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Early Retirement (2006)

philip.greenspun.com

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Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#301

Post by lotsofpulp »

brewdad wrote: post #289
lotsofpulp wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I am talking about the total cost of insurance, not just the portion of the cost of insurance that an employer asks an employee to pay. Just because an employer is paying for $18k out of $20k of your annual health insurance premiums (again, check code DD box 12 of your W2), does not mean that health insurance costs (meaningfully) less for an employer. It is simply a portion of your total compensation, which bo…

The employer's cost for my health insurance is largely irrelevant to me, the employee. There is zero reason that if my employer's cost was zero, that those dollars would be passed along to me unless the employment market forced them to.

Your specific total compensation is not affected by the employer paid portion of health insurance, but all compensation across all employees across all businesses is surely affected (the money for the health insurance has to come from somewhere).

But back to my original point, is that the quality and cost of health insurance on healthcare.gov is comparable to what employers offer (many times it is the same product sold by same insurer). And it is at the same cost, just the tax treatment differs when an employer pays for a portion of it.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#302

Post by 52-6F-62 »

hnfong wrote: post #220
52-6F-62 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely you can read it to death and still glean nothing from it. I don't know how many times I've had to reread, and I usually continue to do so. And to that end it takes more than just reading it, but if one wants to ask some profound questions about the world around oneself now that one doesn't have someone breathing down one's neck then one should probably start where others left off. It'll save a little time.…

The counter argument is that "philosophers" could be dead wrong. Imagine the range of different philosophies that existed in various times and places. Popular interpretations of philosophical texts could be wrong (referring to your suggestion of reading an encyclopedia). You might not even understand the "right" question in the first place. My personal experience is that giving the problem space a bit of thought and…

I think I would recommend reading about some of those philosophies you consider "dead wrong" and how they came to be.

Once you start to understand how they were formed in the first place, I think you would be less ready to deride them.

In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that".

But what you'll find is that that one notion you may have figured out on your own is itself a nuance of a larger system of understandings. That you'll find a lot more work has been done than you realized to understand and prove each of those notions to the best of our collective knowledge.

Then you'll understand why grabbing a single notion and anchoring to it like the author is doing is so fundamentally flawed that it's not a positive exercise.

To use the "rich man's spiritual" reference again: the "rich man" of the poem is basing his salvation on the idea that he has to have enough of whatever new thing he decides is between him and heaven/salvation/happiness before he can ever attain it.

The "rich man" put that barrier there, himself. He created the frame for his experience and bound himself to it by creating it in the first place. In the poem, the central character is making the declaration that he needs more to defend his existing material accumulations, so it's not exactly a 1:1. But that kind of self-imposed framework based on nothing grounded can be self-limiting. It can make it hard to understand real fundamentals.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#303

Post by 52-6F-62 »

nafizh wrote: post #277
52-6F-62 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely you can read it to death and still glean nothing from it. I don't know how many times I've had to reread, and I usually continue to do so. And to that end it takes more than just reading it, but if one wants to ask some profound questions about the world around oneself now that one doesn't have someone breathing down one's neck then one should probably start where others left off. It'll save a little time.…

I think we are talking about two different things. If you are talking about logic, formalism and objectively verifiable things, sure, I totally agree with you. But I am talking about principles that should govern life. Unless you pivot to a Higher moral Authority, I am just taking things to their logical end and saying morality is arbitrary and no amount of philosophy will change that.

We might be.

But we also might not be. However we might be getting into dangerously personal territory there since we're approaching remarks on belief systems and people get pretty touchy about that kind of thing.

I'm curious how think that taking things to their logical end means morality is arbitrary.

My understanding puts everything onto a pretty firm plane that leads me to understand that anything I do to others I'm doing to myself. That's enough to guide my actions accordingly.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#304

Post by 52-6F-62 »

mvp wrote: post #255
52-6F-62 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is making a lot of assumptions about fundamental matters of philosophy and human psychology. For instance, before we escape the first phrase in the section you quoted the author assumed that hard work and adversity run contradictory to happiness—or even actively oppose it. I left the Gordon Lightfoot reference for a reason: the pleading of people for more material resources as the only road to their person…

It is unavoidable for the kind of article the author is writing. He is trying to give the perspective of a person who has 'been there'. This I imagine is very interesting to read for people who want to 'be there' or going to. For them, an article that doesn't deal too deeply into philosophy may be more appealing. This is possible only if the author makes a lot of assumptions. And of course, if you don't agree with th…

I didn't introduce the philosophical notions myself. The author makes plentiful use of them, but inaccurately.

