61–70 of 164 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And when compared to air travel and hotel stays (which come with large water and heat costs associated with daily laundry) it's actually less of a carbon footprint.
People don't stay in hotels getting daily laundry for months at a time
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> low-efficiency vehicles Tangent: Are these actually low efficiency? Sure, 10 mpg (this is a more typical average, BTW, not 8 mpg) is terrible gas mileage ... for an average car. But a portable house that can drive down the interstate isn't just a car. Per pound, it doesn't seem that bad.
And when compared to air travel and hotel stays (which come with large water and heat costs associated with daily laundry) it's actually less of a carbon footprint.
The average 2017 car in the US got 25mpg. So with a 15+mpg difference, you'd need to either drive 5 miles or less per day (0.3g difference), OR average 100 miles per day and have the hotels wash the laundry 20x as much.
Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention. Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc. It's important to maintain ho…
And because of the high fuel consumption of RVs, you’d get greater cost/energy advantage with electric than you would for a small efficient commuter.
Yes, it's sort of clickbait-y. You don't need to feel like you're about to wither and die because you just turned 44.
Yes, it's deeply anecdotal. Lots of older people are incredibly successful in their fields. That 65-year old engineer you know is great!
But frankly, it doesn't matter who you are, or what you do: you will begin to get worse at it some day. And if you define your value by how good you are at this thing, you're gonna feel pretty shitty when you can't do it any more. For a forum that is defined around the development of technical and business skills, I would think that would resonate a little bit.
It doesn't seem like such a crazy idea to me that we need to redefine our own self worth as we age and change. And I think the author provides some excellent advice in that respect, particularly in his exhortations to Serve and Connect.
Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention. Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc. It's important to maintain ho…
While I share your antipathy for low-efficiency vehicles, why is traveling around the national parks of the west a sad way to spend your retirement years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The need to be productive for society until the day you die may have been a requirement in the past, but encouraging that today just sounds depressing.
To be fair, the definition of "productivity" has changed a lot since the start of the industrial revolution too, from "helping your community make ends meet" to "engaging in soul-crushing, inhuman labour to make a group of wealthy investors who actively campaign against your well-being even wealthier".
Not much left to better the community when keeping yourself fed and clothed[1] is two full-time jobs. And that's for free-persons, who aren't serfs, slaves, or indentured labourers.
[1] Prior to industrialization, it took something close to ~3,000 work-hours a year[2] to keep a family barely-clothed. Add another thousand or three if you wanted to have a change of clothes for Sundays.
[2] https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I share your antipathy for low-efficiency vehicles, why is traveling around the national parks of the west a sad way to spend your retirement years?
Personally, RVs kind of miss the point of tooling around nature if one can wimp out and retreat to a house-on-wheels
So what you're saying is if I already don't feel useful in my early 40s I'm pretty screwed.
Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention. Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc. It's important to maintain ho…
Given the hack job that is AEI, I think the author's professional decline arrived much, much sooner than even he thought.
https://www.aei.org/articles/counterpoint-unions-are-irrelev...
"A one-size-fits-all union-type compensation contract with pay determined mostly by seniority and not merit is no longer desirable or relevant for the workers of the 21st century."