Based Camp - Austerity is the New Hedonism

00:00:00.000 Hello, gorgeous. Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. And what I wanted to talk about today was just a thought that came to me in sort of the younger groups where I'm like, these are like the cool, competent, younger people I know. And this trend I see of austerity is the new hedonism.

00:00:20.420 And then I started to think about this line more. And I was like, well, let's elaborate on this. It is voluntary austerity is the new involuntary hedonism.

00:00:35.520 And when I brought this to you, something that you pointed out that I thought was really interesting is that hedonism is always involuntary.

00:00:48.740 And austerity is always voluntary. To have less due to reasons outside of your control is just poverty.

00:01:00.120 Yes.

00:01:01.620 It's not austerity. Austerity is intentional self-regulation. Whereas with hedonism, because it is being driven by your internal instincts, things that you did not choose to want to feel, it is always a thing that you are approaching outside of your control.

00:01:20.500 Would you like to know more?

00:01:21.560 So I wanted you to elaborate on this topic in terms of how it relates to the world today and social status.

00:01:28.460 Yeah. And I do think that there are different layers to this because some of the layers are just new forms of hedonism, I would argue.

00:01:38.260 And I mean, I'd even argue...

00:01:39.060 Elaborate on what you mean by that. Give some examples.

00:01:41.300 Yeah. Well, I mean, I would argue that the dopamine hit that I get from saving money is similar to the dopamine hit that many people get from spending money.

00:01:51.280 And whereas spending money really stresses me out.

00:01:54.240 I don't know about this. One of your favorite shows these days, so people who don't know this,

00:01:58.300 she talks about it all the time. It's like her core guilty pleasure show right now is a show where people put money into envelopes. Explain this.

00:02:06.740 No, no, no, no. Actually, my favorite current YouTube binge is Caleb Hammer's channel.

00:02:14.240 He interviews people. He has guests on who need help with their finances, typically because they're in crippling debt and really spending their money poorly.

00:02:22.220 And then he creates new, very austere spending programs for them and budgets and talks about how, like, well, for the next, like, year, you're not going to go out to eat.

00:02:30.660 You're not going to do anything fun at all. You're going to work, you know, a ton to pay off all this insane debt so that you can get back to a good place.

00:02:36.800 And I just find it insanely comforting.

00:02:39.780 But I did discover this after.

00:02:41.720 It's also very clear that you're not going to actually do it.

00:02:42.860 Yeah. Well, and he has people on, like, six months later sometimes to do follow-ups.

00:02:47.660 And it does seem very, it's very unusual for somebody to have actually.

00:02:52.960 And what happens to them? Have they, like, lost all their stuff? Have things foreclosed on them? Or are they just getting more debt?

00:02:57.860 Some of the people have, in follow-ups, improved their behavior a little bit, but just not a lot.

00:03:04.820 Like, they're still spending more than they should be. They're not following their budget.

00:03:09.680 But a lot of people are showing up. 0.97

00:03:11.340 And, you know, even in their early 20s with insane amounts of debt on really dumb stuff.

00:03:16.700 Like, they bought a Tesla totally on finance that they have no ability to pay off.

00:03:22.440 And they just kind of, I remember noticing a lot of Americans use credit cards the way that we would use, like, an exclusively for fun budget.

00:03:35.740 Meaning that, like, as long as I have a limit on my credit card and I can keep spending it, I can spend this on whatever I want.

00:03:42.480 And I can go take my friends out to dinner.

00:03:44.700 I can travel. I can take a cruise.

00:03:46.600 And that's not a problem.

00:03:47.580 But, yeah, no, I did discover Caleb Hammer's channel after I discovered the whole genre of envelope budgeting on YouTube, where you don't see a person or an interviewer or anything like that.

00:03:58.520 You see just a pair of hands on a desk taking a biweekly payroll or monthly earnings in cash and then putting them into little envelopes.

00:04:08.880 And there's this whole cottage industry that has arisen around this with people selling on Etsy, like, shops of, like, their templates for, like, the little, like, money holders you can buy and everything like that.

00:04:21.880 And also even, like, templates for, like, forms of budgets and little contests you can create for yourself around saving for different things.

