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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

#321

Post by noduerme »

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,…

> Maybe the next person squatting in your town square is a former you.

Maybe they are! And if they are, eventually I hope they stop listening to the romantic rubbish about what "freedom" consists of and what capitalist society owes them, as spewed by the leaders of camps and troupes who are mainly interested in keeping a parasitic lifestyle surrounded by runaway girls and boys who'll do what they say. Those visionary camp leaders are the real narcissists. This one gives his game away when he talks about how he should be the one to manage the shit show when money is abolished. It's all wankerish nihilism dressed up as Marxist dialectics, with the dialectic controlled by someone with slightly more reading than their followers.

FWIW, I upvoted this comment. I agree it's fine for people to have different values. Eventually, me-on-a-beach will hopefully find values that lead toward self-actualization and personal growth, and away from sloth and the bitterness and wasted time of jealousy towards people who have more. In the interim I don't blame them, I just think their philosophy is childish and poorly conceived. If that makes me a narcissist, so be it.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#322

Post by cgh »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #262
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

> Go into the wild and grow/hunt food It is easy to radically underestimate how much food a human needs every day and how hard it is to acquire, especially when living a non-sedentary life as a hunter/gatherer. Trying to accumulate 2000+ calories per day growing food requires a rather significant farm and skill (and weather); doing so with meat requires daily hunting, or a permanent storage facility with refrigeratio…

Yes, and in the northern hemisphere at least, you quickly realize that foraging for plants is a waste of time. There just isn’t enough calories.

Re daily hunting, meat actually keeps for quite a while when hung in cooler temps (heat is not your friend when hunting). This is routinely done with eg deer. And it is easy to dry meat of all sorts, or even smoke it as that has the same effect and also makes it even more delicious.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#323

Post by LightBearer »

noduerme wrote: post #167
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

I've heard the nobility of homelessness and joblessness expressed as an ethos countless times by people who wouldn't care for the work of living off-grid. I happen to work in a town with some of the highest taxes in the country that's also one of the most attractive places for indigent campers. The park across from where I live has become a tent city. I get the pleasure of paying for its "upkeep" while also having to…

You sound mad that this fellow has found a way to not contribute to the society you think everyone should. Jealous?

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#324

Post by shkkmo »

kbenson wrote: post #235
shkkmo wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is realy easy to look down on people for all kinds of reasons. It is much harder to empathize with the challenges and point of views that are alien to your perspective. Our society needs more people willing to take on that challenge instead of allowing their own insecurities to drive them into contempt.

There's a difference between being empathetic to those that have problems and need help and those that choose knowingly to opt out of the surface level of the system while still receiving its benefits. While GP comment may be painting groups with an overly broad brush, I'm not sure I see any fault with the criticism of the specific type of person they describe, which does exist, even if it may not be all of that grou…

You seem to be aligning me with one side or the other. I think my criticism applies equally to the people who look down on people for particpating in the system as to those who call them parasites.

Critical rational thought can take you all sorts of violent and negative places if you don't make an effort to pair it with empathy and a genuine effort to understand the perspectives of those you are tempted to despise.

Giving in to "rational" dehumanization and hatred is not going to actually help anything and will probably make things worse.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#325

Post by dredmorbius »

xondono wrote: post #257
tejtm wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socrates

Socrates was nothing like what is being talked. He was wealthy, he participated in society, he even went to war.

Socrates was a stonemason --- effectively a skilled labourer or tradesman, but not wealthy. He was a footsoldier. In a culture where most were slaves, he was a citizen, but not a member of the aristocracy (notably contrasting with Plato). His long-suffering wife Xanthippe complained of his failure to provide for the family, and Socrates lived simply.

Socrates as a citizen was likely the third of Athens' four classes: slaves, metics, citizens, nobles. Not destitute, but neither wealthy.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/

https://iep.utm.edu/socrates/#H1

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#326

Post by kalenx »

mikem170 wrote: post #304
samatman wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communities of Iroquois Native Americans Had wampum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampum Which was absolutely used as trade goods between Iroquois bands, between the Iroquois and other natives, and between the Iroquois and settler colonialists. Standardized trade goods, portable and of a broadly recognized value: in other words, money. Money which was good enough that the English, being kept short of coin by the Cr…

Like I said, the original post I replied to seemed to say they couldn't imagine the dishes getting done without money: "He wants everyone to suddenly stop using money. If that happened, who would wash the dishes?" I'm fairly certain the Iroquois didn't need to trade wampum with other bands to get the dishes washed? Just like you said you don't need to pay someone in your family to do the dishes, families (and friends…

I think scale is the key here. You can do that within a family, you might do that within a village, perhaps in some perfect circumstances you will be able to do that within a group of a few 1000's people, but never at the scale of our societies. It's not about the type of society or people, it really has to do with the number. You'll have a much harder time convincing someone to work for someone else he doesn't know at all...

