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A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

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Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#251

Post by telotortium »

noduerme wrote: post #159
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vagabon…

Traveling Buddhist monks in Southeast Asia live solely on donations. They don't necessarily have an individual relationship with "parishioners" any more than this particular hippie does (probably less). Whether it's beneficial for anyone for too much of society's resources to be allocated to the practice is a question. If you view spiritual comfort and the pursuit of karma as a kind of social glue, then some amount o…

I have to say, I agree with the traditional Christian practice that discourages this sort of monasticism, called gyrovagues[0] in the West. The more usual forms of monasticism, although they accept donations, are expected to me more or less self-sufficient on a daily basis, and thus less parasitic on society. Either a monk would live in a monastery and work to support the monastery, possibly selling some of the products to the outside world, or a monk would live on their own in the wilderness, only occasionally meeting with a priest and generally actively avoiding donors, at least for the first few years. An exception is anchorites, who generally spend all their time in prayer and do rely on donations, but they generally don't move around from place to place.

Even the large monasteries over time became less favored by the populace in Europe, since they had acquired enough land through donations over the centuries that they often began to act more like landlords.

In summary, those who wish to live outside of normal society, particularly economically, should strive to avoid being parasites, and, failing that, should not move from host to host.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrovague

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#252

Post by craftinator »

aunty_helen wrote: post #206
noduerme wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking to someone who lived on the road for 10+ years and spent plenty of time in music circles on beaches discussing the nature of the universe. All of which came to very little. I don't work and earn to chase a new car. I do it to give my life meaning and to afford a good future for myself and my family. And yeah, I have every right to look down at the people who think they're being so smart by "not getting…

>You're talking to someone who lived on the road for 10+ years >I have every right >I always worked. I didn't do drugs regularly. And I never begged. I wasn't a parasite, like so many >Where are they now? Lying in ditches, muttering to themselves. Dude, you're a narcissist. You're free to change your values over time but no one else is? Maybe the next person squatting in your town square is a former you. Once again,…

> Dude, you're a narcissist. You're free to change your values over time but no one else is? Maybe the next person squatting in your town square is a former you.

This was exactly what was going through my head while reading their post. That, or that they are making up a BS backstory to gain some sort of credibility, but there is no point in that sort of speculating.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#253

Post by codebolt »

aunty_helen wrote: post #206
noduerme wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking to someone who lived on the road for 10+ years and spent plenty of time in music circles on beaches discussing the nature of the universe. All of which came to very little. I don't work and earn to chase a new car. I do it to give my life meaning and to afford a good future for myself and my family. And yeah, I have every right to look down at the people who think they're being so smart by "not getting…

>You're talking to someone who lived on the road for 10+ years >I have every right >I always worked. I didn't do drugs regularly. And I never begged. I wasn't a parasite, like so many >Where are they now? Lying in ditches, muttering to themselves. Dude, you're a narcissist. You're free to change your values over time but no one else is? Maybe the next person squatting in your town square is a former you. Once again,…

If someones choice of values leads them to wilfully and proudly become a parasite and a burden to the people around them, then they are the ones with the mental disorder.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#254

Post by peterburkimsher »

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)…

What about the "hockey-stick" exponential growth that's needed for compounding to work?

Companies pretend that it's true for them, but actually are at the mercy of business cycles. Governments have linear growth at best. Property has had exponential growth because of increasing population, but that's plateauing.

Can social connectedness be exponential, for the benefit of society? Not just more people, but people who are more connected to each other? How can that growth be incentivised? (I'm thinking out loud)

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#255

Post by jazzyjackson »

belugacat wrote: post #191
mikem170 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before money people traded favors. You help me butcher my cow, I help you rebuild your house (which was more work then the cow), so maybe later on your brother helps fix my plow knowing he'll eventually get something in return, and now I am trading favors with you and your brother, etc. This bonded people. It would have been insulting to say "here are two chickens for your lamb, we are now even, I owe you nothing eve…

“No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money,” wrote the Cambridge anthropology professor Caroline Humphrey in a 1985 paper. “All available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.” https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter-...

I can’t tell if you’re disagreeing or adding context to the parent with this quote.

2 chickens for a lamb would be bartering, but that doesn’t happen.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#257

Post by xondono »

tejtm wrote: post #248
xondono wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone. False dichotomy much? Name one odd philosopher poet that has brought anything to the table

Socrates

Socrates was nothing like what is being talked.

He was wealthy, he participated in society, he even went to war.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#258

Post by craftinator »

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.

> Philosophy helps question and understand, it hasn't historically been a driver of change.

You kind of put your foot in it with this comment. Societal change, for the most part, directly follows questioning and understanding.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#259

Post by sharikous »

CydeWeys wrote: post #28
kypro wrote: post #16

I don't see how taking from everyone and giving very little in return is moral. If everyone did this we'd all live in a far worse world. This is basically the antithesis of my own moral code to give more than I receive. I relate to him in that I value money very little as a medium to facilitate my own happiness, but I still want to make a lot of it so I can give more. He seems sweet though. I think I would get on wit…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's a leech on society. He has two children he could not support (and has no contact with), he's constantly mooching off others for his basic needs, and there's not a word in the article about him ever doing a single thing productive for society. And unlike many other homeless people who legitimately are unable to contribute productively, this is all his choice. He's lucky he's…

Really? Why do you assume any society is free of leeches? Heck, even Torrent has them. I think he probably would be a shaman or something like that and he would still live a similar life.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#260

Post by xondono »

alex_young wrote: post #196
xondono wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone. False dichotomy much? Name one odd philosopher poet that has brought anything to the table

Diogenes

A guy of whom we have only embellished apocryphal stories, and who I have the suspicion either never existed or wasn’t nothing as portrayed afterwards.

The various “legends” around him like meeting Alexander the Great and dying at the same time are also suspect as hell.

And for all of that, what we have is what exactly? A philosophical justification for being an asshole I guess? The world would have been pretty much the same if he had not existed.

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