Relationships are often about time you spend together with someone, and allowing you control over your time (first item) has a beneficial effect on relationship-building.
If you think about relationships being about giving and receiving, then what more valuable resource can you give someone than your time?
Sure, wealth can help with relationships, but how can you write an article about the highest forms of wealth and not even mention them? It betrays a particular view of the world and a particular set of values. And while it’s not out and said, I think this article is interested in achieving a satisfying life, for which I think relationships are more important than finance.
This too is covered, both explicitly and implicitly, in the article. The concept that more money can make you less happy is explicitly covered, and the concept that if you want to do something and can't you aren't wealthy is covered. Obviously, there are many people for whom what they want to do today is play with their kids/grandkids/friends.
I think the issue many are running into with this article is that autonomy is a complicated subject and it covers whatever you're thinking isn't covered here.
how so? if you dont have money you must allocate lots of time to kid after work. if you are wealthy, 1st thing you might not work all and 2nd thing you might have nanny or two, who take care of heavy lifting.
"doing whatever you want" does not equal to "stuff that satisfies for very short periods of time (i.e. not only drugs, games and tv)"
You might be able to make extended arguments about how the points in the article relate to relationships, or influence them, but suggesting the topic is entirely covered by this limited advice is absurd. Also, I’m not simply looking for it to be covered but for it to be appropriately centered, which it’s not.
> "Controlling your time and the ability to wake up and say, “I can do whatever I want today.”
If you are in a good relationship, you can’t do whatever you want any day. The goal of the article is fundamentally incompatible with the sacrifices required for a good relationship with another human being.
That’s not how it works. Sometimes you wake up one day and decide you want to go to the natural history museum but your SO wants to go to the MOMA to show you a new piece.
Someone doesn’t get what they want in that scenario and a compromise has to be made.
obvious why, because the author has a somewhat juvenile view of thinking of 'independence' as the primary thing to be after in life. (and in this peace identifies 'real wealth' as the means to achieve that).
"Controlling your time and the ability to wake up and say, “I can do whatever I want today.”
Note that this doesn't apply to one particular set of people, individuals with families or real obligations and people who depend on them.
How is that autonomy? I have to wake up at 6am every single morning and make milk and change diapers. I have to take a crap with the door open. I have to think a day in advance if I can take a shower.
If I'm not doing one of those things I'm working, fixing something around the house, cooking, or running an errand. What I don't have is the privilege to do anything aside from what must be done.
Don't get me wrong, I love having a family but that's kind of my point: autonomy isn't worth a damn to me.
>How is that autonomy? I have to wake up at 6am every single morning and make milk and change diapers. I have to take a crap with the door open. I have to think a day in advance if I can take a shower.
That's still autonomy, since getting into that was your decision to make. Nobody put a pistol on your head to start a family and have kids (hopefully). That's something you chose, with the restrictions that come with it. You could might as well not have started a family, and thus not having to do that.
(Not to mention that if you had more money you could delegate most of those, including making milk and changing diapers, to some helpers, and only keep the "quality" time).
Now, imagine to still "lov[ing] having a family", but being so poor you couldn't afford to start one (or nobody would marry you, because you're, say, homeless). Or having to work double shifts just to make ends meet, and only being able to be minimally present for your kids, despite wanting to be there more. That's lack of autonomy.
> That's still autonomy, since getting into that was your decision to make
You do have to understand Covid changed a lot of the calculus around kids for a lot of parents. Everything has been affected: the amount of help and support you can get, the activities you can do with them.
That's a fair point, it was a decision I made so autonomy still applies by your definition. I think I disagree with the article's definition of highest form of wealth though:
> Controlling your time and the ability to wake up and say, “I can do whatever I want today.”
Even if I had no professional obligations, I still wouldn't have autonomy. Young children, like software projects, take up all available time. They restrict you in where you can go, for how long, with whom, and what you can do.
Sure you could hire help and free up more time. And that's a choice many people make. But it wouldn't sit right with me to have someone else teach my children to read, or build robots, or ride a bike if I really have the free time to do it myself.
>Even if I had no professional obligations, I still wouldn't have autonomy. Young children, like software projects, take up all available time.
As long as time is limited and we can't replicate ourselves to be in more than one place, some lack of autonomy is expected. But nobody talked about total autonomy here. The post, and I, mean the casual autonomy to not to be forced to do something you didn't chose at any point.
Young children you can chose to have or not (and take the time hit that goes with it).
Whereas if you have no money and need food and rent and so on, not working is not a choice.
Autonomy is not about having all free time all the time. It's about chosing how you want to spend your time (if that - like having kids - comes with restrictions, those are still your choice, since you opted to that).
Lack of autonomy is when you can't opt out - like when you don't want to have kids but your parents force you to an arranged marriage, or when you want to have kids but can't because you can't afford it, or when you want to spend time with your kids/family but need to work, and so on.
Autonomy as a concept doesn’t get you very far if you’re seeking fulfillment or meaning. Sure, it’s an important component of fulfillment, but you don’t even need complete autonomy to be happy. You can be happy with compelled marriage or accidental childbirth. This article, and I think you, are too focused on autonomy and material conditions.
I took the author’s perspective to be within the context of wealth-building, i.e. the world of work/professional focus/etc. Within this context I thought his point was well-made: it isn’t that agency is more important than all other things, but rather that having agency, while one goes about building wealth, is of paramount importance.