00:04:29.600 Because the way the envelope budgeting works, and in fact, we actually do something kind of similar, is you, every time you get a paycheck, put, like, a certain amount of money toward, like, this is for fun, this is for travel, this is for, you know, insurance, this is for bills, this is for whatever.

00:04:44.140 And you only spend money that you have, which is what we do, just in bank accounts.

00:04:49.620 But I just want to say, like, the rise of these types of YouTube channels, where, like, a lot of people are just watching other people carefully budget their money, or other people build extremely disciplined financial plans, is growing.

00:05:04.080 And I find it interesting because these are people with runaway hedonism.

00:05:09.920 You can see it in, like, because, I mean, on Caleb Hammer's channel, he'll, like, go through people's credit card statements and go through everything, like, their waxing appointments, each restaurant they'll go to. 0.96

00:05:20.640 He'll, like, and he'll shit on the restaurants. 0.98

00:05:22.660 He'll be, like, In-N-Out Burger, like, you can't afford this, and what a shitty burger. 0.99

00:05:26.600 You know, like, he just gets really, really riled up. 0.84

00:05:29.060 It's very entertaining.

00:05:30.380 I don't understand how people afford restaurants.

00:05:32.560 Like, this is something that Simone and I have talked about.

00:05:34.880 There are a few things that, like, people, like, there's institutions in our society that I see.

00:05:39.920 And I'm, like, we, you know, we make a decent amount of money.

00:05:45.500 Not, like, a ton, a ton, but, like, we're okay.

00:05:47.860 And we live in an area that is, you know, not, like, the most expensive area, right?

00:05:52.160 So, I'm, like, how in this area that is not a particularly wealthy area are there, like, restaurants?

00:05:57.940 Like, who is going to a restaurant?

00:05:59.940 Like, I don't get it.

00:06:01.480 I can understand going to a restaurant maybe, like, once every three months.

00:06:05.080 But, like, that's clearly not happening.

00:06:09.120 And then bars.

00:06:10.400 Why would you go to a bar?

00:06:12.080 How do bars even work in, like, the suburbs where we live?

00:06:15.740 I mean, clearly, you can only get to it by driving.

00:06:17.940 How are you getting home?

00:06:19.380 Is everybody taking a cab home?

00:06:21.200 Is everyone driving home?

00:06:22.260 Also, like, I'm getting these insights into how people live by, like, seeing the financial statements on this show.

00:06:26.880 So, I also find it this amazing slice of life show because you're seeing how people live through the way they spend their money.

00:06:32.820 But it is interesting.

00:06:34.440 I mean, one, no, people can't afford this.

00:06:36.740 Two, we are in a society that's just pervaded by runaway hedonism where people cannot even bring themselves to think about the future and the pain that they're giving to their future selves.

00:06:46.880 I mean, like, the constant theme on Caleb Hammer's channel is you're going to die on a Walmart floor.

00:06:51.260 Like, you know, like, this is bad.

00:06:53.720 Like, you have no retirement. 0.96

00:06:54.800 You are completely screwed and you're in insane debt.

00:06:59.280 And yet these people, like, who frequently come in for follow-ups don't change their behavior. 0.84

00:07:04.860 But, but, but there's this growing interest in austerity, which is why I think you're really astute to say there's this increasing interest in austerity because there totally is.

00:07:14.580 And people are watching this and people are going on the show.

00:07:17.120 Like, they see these plans and they find them very appealing.

00:07:20.880 I think in a very similar way that people find, like, tradwifery very appealing.

00:07:25.300 Well, I mean, I want to elevate an idea here that you often tell me about how you think about this.

00:07:31.500 Like, when you are denying yourself something in the present to indulge in it in the future, whether that is saving or anything like that.

00:07:39.380 And it can be a moral indulgence.

00:07:40.840 Like, you indulge in giving it away or spending it on our projects to try to make the world a better place.

00:07:46.400 And we don't actually really donate to external charities.

00:07:48.900 We only donate to charities we manage because she has worked in external charities and she doesn't believe that they're efficacious at all.

