Early Retirement Extreme

— a combination of simple living, anticonsumerism, DIY ethics, self-reliance, resilience, and applied capitalism

The implications of financial freedom

Published in July 3rd, 2025
Posted by in Early Retirement, Philosophy
45 Comments

Freedom can only be meaningfully defined in terms of a restriction on something else. A freedom for person A is necessarily a limitation on person B. For instance, if A is free from being shot, B is not free to shoot A. This is so simple to understand, that it is hard to explain. This […]

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Zero-sum games

Published in July 1st, 2025
Posted by in Philosophy, Strategy
12 Comments

Game theory is the mathematical description of the structure of strategic decisions when the choices of two agents directly influence the other. Much work has been dedicated towards finding optimal strategies; in fact much military and political strategy is built on mathematical foundations, but it also governs economic decisions. Consequently some knowledge of game theory […]

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Explaining ERE with a kitchen analogy

Published in June 30th, 2025
Posted by in Early Retirement, Philosophy
5 Comments

It is usually quite hard to explain ERE to someone who has been raised as a consumer with materialistic values. A very common first objection upon learning the size of my budget is that they either can’t or won’t “sacrifice” that much. I then try to explain that I’m not really sacrificing, I just do […]

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