Is there anywhere in the world someone can just live for free?

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #85

vjk800 wrote: post #75

Is the goal to live without working or without being in the system? If it's the first, maybe living here, in Finland, in a small, cheap village and living off the unemployment benefits would work. There are plenty of people who have been unemployed their whole lives. 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…

This wouldn't work in the Netherlands (anymore); while we're known to have a good social security system, if you're filing for unemployment or the other kind of support, you're expected to put in the work and show that you're doing so by doing courses, making applications, etc. Failure to do so means your benefits are cut.

Post by lapphi » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #93

LeafItAlone wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cost of land fertilizer transportation animals My read of the parent’s comment is that you aren’t paying for land. You don’t need store bought fertilizer. I had a garden for a few years and avoided manufactured fertilizer for most of it. At an industrial scale, sure, it is needed, but not at an individual garden level. No transportation needed other than your own two feet or what you can build. It’s not like you ne…

I think life in the 1920s, while having downsides, was a lot better than many people imagine.

Post by achates » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #117

jasode wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am somewhat surprised that there aren't more cheap-living communes in the US. A few thousand dollars could probably pay the living expenses of a few dozen people – assuming they are all on-board with such a materially minimalist lifestyle. A monastery of nuns or monks is something like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosed_religious_orders Even though the members live a minimal lifestyle of near-poverty, ma…

One thing everyone forgets is that the Amish people benefit from police and national defence, like everyone else. Their simple, peaceful life would not be possible if they comprised their own sovereign nation in a region surrounded by hostile actors. With no military of their own, they’d be annexed instantly. This means they aren’t truly independent. They’re dependent in a way they could never afford to pay for thems…

Post by idiotsecant » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #104

mdekkers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Come on now, people have done it for hundreds of thousands of years. Come now, people also used to die from toothaches, and during those hundreds of thousands of years infant and child mortality was incredibly high, and education practically nonexistent. These “we have done this since the beginning of time” arguments always make me chuckle, they are so incredibly simplistic.

>Come now, people also used to die from toothaches Last time I was in America (about 20 years ago) there was an item on the news about a child that had died because of an untreated dental problem.

Post by V__ » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #113

throw0101b wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's interesting how quality of life baselines have increased so much in the last century. From John Maynard Keynes, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" (1930): > > Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes --those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which…

Yes, which is why I don’t think any “post-work” society will ever happen on a mass scale. People will invent jobs if they feed a social need.