I always feel a combination of sadness and relief when I read this thread. It's by far the most fascinating "Race from $X to $X" thread on these forums.
One of the concepts that's truly resonated over the past half decade of frequenting this community (and others like it), is the notion that;
standard of living = skill* X cost of living, where skill for the average wage slave consumer = 1
Skill being more clearly defined as skill leverage, efficiency factor, etc.
In order to increase ones perceived standard of living, they could spend more money, or increase their skill/efficiency of spending the money/income they have.
This thread seems to skew to the side that is focused on more money = higher standard of living, with very little emphasis on skill. Due to the high income/high earner lifestyle trappings, many appear to have a skill = <1
This is very bad, if your goal is freedom from wage slavery.
Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite books;
"The disenchanted grumble about "the system" or "the man." The analogy of "the system" is
the people walking around behind the chained slaves, keeping them going. However, it's mainly
the slaves themselves who keep themselves going. We don't realize that we maintain this system
by lack of imagination and questioning. Like birds, which never seem to have a flight plan, yet
always seem to fly together in a swarming flock, we don't question. We obediently pick whatever
options are handed to us, often choosing based on what our neighbors have chosen. We make
the best of the shadows on the wall, but we do not question the wall. The best prison is the one
with invisible bars.
Perhaps one reason for this complacency is the large quantity of material goods available to
the chain gang. Material goods are often used as compensation. Frequently, when someone is
depressed, the advice is "Go out and spend some money. Buy yourself something nice. Treat
yourself. Try a little retail therapy." People don't seem to realize that this attempt to feel good is
exactly what propagates the problem. Compared to people just 50 years ago, modern wage
slaves live a life of material abundance. They're consumers. They have big-screen TVs, movies
on demand, microwave ovens, food processors, and 24-piece flatware. They own multiple pairs of
shoes and enough clothes for more than a week without doing laundry. They have carpeted
floors, matching furniture, and vacuum cleaners. They have expensive toys. They have car
payments, college degrees, five-bedroom/three-bathroom mortgages, laptop computers, cell
phone contracts, power tools with 108-piece bit sets, premium cable, air conditioning systems,
blenders, food processors, pool tables, DVD players, and granite countertops. They redecorate,
attend sporting events, go on vacations, and occasionally play with their toys.
Society has made it very easy to spend money. Shopping centers line every street. Many
creative means of spending money have been devised. Instead of spending 30 seconds opening
a can of tomatoes with a traditional can opener, it's now possible to spend 30 minutes working to
pay for an electric can opener that can open the can in the same amount of time. Similarly, many
of the ways we used to do things have been redesigned to ensure that instead of doing it
ourselves, we can buy some gadget or some service to have it done for us. This is convenient,
because we're usually too busy working to pay for it to do it ourselves. This is the gist of the
service economy; presumably, if we didn't create enough problems to spend time solving them,
the economy would collapse.
To speed up consumption, it's possible to obtain loans and spend money that's yet to be
earned. All it requires is a promise of increased amounts of work in the future, and a commitment
of up to 30 years to pay the money back--plus twice the amount in interest. Lots of personal
finance gurus are willing to charge you money (some will do it for free) to advise you as to exactly
how to distribute your money into retirement plans, college savings plans, mortgages, credit
cards, etc. to maximize your lifetime consumption. Success and power are equated with spending
money.
It usually starts with toys for the children and quickly evolves to cell phones and fashionable
clothes. Many realize that demonstrating their personal values through the color and build of their
cell phone is perhaps inadequate and then move on to bigger and more expensive propositions
like large cars, redecorating, or kitchen renovating. Not that there's anything wrong with such
creative outlets, but the scale of these "projects" is often mind-boggling, with tens of thousands
being spent on marginal increases in functionality. The old but typically fully functioning items are
discarded, especially if they have those ugly 1970s earth tone colors, or that bland 1980s beige,
or whatever we had in the 1990s, etc. Try for a moment to envision the large pile of abandoned
yet functional telephones, TVs, furniture, toys, old clothes and shoes, LPs, CDs, and packaging
material that you have discarded so far in your life. Such stuff doesn't magically disappear. It goes
somewhere, typically a landfill. Now multiply that by several hundred million people--not cool! In
the same vein, tally up the sum total of your earned income so far, subtract your savings, and
compare the difference to your pile of stuff. Was it really a good deal?
Is spending the most productive years of your life chained to the job market to collect a lot of
rarely used stuff that gathers dust in the closet or takes up space in junkyards a wise choice?
Were you really born just to die, leaving a large pile of discarded consumer goods? Probably not.
I realize that not wanting a house full of things makes me look weird and recently even
"unpatriotic." After all, more is better, and who doesn't want to be better? But perhaps conformity
is not the only way to live. In fact, by taking the other end of the bargain, saving as much as other
people are spending on wants, it's possible to retire and live on invested savings after just five
years of full-time work. Rather than increasing the amount of work to acquire more stuff, reducing
this superficial need reduces the amount of necessary work. It's possible to reduce the amount of
work all the way down to zero: financial independence. Indeed, playing the shadow game for five
years provides a permanent way out of the cave. Alternatively, it's also possible to return to the
cave for a few months every year to earn money for the next adventure out of the cave. This is
living on the economy, so to speak, rather than living in the economy."
-JLF
Topic: Race from $2M to $4M...and Beyond! (Read 1447146 times)
