevent you from getting a good job, so it might actually result in less net savings. And that’s just the most direct impact, ignoring the social effects. Looking attractive may help you get better friends (who may then recommend you better jobs) and a better (nicer and richer) partner. Heck, because of halo effect, looking attractive will probably get you higher salary. So, investing in looking good, physically and socially, makes sense; it’s just the question of finding the optimal level. Plus my friends and relatives have a selfish motive to make me appear higher-status; being socially connected to me, my status also reflects on them. -- Here, my response is that I already lose lot of social points by being an aspie, so the benefits of buying a nicer sweater or a nicer car are probably too low to justify the costs. I am already married with children, and I don’t plan to divorce and remarry or to cheat, so I don’t need to impress girls with displays of wealth. (Heck, even if I wanted to cheat, having 8 extra hours a day would probably help me more; some of that time could be spent in a gym, and the rest socializing. Except, whom am I trying to fool here, I would probably spend them by the computer, heh.)
So, I don’t think that “if I can’t have it, neither can you” is the correct description of how most people feel from inside. Though, of course, some people may be like this. But most probably feel that early retirement is not realistic… and if you achieve it or get sufficiently close, they will just conclude that you are an exception but that it was not realistic for them.
I think the fundamental problem in that village, which would not be helped much by skipping the party and saving, is that because they’re mostly unemployed there just isn’t enough money.
If they cancelled the party and all saved enough to avoid starvation for the rest of the month, I bet they still wouldn’t be able to save much for the longer term. They’d starve less but also have less social fun. It might be better, it might be worse, but it wouldn’t stop them being poor.
I do agree that there’s a similarity between their situation and that of insufficiently-saving middle-class communities. I just don’t buy the “sufficient to keep the entire village poor” bit; I think what keeps the village poor is the fact that so many are unemployed and (I’m guessing) those who are employed mostly don’t have very lucrative jobs.
This reminds me of Romani communities in my country. Imagine villages full of poor people, most of them unemployed. Once in a month they get social benefits—then they organize a huge party with lots of food and alcohol, spend all their money during two or three days, and starve for the rest of the month.
Obvious idea: “why doesn’t someone skip the party, save the money instead, and buy some food later?”
But the problem is, this strategy doesn’t work if you are the only person in the village who tries it. As soon as the others find out that you have enough food in the middle of the month, your starving neighbors will come asking for some. Your only options are to share… or to make enemies of the whole village. So at the end, you skipped the party, and now you are starving anyway. Next time, you join the party instead.
I am not saying there are no other problems involved, such as racism etc., but this mechanism alone is sufficient to keep the entire village poor. And I see some similarity between this—and how the communities of middle-class people keep each other away from early retirement.
Yes, it’s the [crab mentality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality).
Uh… I see some relation, but connotationally… The Wikipedia page describes it as “if I can’t have it, neither can you”, which is quite uncharitable for humans… and I suspect even for the actual crabs.
For the Romani village, the feeling from inside is “we have an obligation to help each other”. Which, in abstract, is a good thing. Most people would say it is a central example of morality. Indeed, from certain perspective, those Romani villages are more moral than the civilization that surrounds them! Taking the food away from those who saved the money to make them also starve is not the intended goal; the goal is to alleviate the starving of the others, at least for a day.
The horrible thing is the Nash equilibrium of “having a huge party on the payday” in the community without strong norms for private property, and without competent leadership—because a strong competent leader could e.g. tax everyone, and ration the money for food during the month; and keeping the village non-starving would give legitimacy to their rule. The Romani here have lost their old cultural norms, and didn’t acquire the cultural norms of the majority, leaving them in the worst of both worlds. Culture can solve problems individuals can’t on their own; especially things about coordination.
With early retirement for middle class, the pressure that I see is twofold. First, it’s something like “don’t trade good things you could enjoy now for uncertain hypothetical benefits decades later”. Less charitably, short-term thinking. But in some sense, yeah, rationally you should discount the future a bit. You may die before reaching the date of your early retirement; or a revolution in your country may take your savings away. Also, doing some things will probably bring less enjoyment in old age. -- Here, my response is that I actually don’t enjoy some of those things I give up too much, and that I passionately hate spending 8 hours a day in a job. So, maybe other people just have different preferences than me, so their optimums are different? Dunno.
The second concern is something like “not spending proportionally to your income is low-status”. In abstract, sounds kinda stupid. But is it completely wrong? Status has an impact on your life outcomes. To put it to extreme, living literally like a homeless person would save you some expenses, but it would probably also prevent you from getting a good job, so it might actually result in less net savings. And that’s just the most direct impact, ignoring the social effects. Looking attractive may help you get better friends (who may then recommend you better jobs) and a better (nicer and richer) partner. Heck, because of halo effect, looking attractive will probably get you higher salary. So, investing in looking good, physically and socially, makes sense; it’s just the question of finding the optimal level. Plus my friends and relatives have a selfish motive to make me appear higher-status; being socially connected to me, my status also reflects on them. -- Here, my response is that I already lose lot of social points by being an aspie, so the benefits of buying a nicer sweater or a nicer car are probably too low to justify the costs. I am already married with children, and I don’t plan to divorce and remarry or to cheat, so I don’t need to impress girls with displays of wealth. (Heck, even if I wanted to cheat, having 8 extra hours a day would probably help me more; some of that time could be spent in a gym, and the rest socializing. Except, whom am I trying to fool here, I would probably spend them by the computer, heh.)
So, I don’t think that “if I can’t have it, neither can you” is the correct description of how most people feel from inside. Though, of course, some people may be like this. But most probably feel that early retirement is not realistic… and if you achieve it or get sufficiently close, they will just conclude that you are an exception but that it was not realistic for them.
I think the fundamental problem in that village, which would not be helped much by skipping the party and saving, is that because they’re mostly unemployed there just isn’t enough money.
If they cancelled the party and all saved enough to avoid starvation for the rest of the month, I bet they still wouldn’t be able to save much for the longer term. They’d starve less but also have less social fun. It might be better, it might be worse, but it wouldn’t stop them being poor.
I do agree that there’s a similarity between their situation and that of insufficiently-saving middle-class communities. I just don’t buy the “sufficient to keep the entire village poor” bit; I think what keeps the village poor is the fact that so many are unemployed and (I’m guessing) those who are employed mostly don’t have very lucrative jobs.