00:07:53.900 But we do, you know, give away a significant amount of our money to our charities and stuff like that.

00:07:57.540 And what you say is, well, I'm not really Simone in the future, right?

00:08:02.500 Like, but I'm okay with sacrificing now for that person, for Simone in the future.

00:08:08.140 And with the urban monoculture, this progressive movement, there's this idea, and we've talked about this with, like, the Hayes movement and stuff like that.

00:08:14.540 Like, why is it bad to tell a fat person being fat is unhealthy, even though that would help them in the long term, to, like, accept this as a reality, like, an obvious reality?

00:08:23.080 And it's because it causes pain in the moment.

00:08:25.480 And it is a cultural system that has elevated their in-the-moment identity over their future identity.

00:08:33.000 But what's really interesting about this elevation versus the people who do make sacrifices in the present for their future selves, for their ability to act in society, is that these two people are showing how they themselves judge their future selves.

00:08:49.100 Yeah.

00:08:49.340 So the individual who is okay with letting themselves die on a Walmart floor so that they can do whatever they want now, they are doing that because they don't care about that future version of themselves.

00:09:03.260 They have...

00:09:03.740 No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:09:04.500 Hold on, hold on.

00:09:05.480 Just let me finish this thought.

00:09:06.360 Okay.

00:09:07.240 They don't care about that.

00:09:08.940 They do not admire that future iteration of themselves.

00:09:11.540 They don't see it as something great or good or worth investing in.

00:09:14.040 Whereas for you or me, the future version of ourselves is always better than the current version of ourselves if we are doing everything right.

00:09:23.340 And therefore, more deserving of the sacrifices our present self is making than our present self would be if we indulged in those things.

00:09:31.340 Now, what were you going to say?

00:09:32.100 So pushing back, there is research that has looked at how people plan for the future and like the extent to which they're willing to commit to their future selves.

00:09:42.360 And a lot of it just has to do with priming.

00:09:44.580 And I think what's going on is people are literally not thinking about their future selves.

00:09:49.140 They're just, they're like, I cannot, I cannot think about that.

00:09:53.580 I think a lot of this is about contextualization.

00:09:55.400 So I will dig up those studies and send them to you and we can include links in the description because it is interesting how just getting people to think about themselves in the future or see pictures of themselves in the future can get people to be like, oh, wait, I actually care.

00:10:10.880 It's interesting that you mentioned this.

00:10:12.320 So something that I've seen talked about a lot recently is like the growing normalization of suicidal ideation.

00:10:21.080 But before I go down that route, people are probably wondering what I'm snacking on and it is actually relevant to the topic of this video.

00:10:28.880 This is cheese, my fancy cheeses.

00:10:33.660 But I got one of my fancy cheeses.

00:10:37.420 And it is actually, I mean, it tastes enormously fancy.

00:10:41.420 Hold the mic to your mouth.

00:10:44.280 You have to like, you're not talking to your mic.

00:10:46.240 Sorry.

00:10:46.740 It tastes enormously fancy to me at least.

00:10:49.440 But, and it has this level of hedonism to it that in a historic time period would have been considered like the most indulgent of hedonisms.

00:10:59.000 Yet within our time period, it is something that people look at and they're like, that's a fairly cheap cheese.

00:11:07.400 You know, that's a what?

00:11:08.420 That lasts you like a few days and that's a $4 cheese.

00:11:12.140 You know, like what, how is that hedonism, right?

00:11:15.960 And it's hedonism in its complexity.

00:11:19.660 Like if you're talking about it versus going out to get like a nice burger or something, an artisan cheese is always going to have more complexity of flavor.

00:11:27.120 It's going to have more punch.

00:11:28.900 It's going to be better calorically.

00:11:30.900 It's going to be better financially for you.

00:11:33.200 And this is also something I was thinking about in terms of the way that people indulge in unique flavors and stuff like that is many of the sort of categories of food that you can indulge in with unique behaviors are either enormously expensive, like cocktails, unless you're making them at home.

00:11:49.000 And also alcoholic or wines, which are alcoholic or whiskeys, which are alcoholic or beers, which are alcoholic.

