The MMM Enterprise is a victim of its own success. It's a good problem to have, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.
The early message was "you don't need to be rich to be happy" and he wrote a blog about finding happiness without riches. He argued persuasively that money doesn't buy happiness.
Except the blog made so much money that he started spending it on things that made him happy. It's straight up lifestyle inflation, plain and simple. I think it's well-done lifestyle inflation, focused on travel and housing and interesting projects instead of disposable consumer goods, but it's still lifestyle inflation.
And I think that's what rubs some of these folks the wrong way. It seems like a betrayal of the principles he's (still?) pushing, because his current life undermines the message of his earlier work. You don't work for civil rights all through your 20s and 30s and then join the Klan in your 40s without getting called a hypocrite, or a disappointment. Your earlier work may have been and good and just, and maybe you've rationalized some way to make your Klan membership also feel good and just to you, but these two periods of your life are not compatible.
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Isn't the MMM story the same as every rich person's story? There's nothing magical about "spend much less than you earn and invest the difference" that literally ANY multimillionaire or billionaires doesn't already intuitively understand. The acquisition and preservation of wealth requires prudent financial management, a skill that you have to learn early, before you have wealth, in order to use effectively later, when you are rich. MMM hasn't cracked any secret code there, and like every fabulously wealthy person before him he has gradually increased his spending in line with his growing income and assets, using progressively more complicated shell businesses and tax-avoidance strategies to continue growing that wealth prudently.
These day's, Pete is just another rich guy. He seems like a pretty down-to-earth rich guy, but in the larger sense he's no different than the guy who owns 12 restaurants in your town, or the startup founder who sold to google in 2007, or the developer who built that 200-home retirement community your parents have been eyeing. He's a successful entrepreneur, the lucky individual who through hard work and good timing managed to amass a small fortune in our modern economy. He lives like them, jetsetting around the world to exotic locations. He eats like them, all fancy organic meats and craft beers and abundant recreational weed. He works like them, sheltering expenses in his businesses and turning down opportunities to deal with people he doesn't like. The only difference is that while living this capitalist fat cat's utopian lifestyle, he's somehow still stuck with the aftertaste of the project that brought him fame, the MMM-as-frugal-blogger persona.
Shake it off, Pete! Embrace your success! Go ahead and buy that yacht. Start a foundation, and put your name on a university building. Take up golf. Get yourself a top hat and monocle and accept that you've joined the ranks of America's elite successful small business owners. And whenever one of the peasants complains about the betrayal of your principles, just do what every rapper who lives in a mansion does: donate some money to the kids back in the projects to assuage any lingering guilt you might feel.