What Does It Mean "to Shrug"?
Posted by CircuitGuy 10 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?
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Not all members returned to the outside world after their "vacation", in fact, I believe that Midas makes the comment that due to the disintegration of the outside world most everyone would soon be living there full-time.
I think that most people did live there full time at the point we are introduced to the gulch and those who were going to be soon were in the process of liquidating assets and purchasing what they would need for life in the gulch.
If that brief summery I made of the reasons some of the characters were in the gulch sounds familiar, I'd say it's almost like it has been written from the pages of todays newspapers as they cover the actions of our present government. The similarity is uncanny - and more than a bit scary.
Unfortunately, he landed in a position in the "private sector" ... (not sure that there is such a thing any longer) and he is often up against the same phenomenon.
They don't pay rent, toilet paper, utilities, etc until they're adults. They only receive money for things beyond what we consider normal responsibilities for their age.
Reduce your expenses. The main thing that keeps you in thrall to the state is a "need" for money. So strive for self-sufficiency. Plant a garden. Raise some livestock. Chickens are easy! Give up the distractions. Do you really need 200 television stations? If you're paying $70/month, that's the better part of a gand a year. Cell phones are another huge money pit. Even at $30/month, that's $360/year. What would you do if you weren't wasting all your time gabbing about pointless stuff to someone who doesn't really care in the first place? Internet - costs $20/month for the slow stuff. Most of the time, you're not using it. So strike a deal with your neighbor. Share via wi-fi. Use extension antennas - old DISH antennas work great! Shop cheap. Aldis has prices that make most other retailers weep. Forget the "name brands". It's the same stuff in a fancier box with charges tacked on for advertings. Cut out the middle man. You buy bread? At what cost? $2/loaf? $3? Pick up a bread machine at Goodwill for $10 and make your own bread for about 40 cents a loaf. Garden. Some crops are REALLY easy. No store-bought tomato will ever taste as good as home-grown. Peppers are easy (we're talking about the South here). Other foods that take a little longer, but are easy vary by locale: Bananas (which will be soaring in price over the next few years), Papaya, other fruits and nuts. The sooner you get started, the sooner you'll get results and the longer you get the benefit.
Combined, these reduce your costs and take a couple grand a year out of the economy. If you figure it's all worth $2000, then double that, because if you paid for it all, your income would be taxed at nearly 50%.
Pay off your mortgage. That takes a lot of pressure off. Make it your #1 priority.
Once you reach that point, your biggest expenses are utilities. Water, trash, power. Put in a well. Decline the local trash collection "services" (if you can). That's typically another $400/year ($800 in wages). You'll find that the amount of waste you produce is far less when you stop buying everything in stores. Compost!
If you're not working, suck down every socail welfare dollar you can find. You've paid into the system for years. Now it's time to take - and help slay Leviathan in the process. Push for collapse. In the meantime, use resources to improve your "gulch".
Don't understimate the value of security. A dog that barks, firearms, even security cameras, can be your best friends. If you have some spare cash, buy silver/gold. They WILL go up.
Join forces. If you know like-minded people, you can share resources. A roto-tiller is a useful tool for gardening. But it's not used enough in small gardens to make buying one worth while. But if you own a rototiller and loan it to someone who happens to be a welder, and they do work for someone who raises chickens... there's synergy. Barter outside the system.
You'll reach a point (especially with the mortgage paid off) where you can live on as little as a couple hundred dollars a month, and you can trade goods/services for that. If you go solar - you could be an economic "zero footprint".
Welcome to the gulch.
But if the being good always gets you nowhere, how did these great people become top business leaders in the first place?
Thanks for summary why they went to the Gulch. I had forgotten how the Gulch residents carried on working in different jobs on the outside. This makes me think that they're shrugging was NOT just about moving to the Gulch but rather about stopping trying so hard on the outside and just gave average effort. I imagined before the Gulch had average people, but this definition average people can't shrug b/c they only have average abilities to offer in the first place. I'm thinking this through for the first time.
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