In the US, yes. Part of the poster’s point is that you don’t need to stay in the US.
I won’t make his choice, mostly because I like being around employed people more than I like being around unemployed people, but international mobility is clearly a point in favour of the lifestyle he’s suggesting.
Depends on the country, obviously. I do not know of any country where you don’t have to go through a complex administrative procedure that takes months or years. In places where social services are very good (say Switzerland) it is much harder to get citizenship than where they aren’t. If you’re planning to receive benefits for the rest of your life, researching the prerequisites for various countries should be well worth your time.
The easiest way is always the same, however: Convince a citizen of that country to marry you. Many countries have discrimination policies where it is harder to acquire citizenship by marriage if you’re from, say, Nigeria, but coming from the US it’ll be easy in most places.
I like being around employed people more than I like being around unemployed people
Indeed. Is there such a thing as an unemployed person, providing little of value but receiving enough support (in whatever form) to live on, who is nonetheless working with passion, skill, and knowledge in some interesting domain? Is there, in other words, such a thing as a person who does not support himself by providing value… yet is interesting?
I have. One of them is composing classical music, another is writing a PhD on medieval history, a third is an occasional guest lecturer at university (for a symbolic fee). All use their relatively abundant time to achieve excellence in what they do.
Of course they are all over age 65 and have worked all their life, so that’s the demographic where to look for such people.
Yes, fair enough. It’s a good point, and one I should’ve thought of; a lifetime of doing interesting and useful things plausibly entitles one to freedom from continued active provision of value.
However, I don’t actually think that “living in retirement, benefiting from the fruits of one’s past labors” counts as “unemployed”; the literal meaning may be there, but the connotation definitely doesn’t match. In any case, I hope the thrust of my comment is now clarified.
It seems to me that there’s an intermediate path between conventional retirement and outright vagabondage, which is probably more common than the latter: if you live frugally, save wisely, and happen to have sufficiently marketable skills, you have a good chance of being able to retire much earlier than is usual and live modestly off your savings. SaidAchmiz, do you (1) think people who do this are failing to do their social duty, and (2) have any opinion on whether they are likely to be interesting?
I don’t think “social duty” is a real thing, beyond being shorthand for the sum total of various ethical duties to various individuals, so my answer to (1) is no.
As for (2), well, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve met any such people. I haven’t even heard of any of my friends ever meeting such people. So can I have no opinion on the matter that’s based on any kind of experience.
I think I’d have to, at very least, hear about some actual cases of what you describe, before I could even speculate. Questions abound: what did the person do when they did work? What are they doing now that they’ve retired? Just engaging in passive leisure activities? Or working on some nontrivial personal projects? Do they have family? Do they engage in volunteering or charity? etc.
So yeah, if you know such a person, I’d love to hear a description of an actual case.
I don’t think “social duty” is a real thing, beyond [...]
Please take it as a shorthand for ‘whatever “plausibly entitles one to freedom from continued active provision of value”’, as you put it.
I don’t think I personally know any such people. There are a few internet-famous examples (who claim that Anyone Can Do It, rather optimistically if you ask me because the basis of their argument is that “all you need to do is save half your income for N years” and saving half your income is much easier for well-paid people); maybe the best known is the one who calls himself Mr Money Mustache. A more extreme example is Early Retirement Extreme. Both these people show every sign of being actual real people who actually believe what they say (which is not always true for personal-finance gurus).
Of course famous examples are generally atypical, but to answer your questions: I think MMM was a software engineer or something of the kind, and ERE was [EDITED: used to say “in finance” but I checked and that was completely wrong] a physicist in academia. I haven’t read enough of ERE’s stuff to know how he spends his life now. MMM writes a blog promoting frugal early retirement (I think his real interest is more in “sustainability” than in personal finance as such), works intermittently as a builder—both of these bring in money, so you can debate whether he should really be called “retired”; I think he would answer that he is retired because he now only works on things he wants to work on for reasons other than getting paid—and doubtless does other things but I don’t know what. I don’t know anything much about what either does for charity.
