A little flak recently came my way when I questioned Christopher Rufo’s advice to young men: “You should be listening to Dave Ramsey, not Andrew Tate.” Really I don’t think young men should be paying attention to either; both Ramsey and Tate fall short, though for different very reasons.
1) I've never been in debt, but when I needed to help a friend get out of debt, I checked out Ramsey's book from the library, read it, and then taught the method to said friend (who was stressed and not much of a reader). Friend then used the method to clear all debt. Worked a charm, neither of us spent a cent on it, and... that's probably the best way to do it.
2) But. Some things are harder than others, and it depends a lot on your personality. Back in the day, I needed to lose some weight. It was hard for me. So, I basically subscribed to *all* the paleo/lowcarb podcasts and newsfeeds. Not because they were saying new things every day, but because I needed to hear it, reinforce it, and frankly brainwash myself with it, every day, to make it stick. And... it did in fact work.
It's easy for me to squirrel away money: I'd started with the Tightwad Gazette and Your Money or Your Life back in the dark ages. Hardcore thrift. Sticking to a diet was more difficult for me, and needed a different approach. I assume that's at least part of what's going on with the Ramsey Media Empire. Some people just need to check out a book from the library. Some people need to brainwash themselves. YMMV.
Nobody's perfect. If you read the classic Your Money or Your Life, you can't help but notice that while Dominguez' personal accounting system and behavioral interventions are still as solid as ever, his investment advice hasn't been workable since the early 1990s. I think there's a certain amount of that going on with Ramsey as well: he's got a really solid system for getting out of debt... and then his investment advice (become a landlord) is basically: the thing that is eviscerating the working class and setting us up for 2008housingcrisis redux... and will someday (hopefully soon) be as out of date as "use all your spare savings to buy government bonds that yield 9%" Yay bubble investing.
You're right that there is a value in hammering a message over and over. I just think money is a uniquely risky subject with that strategy. It is an all-consuming thing. Older societies had a way of pushing it to the periphery, and I see a lot of wisdom in that.
I think if you've got a habit of being a spendthrift, there's some real value in figuring out how to snuff that habit.
But there's absolutely the risk of overdoing it, making every second of your life about money. Same as making every second of your life about food amounts to an eating disorder. There's a good rule of thumb out there (I didn't make it up), that the opposite of one bad idea, is usually another bad idea.
One way that older societies pushed it to the periphery is a heavy-duty sense of mutual obligation. We've kind of axed that in modern America, with our "I earned it, it's MINE" having elbowed out "God gave it to me, and I owe it back to Him" and "I have a duty to take care of my parents when they're old" and "I have a duty to my kin" (definition of kin has shrunk amazingly), "I want to leave something beautiful for future generations" or even "I want people to pray for me when I'm dead" etc. How many extravagantly beautiful libraries are being built these days, by eccentric businessmen? Any?
Thank you for this reflection. Can't wait to see what your thoughts are going forward on how to address this situation. I lean more to the camp of Rufo that men need to get to work but maybe it is not as simple as that anymore. Men shouldn't check out but there is no clear philosophy that can guide them so any thoughts you have on that can help with the discussion.
The bootstrappers are right about the necessity of personal initiative--but only partially right, and being partially right is probably a more dangerous thing than being completely wrong.
One of the larger concerns I tried to convey is the tendency of the bootstrap philosophy to conveniently absolve the established types of their responsibilities. It suggests that noblesse oblige (even in a humbler form) isn't necessary. And all of this, imho, is tied to the elevation of economics to the supreme science of our age. All of these problems follow from econ brain. I'm going to work on an essay to elaborate on this.
> Unlike the leftists who aim to homogenize all cogs in the machine, rwers appreciate the profound differences between people
WTF, are you talking about? The leftist aim wasn't to "homogenize all cogs". They go out of their way to dehomogenize all the cogs, right down to letting them identify with any of 72 different "genders", to the point that it destroys the machine's ability to function.
Haha, yeah but the thing about the 72 genders is that all those distinctions eventually don't matter and everyone just becomes an androgynous consoomer-cog.
Your claim about the goal of halting the machine is also a good point. But at the same time they are undeniably mechanistic thinkers and Globohomo is clearly a thing.
> Haha, yeah but the thing about the 72 genders is that all those distinctions eventually don't matter and everyone just becomes an androgynous consoomer-cog.
Only in the sense that the machine is trying its best to keep functioning despite the woke sabotage.
> Your claim about the goal of halting the machine is also a good point. But at the same time they are undeniably mechanistic thinkers and Globohomo is clearly a thing.
Globohomo is a rather loose "alliance" of two rather different philosophical factions, where by "alliance" I mean that neither can overpower the other so they're obliged to work with each other. The two factions being: globalist technocrats on the one hand, and the woke leftist faction that came out of the anti-technocratic rebellion of the 1960s on the other.
The only reason "globohomo" feels like a single faction is that the low level NPCs most of us interact with end up running a combination of both factions' software and doing their best to reconcile the contradictions.
Ramsey bothers me on many levels. On one level, he is a symptom of a sick society. The young shouldn't have to work two jobs just to get by. On another level, this whole idea of living on a budget strikes me as a form of loving money.