00:11:56.000 And yet there's not as many in the non-alcoholic.

00:11:58.200 Talking to the mic.

00:11:59.420 There's not as many in the non-alcoholic categories.

00:12:02.560 But, but, and just about cheeses.

00:12:04.620 So people understand how people used to relate to cheeses.

00:12:07.080 Because I studied medieval Scottish history when I was at St. Andrews, a university in Scotland, where I did my undergrad.

00:12:13.280 And they used to collect taxes in cheese because it was a portable luxury good that people could make and store for long times in a sort of distributed area.

00:12:26.300 Similar to how the Mayans collected cacao beans and there were even counterfeit cacao beans.

00:12:31.440 Yes.

00:12:31.900 Well, and I just love that I'm eating basically gold.

00:12:34.660 Money.

00:12:35.060 For this to our context.

00:12:37.020 That is much more flavorful and complex and nuanced in many meals.

00:12:39.900 And this is also what I'm thinking of with hedonism is people elevate the forms of hedonism, which gives them status within their society, you know, that can be used for social status or that remove effort from them.

00:12:51.860 Instead of the forms of hedonism, like when you're being intentional about hedonism, like I want to indulge in a complex flavor that is very sharp and very, you know, overwhelming.

00:13:04.600 Like artisanal cheeses work great for that.

00:13:07.340 You don't actually need to go out and do all of this other stuff, which is really interesting.

00:13:11.420 That's funny.

00:13:11.900 I thought you were eating our Easter candy because we have these beautiful candy jars down in our kitchen full of Easter themed candy.

00:13:21.020 But little does anyone know.

00:13:22.520 It's all from last year.

00:13:23.860 Yeah.

00:13:24.080 Okay.

00:13:24.280 So people should know all of our Easter candy.

00:13:26.700 Every time after a holiday, we have it marked whenever everything goes on sale.

00:13:29.940 And we go out and we buy all the like extra Halloween candy.

00:13:34.280 And then we buy enough to last us to Easter.

00:13:36.800 And then at the end of Easter, we buy enough for next year.

00:13:40.300 But most of the Easter stuff we have out now is all, actually all of it is all from last year.

00:13:45.280 Because a lot of these holiday candies, they don't expire for a long time.

00:13:48.640 But now I want to talk about suicidal ideation and the role.

00:13:54.320 One thing that I hear in these Gen Z and Gen Alpha videos, especially from like leftist influencers, is it is apparently now becoming pretty common.

00:14:02.680 And this is especially true in the context of now that they're beginning to accept like pronatalism as a real concern.

00:14:08.760 And they're like, look, when people are like, what are you going to be doing when you're old?

00:14:12.720 And they just plan to end it before then.

00:14:15.900 They're like, I'll do what I can now to be happy.

00:14:19.100 But the truth is, is I don't have savings.

00:14:21.200 I don't have kids.

00:14:22.760 There's not really a point to live after a certain point in my life.

00:14:26.340 And historically in our society, this is not something we ever had.

00:14:29.920 You know, I hear these influencers say really interesting things.

00:14:32.480 And it shows how twisted our society has become.

00:14:34.560 So when they were talking about, well, there was a mental health crisis, right?

00:14:38.560 And this influencer was saying, I'll see if I can find the video to link to it here.

00:14:41.360 I think it's a very complex conversation as to why Gen Z is not wanting to have kids.

00:14:47.580 Because it doesn't just pertain to financial issues or inflation eating out our arses clean.

00:14:54.560 But Gen Z has a rampant problem with mental health issues that have gone long unaddressed.

00:15:00.200 Mostly for the reason being that the mental health system is largely lacking.

00:15:04.980 For example, I am still on a wait list to see a psychologist.

00:15:09.340 It has been what?

00:15:10.120 Eight months?

00:15:10.860 Nine months?

00:15:11.480 I can't even remember the last time that I even followed up on that.

00:15:15.420 Because the last time I did, I remember calling the psychologist and he's on the phone like,

00:15:21.440 well, I'm actually leaving for holidays next week.

00:15:24.860 So we're going to be pretty backed up.

00:15:27.180 I'll give you a call in a few weeks time.

