Freedom isn't Free

 

Still loving it. Over 8,000km of awesomeness in two months. Mint.

Longer rides have me pondering the Germanic trio who've had a huge influence on my trajectory. Schopenhauer (1788), Nietzsche (1844) and Mises (1881).

Context

Schopenhauer argues that reality isn’t run by reason but by an irrational force he calls the Will. Human life, on this view, is defined by suffering: we’re always wanting something, and satisfaction never lasts. Morality is grounded in compassion, while art and asceticism offer a brief escape from the constant pull of desire.

Nietzsche takes aim at what he sees as moral weakness, especially slave morality, which elevates humility and resentment over strength and excellence. Where Schopenhauer turned toward compassion, art and ascetic withdrawal, Nietzsche turned toward self-overcoming, life-affirmation, creativity, and the creation of new values.

Mises gives us praxeology, or economics as human action. He famously dismantles socialism by arguing that without market prices, rational economic calculation simply can’t happen. Both politically and philosophically, he is a classical liberal, defending free markets, private property, and individual liberty as the foundations of a functioning society.

Synthesize all three and you end up with a teetotal ascetic monk—Schopenhauerian in temperament, Nietzschean in spirit, Misesian in practice—who escaped the West at 32, retired at 48, and now rides a mid-sized motorbike around the tropics at 52.

Retirement Engineering

With a one year visa extension in the bag I’m in a good place right now, which means it’s time to think about risk management. One of the biggest threats isn’t markets or inflation, but a catastrophic medical event—think getting knocked off the bike and waking up in an ICU. That kind of randomness can easily run to six figures and derail an otherwise solid setup.

I knowingly choose some risks (motorcycles - hit 187km/h recently - a new high), so it makes sense to knowingly offset other risks. I can’t control financial markets, but I can decide whether to outsource certain risks. Outsourcing isn’t free - I spaffed $1,500 to avoid the possibility of spaffing $150,000. Wasteful? Maybe. Prudent? Definitely.

Freedom isn’t free.

This was my first time buying insurance and it's weird that it would be "a win" to never have to use the "product". $1,500 of thin air. But insurance isn’t really an investment, it’s more of an exchange: a known, finite cost to eliminate unknowable and potentially ruinous outcomes. The product isn’t coverage, it’s certainty - or a narrower band of uncertainty. If the policy is never used it's worked perfectly.

Spock

I went with (cheaper) IPD-only coverage and skipped OPD. I’m reasonably healthy and not worried about flu. The goal isn’t convenience or reimbursement - it’s protection against retirement-ending events. Insurance makes most sense when it covers low-probability, high-impact risks, not routine expenses. Traders would frame it as buying a Put-Option - downside risk coverage.

Ordinarily, I would've passed on insurance, but I can't stop thinking about Mises’ core insight:

Man acts with purpose under conditions of uncertainty, scarcity, and time preference.

Uncertainty is baked in. No arguing with that.

So is scarcity - which also explains why John Lennon’s Imagine will never happen; humans must compete for limited resources. Mises also reminds us that value is subjective, contextual and ordinal, and, at this moment in time, my actions reveal that I value insuring the status quo against uncertainty, more than I value $1,500.

It took a couple of weeks to mull over. Am I a pussy? Afraid of risk? A good enough rider? What if a drunk runs into the back of me? Am I somehow above randomness? Is this life-affirming? Can I afford it? Is it stupid? Eventually, reason won out - and I pulled the trigger. Feel calm now.

Laptop Loy

The Vin-top HP hinges finally gave way after five and a half years of abuse - it was free so can't complain. $380 later, I picked up a cheap and cheerful 14" Acer Aspire Lite (AL14-42P-R4UM) with a Ryzen 3 5300U, 8 GB RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. Windows was wiped immediately in favour of Linux Mint 22.3 XFCE 64-bit — an even lighter setup than before. Runs like shit off a stick. Champion. Hoping for another five-plus years.

Health

Bought push-up handles ($2), a doorway pull-up bar ($4), and some rope ($2) — the simplest home gym imaginable. Every other morning I do three rounds of:

• Push-ups ×15
• Pull-ups ×5
• Bodyweight squats ×10
• Jump rope ×1 minute
  

Takes about half an hour. Solid. Most evenings I walk around 5km, either around the Stadium or out at Doi Pha Chang if I’m in the mood for rice fields and karst cliffs - though that’s 25km away and a perfect excuse to for a blast on the bike.

Social

There’s a woman who sells water at the stadium who’d taken a shine to AWOL. She’d had a stroke and suffered the same afflictions as me fatha — a lame right arm and leg — so I knew immediately what had happened to her. Unfortunately, she misconstrued my compassion as romance, leaving me with the delicate task of asserting boundaries while guarding her feelings. A tightrope, that. She was fine in the end, and we’re all good. Poor lass just wants a bit of male attention and affection.

Meanwhile the young Akha couple where I eat most nights are still trying to attach a gyno-parasite to my life. They see an older man, content, at peace, riding his bike around the boonies and feel a deep-seated urge to disrupt it by introducing a permanent, non-consensual joint venture - liability-heavy with irreversible capital commitments, asymmetric downside risk, and a time horizon measured in decades. All of it wrapped in moral persuasion and social pressure, justified by vague promises of “meaning,” wildly optimistic projections, and the quiet assumption that my existing bachelor utility function is immature and due for central planning, complete with price controls on freedom, mandatory emotional-labour quotas, and zero respect for revealed preferences.

Yeah, nah.

I'll stick with the weekly "oil massage". A discrete, spot-market exchange, clearly defined service, known price, limited duration, no residual claims, and no spillover liabilities. Costs are explicit, exposure is capped, and optionality preserved.

Keep on keeping on.