On the experience of being dirt-poorish, for people who want to be

You take nothing from society, you take from the environment, with several abstraction layers, some slaves, some robots, some wage-slaves, some pure abstractions like companies.

Society is not involved in this. Actual society only exists with everyones spare time and only connects to others in there spare time.

Nobody chose to be part of this machine, they all march at gunpoint of each other. If they had a choice, they would abandon the whole thing, be the cog, that with a last pling vannished into some dark corner.

To project emotions on this machinery is miss guided. The cattle farm feeding robot, does not appreciate the subjective warmth emotions those it feeds project on it. To bring morals into the whole affair as a engineer, is a lack of judgment.

Its a machine, nothing more nothing less.

[dead]

Yes. The piece from Resident Contrarian hit hard because it was about being trapped in poverty.

Choosing to live with low consumption is laudable. I grew up in a thrifty household, though nowhere near so thrifty as the author's, and using less was much better for all of us. However, spending very little money but having a safety net and the opportunity to leave is the opposite of being trapped.

It's like a controlled retreat versus a rout. When you're choosing to be poor you have time and slack to make the choice. You might choose to live in a nice but remote house in the forest, which you may actually own outright (the article has no mention of rent or mortgage), and collect wood and grow your own food. When you're forced out of your shitty apartment because you lost your job or your landlord kicked you out on some flimsy pretext, as has happened to a few of my friends, then you've got two options: either find someone to give you a bit of breathing room by loaning you money/space on the couch/etc., or get an even shittier apartment for a worse price.

The author seems quite selfish and manipulative of others. He chooses to live this way because it allows him to avoid social interactions with others. Unlike true poverty he could easily utilize both his relational capital (call parents, get cash) and educational capital (had the ability to get a professional job and turned it down) these are simply not options for people who are actually poor. He clearly wants more from life, as long as someone gives it to him on his own terms.

There seems to be a lot of baggage from his childhood and subtle resentment to his parents. I'm concerned for his mental health. If this is truly just his personal choice though, I really question the relationship he has with his children and his justifications for how he provides the bare minimum for them when her could certainly do more. For someone so focused on frugality and minimalism his discussion about his children was focused completely on materialism, gift giving and the fact that a little under half of his monthly income came from government programs targeted at children. I kept expecting to read something about how he connects with them in emotionally meaningful ways or helps them grow and thrive. That love and care just didn't seem there.

Ultimately I worry about the kids, specifically their emotional and developmental needs. Their dad is so focused on himself and how he wants to live. That sounds like a very tough home to grow up in, even if the author was spectacularly rich.

> Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help.

So as well paid software engineers our overall tax rates as single filers in California reach about 40% at $400k but would only reach 50% at around $5M annual income.

That public services are so expensive to provide in California reflects the fact that housing costs are so expensive. Housing costs are where they are because of a mix of very high average wages and the ingrained nimbyism of existing home owners sitting on multi-million dollar homes.

At the end of the day median public sector workers like teachers need to earn enough to pay median housing costs. In the Bay Area we don't pay teachers anything like that. That makes me wonder whether I should move away when I have school age kids even if I am making absurd tech salaries here.