It's interesting seeing how humans are deciding to forgo one of the most innate patterns of life itself, passing their own genes via these phenomenons. It's almost as if it's a 'invisible hand' regulating the population by cornering people to prefer an achievable amount of pleasure (retire early, travel, etc) by trading it for not having offspring. This also relates to all the news about the rise of 'despair deaths'. No jobs, no way to ensure offspring a quality life, therefore game over for those genes. It is a big claim that these communities don't have kids, I would want more evidence of that before jumping to conclusions but if that's the case it's pretty crazy to read about.
I have been a digital nomad for 8 years of my life and my partner and I (also digital nomad for 2+ years) had actively decided to become parents and have a 2 years old daughter. We do live as expats in Budapest where the cost/quality of living ratio is better with a foreign salary.
I did attend a couple of FIRE meetups in Budapest last year.<p>I think the article is discussing a lot of real problems but is assuming too much cause/effect rather than just correlation.<p>I think many of these movements make sense now BECAUSE travel is easier and millenials are not marrying or are having less kids anyway.<p>The FIRE movement is quite helpful anyway to start to manage your savings and debt. There is a lot of exchange of knowledge about ETF and passive investing.
In the line of the lifestyle blog <a href="https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/</a>
By Retire Early most people intend actually "Retire Early from a job you dislike" and keep working on something you enjoy.<p>I'm from Italy which with Japan is one of the countries in the world with the steepest population decline. Fast population decline with an older population is a though new challenge we'll have to face consciounsly soon.
> Having children is very expensive, so it’s hard to make that work with FIRE. On the other hand, van life and tiny houses are logistically prohibitive to having children.<p>This is debatable. If neither parent is working and they have the time and knowledge to homeschool their kids, having children becomes cheaper since the parents don't need daycare, a nanny, an expensive private school, etc.<p>People of all social classes have been having kids since the dawn of humanity. Kids can be as cheap or as expensive as you want if you don't have to worry about working 9-to-5 at the same time.
I agree with the underlying conclusion but there is one thing you said but did not properly reason about:<p>> On the other hand, van life and tiny houses are logistically prohibitive to having children.<p>This is just not true. Only here in the wealthy west people think they need a big house to have children. In the rest of the world you will see whole families living in one tiny room together.<p>Also there is a lot of valid reasons not to put children into this world without being part of some lifestyle romance.
Affordable homes aren't being built for Millennials. I predict there will be assisted suicide by the time most turn 60 and people will just turn to that service. I also assume the generations to come will look back on this time period as how the generations before the Millennials really threw a group of people into despair for their own well being.
I disagree, while financial aspect is important but it is not the only factor why folks choose these kind of lifestyles.<p>First, having a kid these days might not actually be a good idea, with 7 billion people and counting, uncertaining future job market and the huge expense required to raise a functional kid in modern society. Previous generations never had those obligation or constrains and kids were able to contribute to their farms/income from early age.<p>Second, technology allowed for lifestyles that were not even feasible in the past, it is really obvious and I don't think I need to elaborate on that.<p>Last, humans were nomads settling.<p>To sum up not everyone wants to live the mainstream lifestyle. So it could be due to preference and choice rather than financial pressures only.
reminded me of the “premium mediocre” view of millennials coping with downward mobility <a href="https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l...</a>
I love how the narrative is spun on these things.<p>It's not individuals making decisions about how to live their own lives.<p>Its they, the all encompassing shadowy cabal who wants to tempt naive young people into living in vans, and preposterous less then 5000 sqft houses, with their secret goal of impoverishing everybody.<p>Or maybe there are just people who prefer those things? Surely occams razor prefers the shadowy cabal though...<p>It's like an exaggerated version of the peasents from the Monty python sketch on the anarcho syndacislist commune.<p>.
Powerful post. Unfortunately no potential solutions are explored. Ideas? Is it a matter of figuring out how to shift/part wealth from the ultra wealthy of the world? Or develop a means of building wealth at lower costs? Of course limited land is still an issue. Even if you got cheap land in a remote area, you're likely to be disconnected from the world without running water, electricity, and internet.
Hilarious how entitled the author is. It's delusional to believe that millennials, or anyone else for that matter, are owed living in some of the most expensive cities on the planet.<p>So many people just BELIEVE that if you fumble through college, you're magically owed an affordable, nice house/apartment in some of the most desirable metros on the face of the planet.
Lots of "fashionable" millennial hipster trend things were just normal stuff that were bought by millennials because they were poor artists or working class.
eg. converse shoes, pabst blue ribbon, thrift finds.<p>Oh oh it's so ironic uh no it's stuff millennials can afford because they're poor af.
This is bubble talk. I don't know anybody that went to my undergrad that is remotely interested in any of these except remote work, which was promised to everyone as soon as broadband became available to common people in the '90s. Poor folks aren't the ones blogging about van life, they're the ones that <i>live in their cars in Menlo Park</i>. Meanwhile, the classmates that didn't leave my state have either already purchased houses or are planning to within the next year. Mind you these aren't rich folks, these are folks making $75k a year at best, half of what a Princeton CS grad would make. I've talked to them about FIRE'ing before and got a blank look on their face. The only thing they do is max out their 401k, if that.<p>This isn't a case of "resource constraints" making poverty fashionable. It's a case of out of touch elites trying desperately to either "rough it" for the sake of the experience they never had or to aggressively retire at the age of 30. The median student loan debt burden is closer to $0 than $100k, and while growing and maintaining inter-generational wealth is a massive problem for communities of color because of persistent housing discrimination, I really don't see these folks represented in the communities OP's article mentions.<p>..that is, of course, if this isn't a partially GPT-3 generated blog as speculated here [0] but there do seem to be active responses from the author, so it just appears to be pseudonymous.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23952750" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23952750</a>
Rent seeking capitalists have managed to work their way into every corner of life. There <i>is</i> no way for a significant portion of the population to produce a personal surplus, because 'markets' will be quick to funnel this into ever fewer pocket, thanks to the neoliberal tools they've managed to convince us were necessary for 'business' to not be 'choked' by government. Two working partners, working in well paying jobs in large cities, it doesn't matter, you're not going to keep your surplus.<p>Apart from being lucky and be either born or get a lottery ticket into the 0.01%, the only way I see of building up your surplus (without expending your body with working 80hrs+ for 40+ years) is checking out of usual patterns, patterns that are still not being eaten up by rent seekers. Like a good job on the perifery of your country rather than in/near commercial/industrial centers. And vote labour, of course. In the end, only law can end rent seeking, and for that, we need to stop believing the economy musnt be under our control rather than the reverse.