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

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#121

Post by henvic » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:41 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.

There is no such thing as a "corporate drone".

On the other hand there is such a thing as a statist parasite (think politicians, bureaucrats, crony capitalists, etc.), and hobos with a belief they're superior to others and love to do virtue signaling as making a life decision to live until the end of their lives supported by others, directly or indirectly, is something very, very wise.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#122

Post by erikerikson » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:42 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?

This is an excellent point. The scaling of social accountability is a difficult problem. In my opinion it is a root problem of humanity and our current solutions are due for disruption.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#123

Post by danenania » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #63

boomlinde wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you ever done your own dishes? I use something so that it gets dirty, so I'll wash it off. The jobs "no one wants to do" is usually work people are happy to do for themselves or occasionally their friends and family. The idea that "no one wants to do them" embeds the presumption that you spend eight hours a day doing just that. Of course no one wants to do that!

> Haven't you ever done your own dishes? I use something so that it gets dirty, so I'll wash it off. Dishes is just one example. You may wash your own dishes, but did you buy those dishes from someone who was selling them as their job? Do you grow all of your own food? Do you also sew your own clothes? Build your own shelter? Engineer your own transportation and manufacture your own iPhone? The truth is that a societ…

Exactly. And because we don't usually see all this work happening firsthand, we tend to severely underestimate the difficulty involved in meeting our many needs and desires.

Modern society makes it look easy, but it's extremely challenging for a 'Dunbar's number' sized tribe to meet all its members' needs at anything resembling the quality of life we're all used to. The healthcare/pharmaceutical needs alone would be borderline impossible. You'd have to be willing to tolerate much lower life expectancy, much higher mortality for infants and mothers, etc. etc.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#124

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:45 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?

I mean, to some extend they’re self regulating. Few people have the stomach for a life like that so the total amount of philosopher poets is likely a function of your total population.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#125

Post by AussieWog93 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:45 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 is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt.

Are you sure about this, or are you treating a "noble savage" fantasy as if it were fact?

I've read some early settler accounts of Australian Aboriginals, and they would beat the living shit out of the lower-status members of their society (especially women) on a regular basis.

Sometimes the beatings would be followed up with rape, and the perpetrators would get away with it Scot free because they were high-status.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#126

Post by will4274 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:47 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.…

Citation needed. This would certainly be atypical. Uncontacted tribes in other parts of the world (e.g. the Sentinelese) are famously violent.

It's easy to imagine paradise in cultures we don't understand but reality is rarely that pretty.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#127

Post by bouncycastle » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

In countryside Japan, I notice that people get a lot of their vegetables and rice from family members who have a plot of something. Some have rice, some have carrots, potatoes and so on. Giving whatever excess stuff you have from your field and get reciprocated with other stuff you don't have, no money needed.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#128

Post by scarmig » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #118

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 par…

But we are special, so naturally it'd be we who get the interesting exciting jobs in the post-money society. It'd be all the non-special people who'd be cleaning shit off the sidewalk, though of course they'd enjoy it since they would no longer be burdened by money.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#129

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #119

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Driver? No. Heck, I hardly know any philosophers. But most of our big ideas were written down by a philosopher and then, decades later, read by to-be-important people at the beginnings of a social movement.

Social philosophy influences societal change, by providing ideas. Without philosophers, activists have to be more visionary than they already are, making them rarer.

(Moral philosophy, not really, I'll agree with you.)

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#130

Post by henvic » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

peterburkimsher wrote: post #11

I admire his resolve, though it's not something I'd like to take to the extreme. Spending more time with people who have less money (e.g. CouchSurfing -> BeWelcome, hitchhiking, dumpster diving) has been an immensely rewarding experience. Last week, I heard a message about investment, which said that the 3 ways to store wealth are stocks in companies, bonds in governments, and property (owned by banks or rich people)…

> (shouldn't that be a government choice?).

Why? Just why? Why the hell can't I be free to move freely to a place where other people accept me? Why is it that a parasitic entity (the state) has to say whether they allow me in or not? Why should I be barred to enter a continental region of the world without convincing a bunch of bureaucrats that I'll be there just for a few days?

> Privatisation is also taking over police departments, prisons, bus services, etc. I don't trust that the shareholders' best interests are the same as the needs of the people.

And you trust state actors responsible for most murders in history (example: compare how many hundreds of millions were murdered in wars vs. by private actors in the last century), how come?

> War helps private companies, at the expense of governments & property. I'm not hopeful for peace in the next 50 years.

No. It's not at the expense of governments. This is pure brainwash propaganda. Governments, or states, are responsible for most of the destructive behavior we see in human history. They're not victims but perpetrators of wars. It's silly to think otherwise. You're not hopeful "for peace in the next 50 years" because of your prejudices and misconceptions.

Society has never been so peaceful as today. Thanks to the private sector, communication is more and more accessible to everyone. Some day (not sure if 50 years or 500), poverty will be over, except due to acts of state-sponsored terrorism, and people will be able to denounce it whenever it happens and on a global scale. This is starting to happen today already.

Most private entities (companies or the third sector) do good for the people and benefit nothing from the misery caused by state actors and their wars. Just a thin fraction, such as defense contractors, does.