Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> The number of good answers is endless.

So why wait until retirement to start seeking them?

> Working is slavery, however you want to slice it.

This is a thought-terminating cliche. Slavery is slavery. Working is an arrangement you enter into voluntarily with a series of pros and cons for all participants. Is the CEO if a company a slave? The researcher who finds a cure for a disease a family member died from? A musician in a touring band? An author with a book deal?

It's your life and I respect your choice to live it how you want, but if you have an idea that work is a thing to be suffered for as little as possible until you reach payday and then you retire and your real life starts... you are almost certainly on track for a completely miserable life both before and after your retirement.

Take a look at the kind of people who have the greatest life satisfaction. How many of them went down the FIRE path versus building their entire life in a meaningful way?

What you’re saying is undeniably true. At the same time when one considers high-tech as practiced by Silicon Valley and Seattle big tech companies and startups, it’s easy to see how people could become cynical towards work. Cultish company cultures, dishonest pontificating business leaders, market forces that incentivize disloyalty, undergirded by some truly unaffordable housing costs- it’s easy to see how people can get burned out by false promises of work, at least in this industry. It doesn’t help that tech is particularly preachy in its delusions of morality, unlike say, the financial industry.

And as with such industries or industry scenes where big amounts of money involved, as in Wall Street or Hollywood, people who get into Silicon Valley tend to view things through a purely transactional lens after a while. After all, that’s how these workplaces view them- not as repositories of higher meaning, but as interchange economic producers. Such is the nature of dumb money.

Seeking financial independence is more about having the freedom to choose whether to keep working or not. Many pursue the FI over the RE and find great joy and meaning in their work. If you'd be in deep trouble if you suddenly lost your job because you're not financially independent, then yes I think you're a slave to your job. People in FIRE communities constantly say to build the life you want to live and then save for it. Not enjoying the journey is a FIRE failure.

Until you have the option to not work at all, working might not be slavery but it’s definitely farther down the spectrum towards it than say, a retirees choices for their life. Getting financially independent removes the coercion that comes with all wage based work

The more your family's healthcare is dependent on your employer the less it a voluntary arrangement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com