The reason I asked about people you personally know is that anyone can write a blog claiming any old thing. With these sorts of claims in particular, it’s hard to know how much of what’s claimed is just bullshit. Some of it could be outright lies, some of it could be selective reporting, some of it could be certain unemphasized atypical aspects of their personality / mental make-up / life situation / who the hell knows what. On the other end of the issue, how am I to judge whether these people are interesting?
As far as social duty (suitably expanded from the shorthand) goes… I think that what “entitles” you to freedom from provision of value (to the extent that the notion of entitlement is even ethically meaningful, which is an extent of which I am unsure) is, very roughly, not having to sponge off other people.
You see, it’s not that I think expending effort is inherently morally praiseworthy. I don’t think “working” is a virtue in itself. I think it may well be wonderful (modulo various fun-theoretic considerations) if people didn’t have to work for a living and also didn’t have to depend on other people to provide for them. When we come to live in a world where such universal leisure is possible, we can revisit that conversation.
But we don’t live in that world now. When you live in your friend’s apartment, sleeping on their couch, using their facilities, and so forth, your lack of having to work for a living is dependent entirely on your friend’s income and wealth. You are not entitled to that freedom from provision of value; you happen to have it, by the leave and the grace of your friend; but if your friend tires of your leeching one day and kicks you out onto the street, you have, it seems to me, no moral case against them.
If you work, save up, and retire, it’s different. You are dependent on no one but your past self. (Well, no more than the average citizen is dependent on, collectively, his fellow citizens, for taxes and all the rest of it.)
So to sum up, I don’t think “not working” is an ethically valid choice (generally) if it means that you’ll be living off the work of other people, receiving benefits but providing nothing. If all “not working” means is that you’ve found some mechanism of converting provision of value into resources to live on, that is to some degree different from the usual mechanisms of such, then I see nothing wrong with that. I am a graduate student myself, after all. (I also work, though only for relatively small amounts of supplemental income.)
In the US, yes. Part of the poster’s point is that you don’t need to stay in the US.
I won’t make his choice, mostly because I like being around employed people more than I like being around unemployed people, but international mobility is clearly a point in favour of the lifestyle he’s suggesting.
How hard is it to become a benefits-receiving citizen of another country?
Depends on the country, obviously. I do not know of any country where you don’t have to go through a complex administrative procedure that takes months or years. In places where social services are very good (say Switzerland) it is much harder to get citizenship than where they aren’t. If you’re planning to receive benefits for the rest of your life, researching the prerequisites for various countries should be well worth your time.
The easiest way is always the same, however: Convince a citizen of that country to marry you. Many countries have discrimination policies where it is harder to acquire citizenship by marriage if you’re from, say, Nigeria, but coming from the US it’ll be easy in most places.
Indeed. Is there such a thing as an unemployed person, providing little of value but receiving enough support (in whatever form) to live on, who is nonetheless working with passion, skill, and knowledge in some interesting domain? Is there, in other words, such a thing as a person who does not support himself by providing value… yet is interesting?
I have not met anyone like that.
I have. One of them is composing classical music, another is writing a PhD on medieval history, a third is an occasional guest lecturer at university (for a symbolic fee). All use their relatively abundant time to achieve excellence in what they do.
Of course they are all over age 65 and have worked all their life, so that’s the demographic where to look for such people.
Yes, fair enough. It’s a good point, and one I should’ve thought of; a lifetime of doing interesting and useful things plausibly entitles one to freedom from continued active provision of value.
However, I don’t actually think that “living in retirement, benefiting from the fruits of one’s past labors” counts as “unemployed”; the literal meaning may be there, but the connotation definitely doesn’t match. In any case, I hope the thrust of my comment is now clarified.
It seems to me that there’s an intermediate path between conventional retirement and outright vagabondage, which is probably more common than the latter: if you live frugally, save wisely, and happen to have sufficiently marketable skills, you have a good chance of being able to retire much earlier than is usual and live modestly off your savings. SaidAchmiz, do you (1) think people who do this are failing to do their social duty, and (2) have any opinion on whether they are likely to be interesting?
