71–80 of 493 posts
I think it would be cool if we had a kind of non religious Amish type communities.
It's interesting how quality of life baselines have increased so much in the last century. If you wanted to have the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago, it could be done today for probably $100 a month all-inclusive of food, clothing, and shelter. But you'd be eating the same 5-10 things repeatedly, wearing the same clothes, have a few books for entertainment, minimal or no electronics…
I don't think you have a good idea of what life was like in the 1920s, even in the American West.
Here is what Cheyenne looked like in the 1910s - http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cheyenne1900s.html . People had cars then - and horses. Train service started in 1867. The local library started in 1886 so you could get books for entertainment.
You can see in the pictures there was even phone service.
Sears was making millions each year as a catalog mail-order company, so even if you lived in the middle of nowhere you could order just about anything for your house - including the house! In their 1920 book they wrote "Sears, Roebuck and Co. supply the needs of more than eight million families." https://archive.org/details/storyofsearsroeb00sear/page/2/mo...
So, go back another 50 years, to the 1870s of "Little House in the Big Woods". The family had venison, fish, pork, bear meat, squirrel, rabbit, "potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages" from their garden, red peppers, pumpkins, squashes, and yellow cheeses - all in the first chapter. Plus maple sugar, store sugar, honey from the bee tree, berries, pickles, milk from the cows, and made from all of those, "pumpkin pies and dried berry pies and cookies and cakes ... salt-rising bread" https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/wildersewell-woods/wildersew...
Rather more than "the same 5-10 things repeatedly".
International waters (the 'high seas') are free and represent about 50% of the world's surface
Obtaining a vessel that can reach international waters (let alone one that enables you to survive there for a long time) is quite expensive.
I think it would be cool if we had a kind of non religious Amish type communities.
I guess there's a very small amount of work filling all the benefit forms and subjecting yourself to whatever periodic checks the officials want to make, but it's not very much at all.
It's interesting how quality of life baselines have increased so much in the last century. If you wanted to have the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago, it could be done today for probably $100 a month all-inclusive of food, clothing, and shelter. But you'd be eating the same 5-10 things repeatedly, wearing the same clothes, have a few books for entertainment, minimal or no electronics…
Cost of land fertilizer transportation animals etc have gone up to the point that I didn't think that life is possible for 100 a month Consider that If this was possible I could work at McDonald's for two years and then retire to that kind of life. Obviously that's not realistic
You'd need to scale the chicken operation to cover whatever your three month compost needs are and you'd need people to eat or use the eggs relatively quickly. You could produce, dry, and store the corn on site.
What am I missing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking money from the state for which others worked to finance your life without making an attempt to finance your life yourself.
The inverse perspective is that you have been forced to not be able to finance yourself and I have both theory and evidence that this is true for a non zero percentage of the population. In that sense, not spending "other people's money" was never an option to begin with. Instead of using a framing that sees other people as parasites, I prefer to see it as a bribe to people to get them away from me and leave me alone…
It's interesting how quality of life baselines have increased so much in the last century. If you wanted to have the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago, it could be done today for probably $100 a month all-inclusive of food, clothing, and shelter. But you'd be eating the same 5-10 things repeatedly, wearing the same clothes, have a few books for entertainment, minimal or no electronics…
I have a very low material quantity of life, but my spiritual quality of life is pretty good even as I live homeless with a disability in a minivan in the United States. Americans are way too materialistic and there needs to be a reckoning of this if anything is going to change. Even people I meet that live in other minivans or RVs want to have every single creature comfort they had when they were living in a house.…
Would you be willing to share the list of what you have?
If you’re a citizen or legal resident of a Nordic country, you’ll get paid basic subsistence when you have no other income. In Finland this is around 500 euros / month. There are lots of empty houses in the remote countryside in Finland (and I presume the same is true for parts of Sweden and Norway). You can probably rent something for next to nothing, or even make a deal with the owner to stay for free in exchange f…
It’s called living on the dole, most western countries have social security like this. It’s not really meant for long term living but as a safety net for periods when you might find yourself unemployed. Also, most countries have very cheap housing in the countryside/remote areas, in northern countries you have to factor in heating costs which can be several hundred euros/month during the (long) winter.
It's interesting how quality of life baselines have increased so much in the last century. If you wanted to have the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago, it could be done today for probably $100 a month all-inclusive of food, clothing, and shelter. But you'd be eating the same 5-10 things repeatedly, wearing the same clothes, have a few books for entertainment, minimal or no electronics…
> the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago I don't think you have a good idea of what life was like in the 1920s, even in the American West. Here is what Cheyenne looked like in the 1910s - http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cheyenne1900s.html . People had cars then - and horses. Train service started in 1867. The local library started in 1886 so you could get books for entertainment.…
It’s cute for sure but I don’t know if I’d use a novel for children as an accurate portrayal of the median subsistence living experience 150 years ago.