00:15:29.700 I saved the day in my phone and everything like that.

00:15:32.580 I never got a call.

00:15:33.800 So a week later, I called them again and I was like, hey, just following up, blah, blah, blah.

00:15:38.780 Well, actually, no, we don't have any appointments available until mid-December.

00:15:43.880 This was in, I think, June last year?

00:15:46.880 Well, the way we solve the mental health crisis is it's caused by not enough psychologists.

00:15:53.980 That's what the mental health crisis is caused by.

00:15:56.040 We need to have more psychologists, more inexpensively accessible.

00:15:58.660 And here I am being like, okay, so you think that the mental health crisis is unique to Gen Z.

00:16:04.180 Do you realize that psychologists didn't really even exist at a large scale before 30 years ago?

00:16:13.020 Like, yeah, yeah, there were some psychologists, but they were incredibly rare.

00:16:17.320 And almost nobody went to them.

00:16:19.220 It was much more likely that a person regularly went to a fortune teller than a psychologist.

00:16:24.260 And if you go, you know, the Old West or something, I was playing Red Dead Redemption 2 recently, which I think is an interesting depiction of the Old West.

00:16:31.880 Or, you know, when we read the story about my ancestors, you know, the account of their life in the episode of People Used to Like Their Parents.

00:16:39.160 You know, these were not people where anyone would go to a psychologist.

00:16:43.220 And yet they had enormously better mental health than individuals today.

00:16:46.460 It is this self-indulgence which is causing these negative externalities.

00:16:50.260 I mean, it genuinely worries me that somebody could build up half a million followers and still have takes that are so uneducated and so ungrounded from reality to accurately note that, yes, mental health does have something to do with why people aren't having kids anymore.

00:17:06.020 But then to think that it's due to there not being enough psychologists, to have no historical context to know that the psychology industry is a completely modern phenomenon that correlates with the mental health crisis,

00:17:20.820 i.e. it appears that the mental health crisis is a result of too many psychologists and psychologists like thinking invading mainstream discussions of dealing with mental health instead of just nutting up, which is what we used to do,

00:17:39.840 which it turns out is a much more psychologically healthy way to deal with the challenges in your life than to medicalize it and to externalize it and to believe you need to see this sort of secular confessionary class.

00:17:55.460 But also, it's an indulgence in a lifestyle and in a cultural system that doesn't really have a plan.

00:18:03.300 Because the cultural system is so optimized for in-the-moment hedonism, it doesn't really have a plan for the future.

00:18:09.840 And when people begin to realize this, there is two things they can do.

00:18:14.160 They can go against their cultural group.

00:18:15.580 They can go and say, hey, maybe these religious weirdo-rightists, people like the Collinses, who we say have made up some weird cult for their family.

00:18:24.240 It's like, why would they do that?

00:18:25.620 Why would they recreate religion for our family? 0.98

00:18:27.580 And it's like, because it's other things, the alternative, and it is not working.

00:18:32.400 It is obviously not working.

00:18:34.780 And I think that's really interesting because in history, we've never seen this.

00:18:39.040 In history, we've never seen a world in which a lot of society was just like, yeah, after my golden years, after I hit 30 or 35, it's over for me.

00:18:53.720 I'm not really planning for past that stage.

00:18:56.380 Yeah, I mean, although I guess there were people who were like, very happy to go out and die in war.

00:19:02.540 So, I don't know if that's...

00:19:04.240 Yeah, but they were dying for something bigger than themselves.

00:19:06.500 They were, yeah.

00:19:08.700 I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

00:19:10.340 And have you sort of seen this nihilism that's become so common within this generation?

00:19:14.140 I think I see more of the examples of the interest in austerity, but then, of course, failure to follow through on it, which is what I find really interesting.

00:19:23.980 Because it's not just showing up in financial niches or people getting into being a trad wife or whatever.

00:19:30.780 Think about all the weird health diets that are so big.

00:19:34.240 Going keto, going paleo, or intermittent fasting is so popular now.

00:19:40.220 People are doing cold plunges.