I don’t think “social duty” is a real thing, beyond being shorthand for the sum total of various ethical duties to various individuals, so my answer to (1) is no.
As for (2), well, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve met any such people. I haven’t even heard of any of my friends ever meeting such people. So can I have no opinion on the matter that’s based on any kind of experience.
I think I’d have to, at very least, hear about some actual cases of what you describe, before I could even speculate. Questions abound: what did the person do when they did work? What are they doing now that they’ve retired? Just engaging in passive leisure activities? Or working on some nontrivial personal projects? Do they have family? Do they engage in volunteering or charity? etc.
So yeah, if you know such a person, I’d love to hear a description of an actual case.
Please take it as a shorthand for ‘whatever “plausibly entitles one to freedom from continued active provision of value”’, as you put it.
I don’t think I personally know any such people. There are a few internet-famous examples (who claim that Anyone Can Do It, rather optimistically if you ask me because the basis of their argument is that “all you need to do is save half your income for N years” and saving half your income is much easier for well-paid people); maybe the best known is the one who calls himself Mr Money Mustache. A more extreme example is Early Retirement Extreme. Both these people show every sign of being actual real people who actually believe what they say (which is not always true for personal-finance gurus).
Of course famous examples are generally atypical, but to answer your questions: I think MMM was a software engineer or something of the kind, and ERE was [EDITED: used to say “in finance” but I checked and that was completely wrong] a physicist in academia. I haven’t read enough of ERE’s stuff to know how he spends his life now. MMM writes a blog promoting frugal early retirement (I think his real interest is more in “sustainability” than in personal finance as such), works intermittently as a builder—both of these bring in money, so you can debate whether he should really be called “retired”; I think he would answer that he is retired because he now only works on things he wants to work on for reasons other than getting paid—and doubtless does other things but I don’t know what. I don’t know anything much about what either does for charity.
The reason I asked about people you personally know is that anyone can write a blog claiming any old thing. With these sorts of claims in particular, it’s hard to know how much of what’s claimed is just bullshit. Some of it could be outright lies, some of it could be selective reporting, some of it could be certain unemphasized atypical aspects of their personality / mental make-up / life situation / who the hell knows what. On the other end of the issue, how am I to judge whether these people are interesting?
As far as social duty (suitably expanded from the shorthand) goes… I think that what “entitles” you to freedom from provision of value (to the extent that the notion of entitlement is even ethically meaningful, which is an extent of which I am unsure) is, very roughly, not having to sponge off other people.
You see, it’s not that I think expending effort is inherently morally praiseworthy. I don’t think “working” is a virtue in itself. I think it may well be wonderful (modulo various fun-theoretic considerations) if people didn’t have to work for a living and also didn’t have to depend on other people to provide for them. When we come to live in a world where such universal leisure is possible, we can revisit that conversation.
But we don’t live in that world now. When you live in your friend’s apartment, sleeping on their couch, using their facilities, and so forth, your lack of having to work for a living is dependent entirely on your friend’s income and wealth. You are not entitled to that freedom from provision of value; you happen to have it, by the leave and the grace of your friend; but if your friend tires of your leeching one day and kicks you out onto the street, you have, it seems to me, no moral case against them.
If you work, save up, and retire, it’s different. You are dependent on no one but your past self. (Well, no more than the average citizen is dependent on, collectively, his fellow citizens, for taxes and all the rest of it.)
So to sum up, I don’t think “not working” is an ethically valid choice (generally) if it means that you’ll be living off the work of other people, receiving benefits but providing nothing. If all “not working” means is that you’ve found some mechanism of converting provision of value into resources to live on, that is to some degree different from the usual mechanisms of such, then I see nothing wrong with that. I am a graduate student myself, after all. (I also work, though only for relatively small amounts of supplemental income.)
That all sounds very reasonable. Thanks.