One of the main reasons for making a higher income is so you don't have to think about money so much. Just live below your means and the money piles up. You don't have to count it on a regular basis. And yes, is you choose to live super cheap, you can become a man of leisure on a Panada Express manager salary eventually. Eat those lentils!
Also, cutting up your credit cards before you have lots of savings is foolhardy. A credit line is a form of retroactive insurance. It is, of course, important to pay down your cards when you do have income. But consider the resulting headroom on the cards as part of your emergency fund.
And student loans are worth it if you get a major in a field where companies are hiring. A degree in literature or philosophy should be considered a luxury good. A degree in accounting or engineering, on the other hand, is a true monetary investment. Stretching out your schooling to eight years to avoid a loan is dumb. The human body depreciates.
Finally, being a millionaire is no longer being rich. There has been at least a 10x in prices since Thurston Howell III was stranded on Gilligan's Island.
Ramseyites (and Ramsey himself) will probably say that the point of the program is so that you don't have to think about money. This is a good intentions and I wish them well. But they plunge themselves deeper into that way of thinking in their attempt to escape it. The whole things seems like quicksand.
Yes, but moderation can mean setting a target lifestyle which is below what you can afford, vs assigning a name to every dollar. Just go into bean counting mode for the big expenses vs. looking for deals on toothpaste.
And the superheroes of saving money do it by focusing on the non-consumption for environmental purposes.
> Yes, but moderation can mean setting a target lifestyle which is below what you can afford
The problem is that it's easy to get into a situation where your "target lifestyle" because more expensive than you thought it was. Especially if you refuse to "name every dollar" and end up "cheating" more often than you think.
> Ramsey clearly isn’t responsible for the problems of indebtedness he attempts to solve, but his solutions participate in that same economic spreadsheet-brain that has made a general mess of things in the first place. A fixation on money, on budgeting, on finances ultimately leads to a corporatized society, a dull land with endless strip malls, HR departments, team-building, idiotic jargon, and fake work.
Um, much of the HR nonsense, as well as the team-building, and idiotic jargon are not a result of "spreadsjeet-brain" per se. Rather they're the result of a previous generation's attempt to "solve" this problem.
Haha, I mean, I hope I made it clear that I'm not a fan--but the outraged howling about him avoids the obvious question: why does this guy have such appeal?
On the Ramsey thing:
1) I've never been in debt, but when I needed to help a friend get out of debt, I checked out Ramsey's book from the library, read it, and then taught the method to said friend (who was stressed and not much of a reader). Friend then used the method to clear all debt. Worked a charm, neither of us spent a cent on it, and... that's probably the best way to do it.
2) But. Some things are harder than others, and it depends a lot on your personality. Back in the day, I needed to lose some weight. It was hard for me. So, I basically subscribed to *all* the paleo/lowcarb podcasts and newsfeeds. Not because they were saying new things every day, but because I needed to hear it, reinforce it, and frankly brainwash myself with it, every day, to make it stick. And... it did in fact work.
It's easy for me to squirrel away money: I'd started with the Tightwad Gazette and Your Money or Your Life back in the dark ages. Hardcore thrift. Sticking to a diet was more difficult for me, and needed a different approach. I assume that's at least part of what's going on with the Ramsey Media Empire. Some people just need to check out a book from the library. Some people need to brainwash themselves. YMMV.
Nobody's perfect. If you read the classic Your Money or Your Life, you can't help but notice that while Dominguez' personal accounting system and behavioral interventions are still as solid as ever, his investment advice hasn't been workable since the early 1990s. I think there's a certain amount of that going on with Ramsey as well: he's got a really solid system for getting out of debt... and then his investment advice (become a landlord) is basically: the thing that is eviscerating the working class and setting us up for 2008housingcrisis redux... and will someday (hopefully soon) be as out of date as "use all your spare savings to buy government bonds that yield 9%" Yay bubble investing.
You're right that there is a value in hammering a message over and over. I just think money is a uniquely risky subject with that strategy. It is an all-consuming thing. Older societies had a way of pushing it to the periphery, and I see a lot of wisdom in that.
Agreed.
I think if you've got a habit of being a spendthrift, there's some real value in figuring out how to snuff that habit.
But there's absolutely the risk of overdoing it, making every second of your life about money. Same as making every second of your life about food amounts to an eating disorder. There's a good rule of thumb out there (I didn't make it up), that the opposite of one bad idea, is usually another bad idea.
One way that older societies pushed it to the periphery is a heavy-duty sense of mutual obligation. We've kind of axed that in modern America, with our "I earned it, it's MINE" having elbowed out "God gave it to me, and I owe it back to Him" and "I have a duty to take care of my parents when they're old" and "I have a duty to my kin" (definition of kin has shrunk amazingly), "I want to leave something beautiful for future generations" or even "I want people to pray for me when I'm dead" etc. How many extravagantly beautiful libraries are being built these days, by eccentric businessmen? Any?