00:19:41.860 It's becoming very high class to have a cold plunge pool, to really carefully diet, maybe with the help of Ozempic, but people are actually successfully losing weight now.

00:19:54.040 So, it seems to be also that austerity, even among the very well-resourced, is a status signaler.

00:20:03.780 So, it's not just picking up, I think, because people are realizing...

00:20:06.720 So, well-resourced.

00:20:07.760 I love your wording here.

00:20:10.260 No, but it is a status signaler.

00:20:11.580 It is a status signaler.

00:20:12.880 And we're increasingly seeing this.

00:20:14.380 So, when you look at the tech nerd bro culture, and you look at the wealthiest people in the world, you can look at Sam Bakeman-Fried, for example, who was one of the wealthiest people in the world for a while.

00:20:24.540 And he would constantly attempt to signal his austerity.

00:20:27.100 Now, he was really bad at it.

00:20:28.280 I mean, he succumbed to hedonism more.

00:20:29.940 I can't believe anyone believed that he actually had any level of austerity when he couldn't even resist playing video games and board meetings.

00:20:36.140 But, I mean, talk about succumbing to in-the-moment hedonism like a maniac.

00:20:39.320 But then the other person who I think actually does live with a level of austerity is Elon Musk.

00:20:44.560 At least he aspires to live with some austerity.

00:20:47.360 I won't say that he succeeds in it, but you see this in his documentaries and stuff like this.

00:20:52.200 It's this aspiration to live a degree of austerity.

00:20:55.600 Yeah, like when he sort of decided to not have a home for a long time.

00:20:59.960 But, I don't know, he might be a good example of the interplay between those two things, right?

00:21:04.140 Because he still does pretty hedonistic things.

00:21:06.800 And, like, I think in the biography on him by Walter Isaacson, there was this one part where I think he started intermittent fasting and, like, dieting really carefully.

00:21:17.240 But then he wasn't, like, quite going all the way.

00:21:20.160 Like, then he'd, like, go to a fast food joint and get really shitty food because he'd be like, yeah, this is my one, like, window where I can eat.

00:21:27.940 That means I can eat anything I want.

00:21:29.360 So, I think that he's, I mean, he is the everyman.

00:21:33.180 Like, I think a lot of people identify with Elon Musk because he's, like, the id of a certain segment.

00:21:39.720 He reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer Simpson gains a lot of power and he gets to design a car and he puts domes all over it.

00:21:49.700 Just like the Tesla has a fart noise in the passenger seat.

00:21:55.460 It does?

00:21:55.960 Yeah.

00:21:57.160 You can turn it on so when they sit down it makes a fart noise.

00:22:01.660 Because, like I said, Elon Musk represents the id of a certain, incredibly intelligent but also very…

00:22:08.180 Think about what he's signaling with that, which is a lack of pretension.

00:22:12.080 He gets jokes.

00:22:13.260 He knows how to have fun.

00:22:14.700 No, no, but what I'm saying is he's signaling by allowing stuff like that a lack of pretension, which is in itself a status signal.

00:22:23.880 Yeah.

00:22:24.100 To say, I don't need pretension to signal status to other individuals.

00:22:28.060 I don't know.

00:22:28.320 I mean, you get the impression he genuinely finds it funny, too, and is doing it because he can't.

00:22:33.080 But, of course, many things can be true at the same time.

00:22:36.560 But, yeah, no, I do think that it's becoming cool to be austere.

00:22:39.800 And to me, the fact that it seems that more people are interested in austerity than are actually practicing it or apparently capable of practicing it implies to me that this is more of a status thing than it is a recognition that our current way of life and focus on hedonism is unsustainable.

00:22:59.800 But you imply with the thesis of your argument that that's not true and that we will see a significant number of people genuinely become austere and actually follow through, which I doubt.

00:23:12.360 I think when you can build austerity into a form of status signaling, which I think we are getting close to doing in a society, right?

00:23:23.720 I.e., and this is one of the problems with many wealth or high status people in the past.

00:23:31.560 You know, you look like an Andrew Tate or something like that, where their lifestyles are most defined by a lack of austerity and personal industry, right?