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#327

Post by Aeolun »

nwienert wrote: post #170
Aeolun wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many crazed homeless drug addicts per philosopher poet do you find acceptable? Is it somewhere near the current 10k to 1 level? Of course you are willing to patronize a cabal of homeless on your block as well.

> How many crazed homeless drug addicts per philosopher poet do you find acceptable?

I think the only acceptable number is zero. The philosopher poet clearly desires this life. The crazed homeless drug addict would much rather inject his morphine at home.

In other words, I think the fact that a drug addict is homeless is incidental. They should be treated because they’re a drug addict, not because they’re homeless.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#328

Post by Aeolun »

xondono wrote: post #164
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.

> 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

I think you misunderstand the scale at which I’m thinking.

This guy has amused me for, say half an hour of reading the article, and for a bunch more while replying to the comments.

It’s possible I would have been as amused by a corporate drone’s story, but it’s doubtful. I read enough of those, so the marginal utility of one extra story is very low.

That said, I’ve met philosopher poets on the street before, and the encounters are always memorable.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#329

Post by mikem170 »

gimmeThaBeet wrote: post #320
mikem170 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tangential, but I tend to feel this way about a segment of van life philosophy Ah, I know what you mean. I've thought about this myself. One of those "it wouldn't work if everyone did it" kind of things. You could do van life while working for an oil company, there's people with all kinds of van life jobs, it's a way to cut expenses and have more time outside of work. But things would need to be quite different if…

I understand, I was careful to say a segment, I know how easy it is to come off resentful or bitter. I largely don't have much a problem with van life or any such lifestyles, like you say, there's plenty of people where the extent of van life is they just happen to live in a van. The issue I take is admittedly more pedantic, sort of intellectual honesty. I know it's paradoxical, but a thought I have a lot is "I don't…

I guess I had a different reaction to his no-money thing, kind of putting it into the context of my own recent experiences, feeling drowned in the rat race sometimes, and seeing that happening to other people I know. Have we made things better in the last 50 years? The culture in the U.S. seems to be very focused on money, keeping the gdp growing, counting on consumers to keep consuming, etc. Isn't money supposed to be just a means to an end?

So I took this guy's stance on money as making a statement. Are we hating on the guy who doesn't want to play the game so many of us feel stuck in? Is he worse then the rich who dupe the rest of us, plundering the common good for their profits?

I think it's great that there's people out there dedicated to exploring different ideas. That seems to be inevitable, there's billions of us, and we're not evolved to be the same, for good reason. The majority shouldn't need to be scared of the minority, right? And we're all equal, aren't we?

Also, unrelated to the idea of no money, I liked his taking a stand on allowing people to sleep in parks. Many homeless people want to work and need to be near cities, where the jobs tend to be, and have nowhere secure to sleep. Maybe lockers, porta potties, showers, cheap boarding houses, camps for the better behaved, camps for the crazies, etc. What we're dong now isn't good enough. I'd like to think if we got all opinions in a room we could work something out. They're people, too.

Anyways, that's what was running through my mind when I read the article. I've also thought of stuff like this from the van life perspective, like you mentioned. In the past I've railed against welfare, but lately I wonder more about the burdens we place on the poor more than the money we give them. I don't think I've ever thought it was immoral to be poor.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#330

Post by alasdair_ »

jfk13 wrote: post #193
imtringued wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is bad for lenders (i.e. people keeping deposits in USD). People who work get paid based on their real value which means their pay rises if inflation rises. Of course it maybe difficult to get a raise for your current job but switching jobs will get you a raise that catches up to inflation. Here is a chart: https://imgur.com/a/eOXF0UO Note that there has been a shift in bargaining power since 1980 that is c…

> switching jobs will get you a raise If only that option were realistically available to all, rather than just an entitled few.

A remarkably large number of restaurants and similar employers have recently increased their wages due to demand. It’s not just the elite.
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