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Lumifer comments on Open thread, September 8-14, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The answer really depends on the underlying value system. For example, most varieties of hedonism would find nothing wrong with retiring to the life of leisure at thirty. But if you value, say, self-actualization (a la Maslow), retiring early is a bad idea.
Generally speaking, the experience of the so-called trust fund kids indicates that NOT having to work for a living is bad for you. You can also compare housewives to working women.
If you want want to self-actualize in a way that does not (reliably, or soon enough) bring money, retiring early can be useful.
I think there's some lack of clarity in this thread about what it means to "retire". There are two interpretations (see e.g. this post):
(1) Retire means financial independence, not having to work for a living, so that you can focus your energy on what you want to do instead of what you have to do.
(2) Retire means a carefree life of leisure where you maximize your hedonics by doing easy and pleasant things and not doing hard and stressful things.
I think these two ways of retiring are quite different and lead to different consequences.
I meant to imply the former, albeit with the possibility "what you want to do" is not restricted from including leisure/hedonics/pleasure.
Technically, yes, though people mostly use (1) to mean doing something purposeful, an activity after which you can point and say "I made that", while (2) is essentially trying to get as close to wireheading as you currently can :-)
Fair enough :)
Thank you for responding. Is there a reason you think it is a bad idea beyond Lumifer says so?
I have thought about reading up on housewives, but not asking (the women's studies experts I know are VERY sensitive in their field, but quite engaging in others, so I'm afraid to talk shop). Could you recommend a source on each side?
Sorry, don't have any links handy, but you should be able to google up trust-fund kids' issues quite easily. With respect to housewives it's mostly personal observations aka anecdata. I would be wary of studies on the subject as it is a political minefield and a hard thing to research due to confounders and fuzzy definitions.
Yeah, likely to get hit over the latter :).
The former is very familiar to me in my circles, and if anything they are more happy/fulfilled/productive than the wage reliant, though both extremes exist in both groups.
I am not saying that working for a living is necessarily better, my point is that being financially independent has its own particular failure mode the existence of which should be taken into account.
That's a very good point and too often neglected. There's too much betterness in folks' thoughts, not enough differentness, and the "best" situations fail in different ways than the "worst," which can succeed spectacularly in their own right.