A Victoria man has gone two decades without money • Hacker News Board

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#111

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #107

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #74

I’m not sure living in the city off handouts, charity, and free tax payer provided facilities exactly promotes his no money philosophy. His life relies on the things he despises, if the economic collapse he predicts comes he will be among the first to starve to death. Go into the wild and grow/hunt food or trade some skill - the post money society doesn’t need philosopher poets scavenging cigarettes from trash cans

> the post money society doesn’t need philosopher poets scavenging cigarettes from trash cans Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion. Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone.

> Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion.

Have you considered that society should also be the natural predator of the odd philosopher poet so that their numbers do not become problematic for their environment?

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#112

Post by kevmo » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #100

Money is only one kind of power as I learned from going from working stiff to millionaire (thanks software biz!) to homeless broke person (cursed alcohol.) There is the shamanic-like power of a deeply spiritual person. There is the leadership power of a good manufacturing supervisor or ship captain. There is the moral power of Martin Luther King or Solzhenitsyn. I've come to the conclusion that accumulating money is…

> Would this person have any power if they weren't rich? A lot of times the answer is no.

In my experience, the answer is no like a solid 90-99% of the time. At least in America, the wealthy buy their kids into elite high schools, which feed into elite colleges, which feed into jobs at elite, increasingly monolithic institutions/corporations.

Junior gets to fail again and again until they succeed, and then the return on capital further institutionalizes their family's power.

It's just aristocracy, but with more steps.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#113

Post by birdyrooster » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #104

birdyrooster wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially given that men have taken on tasks far more dangerous and difficult than doing the dishes and have always died sooner. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlie...

This is kind of complicated, because men die sooner even if they don't do dangerous tasks. And in contemporary communes, there pretty often are not all that many super dangerous tasks to do. These communes dont have soldiers going into wars nor miners spending days in dust and dark. There used to be difference in terms of men drinking and smoking much more then women, but that is equalizing too. Basically, even if me…

My source is https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlie...

What is yours?

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#114

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #111

Aeolun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the post money society doesn’t need philosopher poets scavenging cigarettes from trash cans Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion. Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone.

> Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion. Have you considered that society should also be the natural predator of the odd philosopher poet so that their numbers do not become problematic for their environment?

Look: a “social Darwinist”! I should get a spotter's guide.

If society preys on philosopher poets, we don't get philosophy or poetry, our ethics never develops, and the fundamental principles of society don't improve, limiting how much technological progress can raise the standard of living. I personally call that a bad outcome.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#115

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

VictorPath wrote: post #92

kangnkodos wrote: post #17

He wants everyone to suddenly stop using money. If that happened, who would wash the dishes? Many communes have failed over this exact issue. They go on for several years with several people, usually women, making the sacrifice and doing what needs to be done. But eventually, the people who do the dishes get fed up and stop, or leave. And then the whole thing collapses. The alternative is for the leaders to have some…

> If the society has no money, there's going to be a whole lot of punishment going on The mostly uncontacted hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon jungle have no money, and not much punishment. Men all go out and hunt. If they are old or young or sick, the hunters give them food. If they are fine and refuse to go out on a hunt, they tend not to eat. There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt.…

"There's no coercion other than a hungry stomach."

This sounds like the classic punishment of being sent to your room without dinner, right? Removing the basic necessity of food is about as coercive as it gets. Even in civilized society we feed prisoners, give food to the hungry, etc.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#116

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #74

I’m not sure living in the city off handouts, charity, and free tax payer provided facilities exactly promotes his no money philosophy. His life relies on the things he despises, if the economic collapse he predicts comes he will be among the first to starve to death. Go into the wild and grow/hunt food or trade some skill - the post money society doesn’t need philosopher poets scavenging cigarettes from trash cans

It is incredibly ironic that the very people that claim the system is bad, effectively cannot survive on their non-conformist lifestyle without the current system. In a way though, it's no different than a religion. Priests cannot effectively survive without parishioners giving them money. Priests likewise preach things about the modern era of morality are bad and we must change them. So if you think of these vagabonds as "roving priests" then what they are doing is of the same concept. Although the difference between a local priest and some modern hippie rhetoric is a priest has relationships with his congregants. The idealist vagabond does not. So it's much harder for them to garner any support.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#117

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

seriousquestion wrote: post #106

VictorPath wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the society has no money, there's going to be a whole lot of punishment going on The mostly uncontacted hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon jungle have no money, and not much punishment. Men all go out and hunt. If they are old or young or sick, the hunters give them food. If they are fine and refuse to go out on a hunt, they tend not to eat. There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt.…

Are there examples of that in groups larger than Dunbar's number?

I don't know of any, but does it need to?

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#118

Post by AussieWog93 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

kangnkodos wrote: post #17

He wants everyone to suddenly stop using money. If that happened, who would wash the dishes? Many communes have failed over this exact issue. They go on for several years with several people, usually women, making the sacrifice and doing what needs to be done. But eventually, the people who do the dishes get fed up and stop, or leave. And then the whole thing collapses. The alternative is for the leaders to have some…

>If that happened, who would wash the dishes?

I'm genuinely shocked to see so many people disagreeing with this premise. Very few people will voluntarily perform shitty, low-status jobs unless you motivate them. Everyone wants to hand out toys to sick kids and pose for photos, nobody wants to clean up their chemo-smelling shit and puke.

It's been a real issue in every single volunteer-run organisation I've been a part of, from local churches and clubs right up to multi-million-line open source software projects.

Have none of these commenters ever participated in a real-world community setting like this?

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#119

Post by mgraczyk » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #114

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion. Have you considered that society should also be the natural predator of the odd philosopher poet so that their numbers do not become problematic for their environment?

Look: a “social Darwinist”! I should get a spotter's guide. If society preys on philosopher poets, we don't get philosophy or poetry, our ethics never develops, and the fundamental principles of society don't improve, limiting how much technological progress can raise the standard of living. I personally call that a bad outcome.

I don't think it's accurate to claim that ethics follows moral philosophy, and certainly most philosophers would not endorse that viewpoint. Philosophy doesn't tell society how to improve or behave. Philosophy helps question and understand, it hasn't historically been a driver of change.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#120

Post by aazaa » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

> As we walk through the city, Johnston offers a small disclaimer, putting out in the open what he calls his one “debatable” act of spending, post-31st birthday. If you count a gift card that someone gave him back in 2012, which he used on Big Macs and coffee, then, he says, he’s been money-free for only nine years.

This raises a point that article doesn't address: what is "money"?

If Johnson trades those cigarettes he makes from tossed butts for food, is he using money? Cigarettes have been used as currency in some special situations like war time.

Likewise, if Johnson accepts a product created through the use of money, isn't he in fact using money, if only indirectly?

Then there's the big question that never gets asked or answered: what happens if every single person on earth lived like Johnson? Money is fundamentally a way to fulfill future needs and wants. Abandoning money is really abandoning a path to build a future deliberately.

Storing grain, smoking meat, or building a shelter serve exactly the same purpose as money in this context. They are ways to make the future more predictable. They also have the interesting property that they can be traded for other ways to make the future more predictable. And that leads to the main problem that Johnson seems to be trying to solve: how to stop focusing on optimizing one's future through the accumulation of things that can make the future more certain.

What does a world of people who have abandoned the idea of making a future for themselves actually look like?