00:23:39.000 That when we redefine, and this is what masculinity used to be, you know, this is what ideal femininity used to be, right? 0.87

00:23:47.340 Like there was a masculine form of austerity and a feminine form of austerity.

00:23:50.420 When we redefine these as positive qualities, both in partners and people we look up to and people who we signal boost, which is now possible with these new types of platforms we have and stuff like that.

00:24:03.480 I mean, one of the problems was individuals who elevated austerity, which we talked about in our most recent track.

00:24:08.880 Well, depending on when this goes live, it was track four, is that cultural sources that elevate austerity as a thing of goodness are intrinsically at odds and hostile to the wealthy and powerful in our society.

00:24:22.760 Because it devalues the thing that they want to do with that wealth and value, you know, now they've reached this role within our society, now they have all this power, now they want to use it to do whatever they feel like, right?

00:24:35.200 And if you assign austerity as a positive moral metric, well, now you're devaluing those that have power, so you are a threat.

00:24:44.420 And it's really interesting, you even see this in communist systems.

00:24:47.520 Like communists always promote austerity until they have power, and then it's, well, you know, austerity for the middle of the population at least, but certainly not for the people who are running this government.

00:24:59.340 I mean, we need our constant caviar shipments and private boats and military parades.

00:25:06.460 Yeah, well, I think anyone will start to justify, and I see this in the guests on Caleb Hammer's YouTube channel slash podcast all the time, who are like, oh, well, you know, I don't have time to do this.

00:25:19.080 And this is why I get DoorDash, like every single day.

00:25:22.120 DoorDash?

00:25:22.620 Order out. 0.73

00:25:23.180 I don't even understand.

00:25:24.020 DoorDash.

00:25:24.360 Who can afford DoorDash?

00:25:25.460 Nobody can, but you would not believe the number of people who are apparently using it.

00:25:30.900 And, you know, but they're like, you know, my time is more valuable.

00:25:33.080 You know, I just don't have time.

00:25:34.420 And I think it's very easy for anyone, no matter how austere or, like, mission-driven they see themselves to be, to, if they do not keep themselves honest, over time start spending preposterous amounts of money on things that they think are necessary and fully appropriate that really are not.

00:25:51.560 I think what's interesting is if there could be some way where we can tie austerity becoming a status signaler with the kind of actually effective interventions that cause people to start serving their future selves, which has been found in this research of, like, actually thinking about your future self more, contextualizing yourself as part of this unbroken chain of people, that we could actually see some really positive change.

00:26:16.880 For example, like, on a regular basis, you know, I, like, waddle around the house talking to myself all the time. 0.89

00:26:23.060 She's a crazy person. 1.00

00:26:24.380 You guys don't know this. 1.00

00:26:25.060 She's just bat insane. 1.00

00:26:27.440 I believe the correct and technical term is bat shit crazy, not bat insane, Malcolm Collins. 0.99

00:26:36.240 Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 0.95

00:26:37.560 Thank you, yeah, I, actually, I need to look into the origins of that, like, is there maybe something, like, associated with a madness-related disease related to accidentally ingesting fecal matter from bats?

00:26:49.660 I'm going to have to look this up.

00:26:50.820 For anyone wondering, it comes from the term bats in the belfry, which was, belfry is a part of a church, and when it wasn't in use, it would get bats in it, and that was like, your brain's not in use, they were saying. 0.97

00:27:03.680 And then people in modern times just added the word shit to it because it sounds awesome. 0.97

00:27:10.980 Oh, yeah, actually. 0.99

00:27:12.440 Batch it crazy.

00:27:14.440 But anyway, so I will walk around the house, and, like, if, for example, like, you know, something has been, like, prepped for me by my past self, I'll be like, oh, thank you, past Simone.

00:27:25.040 Like, wow, past Simone was awesome.

00:27:26.800 And then I will take a lot of pride in, like, setting things up for, like, Simone of tomorrow morning to make sure that she has an easier morning.

00:27:34.460 Well, you often send letters to these different iterations of yourself, addressed to different iterations of yourself.

00:27:39.440 Yeah.

00:27:39.680 Where she really fully, this is even before we met, sees herself at different frames of time as entirely different people.

