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The natural relationship to money is satisficing over a short averaging window, not maximizing over either short or long windows. Maximizing money is a pro sport for those who enjoy that intellectual challenge, not a meaningful thing for everybody.
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Of course there’s risk in the satisficing attitude. You never know what expensive emergencies will hit your life, or how much retirement will actually cost you, and whether you’re saving enough or not etc. But everything is risk management.
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Not taking enough time off the table today creates different kinds of risks (to health for instance, or even just to quality of existence, which for me involves a good deal of idle time, tv etc).
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And while I’d like to score FU$, and explore the full-leisure enmansioned life, that isn’t an overarching desperate goal. I enjoy work enough that I don’t mind devoting some time to it indefinitely. I am not working to stop working as many seem to be.
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I don’t think any kind of huge returns potential would get me working 100h/week. Only thing that can get me putting in that kind of intensity is actually enjoying the work OR avoiding serious risk of pain/destitution. Money is just not worth that kind of intense effort for me.
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Maximizing money returns on effort intensity only makes sense under 2 conditions: a) you enjoy the intellectual challenge b) you want to buy something specific within a specific time horizon that demands $X. Which is just uberrationality over a longer horizon.
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Of course many in the US who work to maximize money beyond what they have meaningful designs for, without enjoying the work, do so for some sort of vague social arrival/identity validation/class membership aspiration. Join the rich class. Some who make it even seem to enjoy it.
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Of course this is middle-class privilege talking. Your life has to be pretty shitty for marginal income of the 9th hour of work you don’t enjoy to beat value of day’s first leisure hour. If you’re working yourself out of an external or internal hellhole, max$ may be rational.
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Been reflecting on wealth and success (in conventional sense, which may involve some combination of wealth, fame, accomplishment, historic impact, etc) lately. Both are things I am not personally very motivated by. But they are not things I have a problem with either.
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Replying to
There’s an old pulp fiction hero named Travis MacGee who did detective hero jobs until he had enough cash to take time off, then repeat. His line was “I’m taking my retirement on the installment plan”.
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