Great post
Thank you kindly, brother
Thank you for this reflection. Can't wait to see what your thoughts are going forward on how to address this situation. I lean more to the camp of Rufo that men need to get to work but maybe it is not as simple as that anymore. Men shouldn't check out but there is no clear philosophy that can guide them so any thoughts you have on that can help with the discussion.
It's a big question, isn't it?! Did you see Dudley Newright's post on two things being true at once? https://x.com/NewRightPoast/status/1878912053991416140
The bootstrappers are right about the necessity of personal initiative--but only partially right, and being partially right is probably a more dangerous thing than being completely wrong.
One of the larger concerns I tried to convey is the tendency of the bootstrap philosophy to conveniently absolve the established types of their responsibilities. It suggests that noblesse oblige (even in a humbler form) isn't necessary. And all of this, imho, is tied to the elevation of economics to the supreme science of our age. All of these problems follow from econ brain. I'm going to work on an essay to elaborate on this.
> Unlike the leftists who aim to homogenize all cogs in the machine, rwers appreciate the profound differences between people
WTF, are you talking about? The leftist aim wasn't to "homogenize all cogs". They go out of their way to dehomogenize all the cogs, right down to letting them identify with any of 72 different "genders", to the point that it destroys the machine's ability to function.
Haha, yeah but the thing about the 72 genders is that all those distinctions eventually don't matter and everyone just becomes an androgynous consoomer-cog.
Your claim about the goal of halting the machine is also a good point. But at the same time they are undeniably mechanistic thinkers and Globohomo is clearly a thing.
> Haha, yeah but the thing about the 72 genders is that all those distinctions eventually don't matter and everyone just becomes an androgynous consoomer-cog.
Only in the sense that the machine is trying its best to keep functioning despite the woke sabotage.
> Your claim about the goal of halting the machine is also a good point. But at the same time they are undeniably mechanistic thinkers and Globohomo is clearly a thing.
Globohomo is a rather loose "alliance" of two rather different philosophical factions, where by "alliance" I mean that neither can overpower the other so they're obliged to work with each other. The two factions being: globalist technocrats on the one hand, and the woke leftist faction that came out of the anti-technocratic rebellion of the 1960s on the other.
The only reason "globohomo" feels like a single faction is that the low level NPCs most of us interact with end up running a combination of both factions' software and doing their best to reconcile the contradictions.
Ramsey bothers me on many levels. On one level, he is a symptom of a sick society. The young shouldn't have to work two jobs just to get by. On another level, this whole idea of living on a budget strikes me as a form of loving money.
One of the main reasons for making a higher income is so you don't have to think about money so much. Just live below your means and the money piles up. You don't have to count it on a regular basis. And yes, is you choose to live super cheap, you can become a man of leisure on a Panada Express manager salary eventually. Eat those lentils!
Also, cutting up your credit cards before you have lots of savings is foolhardy. A credit line is a form of retroactive insurance. It is, of course, important to pay down your cards when you do have income. But consider the resulting headroom on the cards as part of your emergency fund.
And student loans are worth it if you get a major in a field where companies are hiring. A degree in literature or philosophy should be considered a luxury good. A degree in accounting or engineering, on the other hand, is a true monetary investment. Stretching out your schooling to eight years to avoid a loan is dumb. The human body depreciates.
Finally, being a millionaire is no longer being rich. There has been at least a 10x in prices since Thurston Howell III was stranded on Gilligan's Island.
Ramseyites (and Ramsey himself) will probably say that the point of the program is so that you don't have to think about money. This is a good intentions and I wish them well. But they plunge themselves deeper into that way of thinking in their attempt to escape it. The whole things seems like quicksand.
> One of the main reasons for making a higher income is so you don't have to think about money so much.
Doesn't work that way. If you can't exercise moderation, no amount of income will be enough for you.
Agreed, money has fangs and wants to sink them into your soul.
Yes, but moderation can mean setting a target lifestyle which is below what you can afford, vs assigning a name to every dollar. Just go into bean counting mode for the big expenses vs. looking for deals on toothpaste.
And the superheroes of saving money do it by focusing on the non-consumption for environmental purposes.
> Yes, but moderation can mean setting a target lifestyle which is below what you can afford
The problem is that it's easy to get into a situation where your "target lifestyle" because more expensive than you thought it was. Especially if you refuse to "name every dollar" and end up "cheating" more often than you think.
> Ramsey clearly isn’t responsible for the problems of indebtedness he attempts to solve, but his solutions participate in that same economic spreadsheet-brain that has made a general mess of things in the first place. A fixation on money, on budgeting, on finances ultimately leads to a corporatized society, a dull land with endless strip malls, HR departments, team-building, idiotic jargon, and fake work.
Um, much of the HR nonsense, as well as the team-building, and idiotic jargon are not a result of "spreadsjeet-brain" per se. Rather they're the result of a previous generation's attempt to "solve" this problem.
Excellent. Ask most young men, who inspires, who is bold, who lives courageously? Tate or Ramsey. We all know the answer.
Haha, I mean, I hope I made it clear that I'm not a fan--but the outraged howling about him avoids the obvious question: why does this guy have such appeal?
Forwarded to business owners and family for further conversation