What Does It Mean "to Shrug"?
Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 10 months ago to Economics
I hear people say they're a few years away from shrugging or they're considering shrugging. What does that mean? I have thought of five levels of shrugging.
5. Try Something New: Sell or close one business and start doing paid work in some form and/or start a business in less regulated industry. Keep your wealth invested as before.
4. Partially Retire: Stop working for money but keep your wealth invested as before and possibly act as an angel investor and mentor for entrepreneurs just starting or take occasional consulting projects.
3. Fully Retire: Stop all paid work in all forms. Invest all wealth in large funds that don't require any management work on your part. Make no angel investments and no real estate investments except for REITs that require no work or management involvement on your part, apart from passively reading prospectuses. Accept no paid positions on boards and no indirect payments of any kind. You can still do unpaid work like helping your kids do repairs, but just for the joy of it, not in trade.
2. Fully Retire with No Investments – Put all your wealth in things that don't generate new income or value, such as precious metals and undeveloped land. You can sell the land and metals to get money to spend at for-profit businesses to provide for your needs, but you personally are not trying to make any profit or taxable income.
1. Atlas-Shrugged Shrug: Take all the wealth you can carry to a hidden “Gulch” settlement. Destroy the rest to the extent it's practical. Abandon or destroy all wealth that exists on the outside world.
Numbers 5 through 3 still involve a lot of participation in the economy and are things even people with no problems with the government do. With #2, you've mostly checked out but you're still feeding the economy by consuming goods and services.
I love the notion that there might be small secret Gulches of sorts were people could move. I hope people build a large one, maybe a non-secret Gulch, within my lifetime.
Assuming there's not a secret Gulch you know of, what does it mean to say, “I'm frustrated with the gov't, and I'm considering _shrugging_ at some point in the next five years.” What does that mean?
5. Try Something New: Sell or close one business and start doing paid work in some form and/or start a business in less regulated industry. Keep your wealth invested as before.
4. Partially Retire: Stop working for money but keep your wealth invested as before and possibly act as an angel investor and mentor for entrepreneurs just starting or take occasional consulting projects.
3. Fully Retire: Stop all paid work in all forms. Invest all wealth in large funds that don't require any management work on your part. Make no angel investments and no real estate investments except for REITs that require no work or management involvement on your part, apart from passively reading prospectuses. Accept no paid positions on boards and no indirect payments of any kind. You can still do unpaid work like helping your kids do repairs, but just for the joy of it, not in trade.
2. Fully Retire with No Investments – Put all your wealth in things that don't generate new income or value, such as precious metals and undeveloped land. You can sell the land and metals to get money to spend at for-profit businesses to provide for your needs, but you personally are not trying to make any profit or taxable income.
1. Atlas-Shrugged Shrug: Take all the wealth you can carry to a hidden “Gulch” settlement. Destroy the rest to the extent it's practical. Abandon or destroy all wealth that exists on the outside world.
Numbers 5 through 3 still involve a lot of participation in the economy and are things even people with no problems with the government do. With #2, you've mostly checked out but you're still feeding the economy by consuming goods and services.
I love the notion that there might be small secret Gulches of sorts were people could move. I hope people build a large one, maybe a non-secret Gulch, within my lifetime.
Assuming there's not a secret Gulch you know of, what does it mean to say, “I'm frustrated with the gov't, and I'm considering _shrugging_ at some point in the next five years.” What does that mean?
The American Dream is being supplanted by the Utopian Dream. More accurately the Utopian nightmare of tyranny of subjugation and servitude to the state masters that decide what your hopes and dreams SHOULD be. What your abilities should be. What your level of production should be. What your "fair share" contribution to the collective should be. What your thoughts should be. Where your devotion to the collective should be.
From those according to their ability, to those according to their need.
It makes me sick. I shrug Utopia and all that it represents. Death.
Cheers
Thank you for your comment. I notice your use of the passive voice: "you are seen [by some group] as nothing more..." I think what you're saying is you don't care what that unnamed group sees you as, and I agree completely. There are countless groups who see you as all kinds of things.
First of all, remember that Galt's Gulch in the NOVEL, is a respite until the collapse of the moocher's world. That happens and Galt and all the others start back into the world at the end of the novel to remake it in a producers' construct..
So, essentially we have to face the realities of the real world. As I see it, the US will descend into an England social-welfare type state. Democracy favors the will of the masses. Social-welfare programs over individual responsibility/self-realization. That is, the primary purpose of the politician under the current democratic construct is to get re-elected.. The easiest way for that, as we see, is pass social-welfare programs to get re-elected
The bottom line for that is TERM LIMITS FOR ALL POLITICIANS. The only question is if enough of us are smart enough to get enough people together to get that accomplished.
To save the founding principles of the United States. Written on this July 4 weekend from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Harry M
I have had things happen in my life over the past decade that have made me sure that if you're a working middle-class family man in America you are seen as nothing more than livestock and a source of revenue. I have adjusted my life in response in my own style of going Galt. I no longer participate in charity. I actually work more, but that's because I am self-employed. I do it only to help me, my wife and kids. Some of the work I do places me in a very good place, financially.
Being awake may be the first step in going Galt, in my case.
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