That's worse than not using them.

It's like pasting

    rm -rf /
in an article about Fun Bash Commands. People who know enough won't be harmed, and either find it funny or moronic. But those who don't know enough can be injured.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#305

Post by spacedcowboy »

nly wrote: post #292
toomuchtodo wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some might say you're giving your son a gift having citizenship in both the US and the UK. Options are freedom.

Must be raging that that doesn't include EU citizenship now

What can I say ? Idiots.

Not that I had any say, I've been out of the country too long to vote now.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#306

Post by _k9eq »

jaybe1234 wrote: post #297
_k9eq wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your opposition to capitalism is based on idealistic notions of morality, you have to accept that it is the predominant mode of production that society involuntarily finds itself in. Marx was financed by Engels, a factory owner and capitalist, and if he had refused to do so on principle, he would have probably never gotten around to write any of his theory (regardless of what one things of it). Money disassoci…

Capitalism by it's nature is exploitative. You work for me and I pay you less than your labor is worth so I make a profit. It's a system built on greed and profit and is most certainly unethical. The system privileges the top unconditionally. Think what you want, but let's not pretend that capitalism is an ethical system where the laborer isn't exploited.

Exploitation is not an ethical question, it is necessary for societies that a discrepancy exists between the value of labour invested and the value of the return. Otherwise you'd have a society where only those who work would be rewarded, and the ill, the elderly and children would get nothing.

Capitalism doesn't require greed, in the abstract it is just a condition whereby some must sell their labour and others have to buy it. In practice, there are of course a number of issues when production revolved about value accumulation, and it breaks down when the reproduction of society on a material level becomes unprofitable.

Capitalism is the rule by Capital, the impersonal forces that emerge from the structures based on the wage-labour relation. Capitalists, insofar they still exist, are (well-treated) servants, but they have no autonomy and are not rulers. Some stand to gain more than others, naturally, but the need to moralize capitalism is the consequence of weak theory, not something inherent to the system.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#307

Post by mathattack »

ghaff wrote: post #279
mathattack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar. My old man went back to his old job as a consultant. It was supposed to be 20 hours a week and quickly turned into 40. Then he gradually reduced over time.

Probably my ideal thing would be some project-based (non-dev) consulting that wasn't too many hours and that let me disappear for a month here and there. I'm not sure I could really count on that though--especially without a lot of beating of bushes--which leads me to put in a bit more time while I easily can.

There’s a market for snowbirds who work half the year. You just have to be Visibly Very Good at something.

Re: Early Retirement (2006)

#308

Post by hnfong »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #302
hnfong wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter argument is that "philosophers" could be dead wrong. Imagine the range of different philosophies that existed in various times and places. Popular interpretations of philosophical texts could be wrong (referring to your suggestion of reading an encyclopedia). You might not even understand the "right" question in the first place. My personal experience is that giving the problem space a bit of thought and…

I think I would recommend reading about some of those philosophies you consider "dead wrong" and how they came to be. Once you start to understand how they were formed in the first place, I think you would be less ready to deride them. In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that". But what you'll find is that that one notion you may have figured out on y…

I totally understand how philosophies, whether wrong or not, came to be: some random person with an interesting idea wrote it down, taught it to others, and others liked it enough to keep sharing it or further adapt/adopt it.

Through this process, things that have withstood the test of time are probably worth a look, but then with time comes a loss of context and relevance.

I mean, I wasn't even saying most/all/many philosophies are dead wrong. It's all about the signal to noise ratio after you've read more than a couple books. You'd be a fool to blindly believe in the process of how ancient wisdom is passed down mostly by a long standing popularity contest. Worse, even good ideas come with "addons" and extra baggage that needs to be thrown out, because ancient elders knew that common people wouldn't understand the core ideas and thus attached "click baity" stuff to ensure the ideas keep passed down over generations.

> In fact, I'll bet you it entices you because you'll end up catching yourself saying "hey, I thought of that".

Sure, this happens often. I consider this independent validation of my own ideas. Without this independent "verification" process, you're almost taking what you read on faith. (yes, the explanations or justifications they give are often not the real ones...)

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