It’s interesting how values come across when evaluating this engineering triangle. For fun, assume a consumerist mindset for a moment. Cost (cheap/expensive) becomes upfront forgone consumption, time is roughly the same, and value lifetime consumption.

ERE becomes undesirable as it’s expensive and bad, though fast. This explains why our culture has trouble understanding ERE. From their value statement, we have a whole other vector we could have improved. We sacrificed everything for speed as they don’t understand our value statement.

The traditional lifestyle is cheap and good still. High current consumption, good total consumption, but a long time till independence.

Cheap and fast would be selling everything to move abroad to a lower cost of living area after a few years of enjoying their stuff. Or perhaps, to some consumers travel can be a form of consumption so the location independent lifestyles would fit here and that may be why these lifestyles are more easily understood.

Fast and good would be starting a successful bootstrapped business while throwing your whole life into it, or maybe forgoing purchases now to invest and consume more later (while still working).

Interesting. I’ve never heard of it before but I distrust it. There’s a knee jerk impulse in human beings to take a model and extend it beyond its usefulness.

I’ve a hypothesis that astrology may be an example. In Antiquity there was no distinction between astrology and astronomy (and most of higher math for that matter). But ancient star gazers clued in early on the stars could tell you when the seasons would change and by extension what the weather was going to be and gave info on how to manage their agricultural cycles. This wisdom got extended past that to actually predicting the future in the most metaphysical sense and astrology started it’s path to becoming a seperate discipline. Silliness ensued.

Also, the terms are vague, especially for engineering.
“Cheap” – cheap in what? Money, labor, stress, cookies, intellectual input?
“Fast” – fast in terms of days and months? Or fast compared to competitors, arbitrary deadlines, or seasonal/economic/social cycles?
“Good” – good from a moral view (and who’s morals?). Or good in terms of durability, user friendliness, market price, marketability, aesthetics, function, etc.

I disagree: “The normal way of life is cheap and good. If you save 10% per year and simply do what everybody else does, namely get a career, you will reach the same robust position of financial stability. However, it’s not going to be fast. It will take you 30-50 years, but slow is the cost of cheap and easy.”

Do you really hate your job/career that much?

It’s funny because similar to you if I want to retire early I can because my living cost will be extremely low. I don’t enjoy drinking, I don’t mind cheap food, I have no preference on luxrious lodging, if I retire I would probably spend the rest of my life at a small basement alone watching anime and playing my vast collection of Steam games bought during sales and bundles (I have a 700+ PC games collection on steam). But is this a life I want to spend for only $12k a year for the rest of my life? I could, but then it would be not exciting and I rather make more money and experience life and watching anime and play video games when I’m old and possibly senile.