00:27:46.760 But I'm always working in service to future Simone's, but also thinking back to past Simone's and thinking, like, wow, she, like, deserves a lot of praise and credit for really setting me up well.

00:27:56.880 And I think if people contextualize that more into their lives and started seeing their lives like that, they would start to actually gain genuine hedonic satisfaction from austerity.

00:28:08.360 Because austerity is almost always an action or a sacrifice that's taken in favor of the future.

00:28:12.960 Well, for the audience who may have struggled with, like, what you're talking about here, it's like the ship of Thetia thought experiment.

00:28:20.240 You know, like, boards fall off of a ship over time, and they're replaced over time.

00:28:24.060 When it gets to the final port, it has none of the original boards.

00:28:26.640 Is it a different ship, or is it the original ship?

00:28:29.100 You are basically taking the answer of every time a board falls off, it's meaningfully a new ship.

00:28:33.860 But it's also meaningfully part of a continuum of ships, and therefore it's serving the future interests of the ship.

00:28:40.080 What I'm serving, like, any conscious moment of my life, is the mission of transporting my cargo, my people, whatever.

00:28:49.240 Like, it's not about the material composition of the ship.

00:28:53.900 It is about the act of conveying passengers or cargo from one port to another.

00:29:00.280 And I think when people contextualize themselves as that and seeing themselves in service to that, then it's very different.

00:29:06.080 And, again, please remind me to send you those studies, so you can see, like, it does really affect people's decision making.

00:29:13.580 I love you, and I love your crazy shows.

00:29:16.320 And if you wanted to end on a thought, you could end on the craziest thing that people have overindulged in.

00:29:22.800 On the show.

00:29:24.840 Oh, God.

00:29:26.180 Honestly, no.

00:29:26.880 It's really mundane stuff.

00:29:28.040 It is literally just DoorDash restaurants, cars, and sometimes travel.

00:29:34.060 But it is – that's the thing.

00:29:35.480 It's like, if it'd be one thing, if it was like, oh, you know, I bought, you know, a yacht that was, you know, stranded in the middle of the desert, and I was going to create a resort around it.

00:29:45.500 You know, like something crazy, right?

00:29:46.660 But it's never that.

00:29:47.940 It's so basic.

00:29:49.580 It's Starbucks.

00:29:50.100 Well, that's – and that's what it is, is that they're wasting money on things that aren't even inspired.

00:29:54.460 Not even crazy.

00:29:55.480 Sad.

00:29:55.860 I love you to death, Simone.

00:29:57.320 And often the people who waste their money on crazy things, they tend to make it back again, I've noticed.

00:30:02.480 That's true.

00:30:03.140 Well, and that's Elon Musk, right?

00:30:04.720 Like, he's blown his money on insanely, insanely risky investments.

00:30:10.120 And what's the problem with these people who may end up being perpetually poor is that they pretty much always spend their money on what Caleb Hammer describes as taquitos, which is just like dumb impulse buys.

00:30:22.100 Like, you go into a 7-Eleven and you buy taquitos, and he'll just, like, go through people's statements and be like, taquitos, taquitos.

00:30:27.320 Taquitos, taquitos.

00:30:27.960 And that's the thing.

00:30:28.820 So, yeah.

00:30:29.400 I kind of like – that's an interesting – maybe someday, even if we have enough to flesh that out, a topic for a future podcast is the difference between, you know, like dumb spending versus dumb spending.

00:30:41.940 All right.

00:30:42.500 I love you to death, Simone.

00:30:43.600 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:44.480 I love you too, so let me see.

00:30:44.860 All right.

00:30:45.120 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:45.660 Yeah.

00:30:46.680 I love you too.

00:30:47.100 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:49.280 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:50.040 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:53.280 So, yeah.

00:30:53.900 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:55.580 To me?

00:30:57.760 I love you too, gorgeous.

00:30:58.820 Little sitcom.

00:30:59.440 雨 in the same way.

00:31:00.220 I love you to this.

00:31:01.460 You're welcome.

Based Camp - April 04, 2024

Austerity is the New Hedonism

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