[shukantpal]

No. Let’s say everyone in the world is relying on savings + investment income for living (the end goal of the FIRE movement?). Then who will produce food (no one is doing any labor)?

FIRE is possible for everyone only when full automation is developed.

[californical]

That’s definitely and decidedly not the end-goal. Most people don’t retire entirely, they just switch to work that’s more interesting to them, on their own terms. Maybe fewer hours.

But I’ve never heard anyone proposing that nobody should ever work again — you still need to work for long enough to build up a big portfolio. Maybe you can choose to just work 20 hr weeks for your entire 40-yr career… or 60 hour weeks for 15 years, then retire early. But the idea is that if people could consume much less, then we could build a better economy that supports everyone needing to work less in a lifetime.

[maerF0x0]

additionally there is always a new generation of non retired people who can do the non-automated tasks (in return for their FIRE money)

[chii]

> who will produce food

the people who have not yet FIRE'ed would have to do it, and they do it because they are getting paid by people who are FIRE'ed - presumably, with the intention of FIRE'ing themselves after reaching some target net worth. Unless you're claiming that somehow the population would stagnate and no new people would be born, this will continue to work.

Why does it have to be possible for _everybody_ to be in the same position, at the same time, for FIRE to work?

[xur17]

People that FIRE are still working - they're just compressing their working years vs higher income vs lower spending. Everyone is "producing food", just for a shorter portion of their life than normal.

[batshit_beaver]

It's not possible for everyone to FIRE, is the point.

Society needs to produce X amount of goods and services to sustain itself. If insufficient goods and services are produced, you get stagflation that kills your retirement nest egg. It's reasonable to say that a society where everyone stops doing work they don't like around age 35 cannot possibly produce enough goods and services, unless these people also die by 40.

I also don't buy the idea that it's possible to utilize only ~10-20 years of high productivity from an average person to sustain that person perpetually. This would only be possible with much more advanced automation than what we currently have, in everything from food production to medicine.

FIRE works for now because productivity continues to grow, at least in the US, and in part due to population growth. It also does only work for a small subset of the population (be it high earners or high savers), because the larger this subset, the higher the systemic risk. And it's a bad idea to advocate FIRE as a culturally sustainable approach to life. That idea is absurd.

[burntoutfire]

> I also don't buy the idea that it's possible to utilize only ~10-20 years of high productivity from an average person to sustain that person perpetually.

Check out earlyretirementextreme.com

The author shows how it can be done in 5 years on a sub-$100k salary. The catch though is that he doesn't have children. With dependents, it would probably be more like 10 years.