Is there anywhere in the world someone can just live for free? • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by sdwr » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

V__ wrote: post #139

keiferski wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was a line in the show Orville which stuck with me. The gist was: In a post scarcity society people started to value other for their compassion and "work ethic". If someone wants to read all day and learn, or be a bartender etc. then that is all the same, only laziness and not pursuing something was looked down upon.

A post-scarcity society is kind of a present-day reality for people with enough $$$ in the bank (including Seth McFarlene). Maybe that's the attitude he's cultivated. He's certainly no stranger to labors of love - I just found his old-school-crooner-style albums on youtube last week.

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

#182

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

aBioGuy wrote: post #68

No has mentioned that the initial assertion is incorrect? The US Government sent troops to remove native inhabitants. Then they gave the land away. Having an army clear the land ahead of time makes a lot of homesteading possible.

The Americas largely were empty land ready to be taken by colonists, because Europeans brought old world diseases that killed 90+% of the native people, often before they'd even seen a European.

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

#183

Post by user3939382 » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

btbuildem wrote: post #157

OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. It usually seems to imply "away from others". Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social f…

There are a few places with no property taxes. So you could setup a self sustaining home and after an initial investment live free forever, and still be part of a community.

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

#184

Post by rebolek » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

beedeebeedee wrote: post #180

ethanbond wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) a community that moves is still a community. A loner that moves around, by contrast, is usually dead within a week or two. 2) we didn’t stop moving around because there’s nowhere else to go. There is a huge amount of totally unpopulated (by humans) land in nearly every region. We don’t choose to live out there because it sucks. We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all ov…

> We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow foor right near you... If that was all there was to it, why did we keep migrating after the agricultural revolution?

Because of changes in the environment.

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

#185

Post by christophilus » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

beepbooptheory wrote: post #143

keiferski wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does that follow though? Why not just say: in the absence of labor, people would still like to make and do nice things for people to consume. Like, you know, enjoying life and sharing with others. A "job" is not a spontaneous effect of a desire, its not a natural thing, but simply a formalization step in capitalism for the sake of exchanging labor for pay. "Post-work" generally doesn't mean "nobody can work anymo…

Every economic system we’ve ever observed had jobs. Communism, socialism, feudalism, tribalism… Human civilization has and probably will always have roles which are essentially responsibilities for ensuring some good or service is consistently available to the community. That’s a job in my book, regardless of the economic system.

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

#186

Post by ethanbond » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:12 PM UTC

beedeebeedee wrote: post #180

ethanbond wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) a community that moves is still a community. A loner that moves around, by contrast, is usually dead within a week or two. 2) we didn’t stop moving around because there’s nowhere else to go. There is a huge amount of totally unpopulated (by humans) land in nearly every region. We don’t choose to live out there because it sucks. We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all ov…

> We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow foor right near you... If that was all there was to it, why did we keep migrating after the agricultural revolution?

For the same reason people still move and still found new towns and grow the borders of cities today? Because there are new places to go, and they might be better than the current place?

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

#187

Post by watwut » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

beedeebeedee wrote: post #169

btbuildem wrote: post #157

OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. It usually seems to imply "away from others". Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social f…

> Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. I would say it is the opposite. Looking back at the millenia of human history, it is people migrating. Successive waves out of Africa and across the continents, and everywhere e…

The average human did not moved anywhere majority of the history and the groups on the move typically stopped moving when they found a place they could settle in.

Migration waves happened, but those were notable events cause by something rather then norm. They also usually or often involved people moving in groups rather then alone.

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

#188

Post by bigfudge » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #114

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.

That doesn't mean it's false though? The parent seems correct that human beings are capable of subsisting and surviving for many many generations on very austere conditions.

psychologically, though, it’s much easier to suffer hardship. If everyone in your community is also suffering the same hardship. Making unilateral choices to deny yourself, creature comfort doesn’t seem all tha likely to succeed as a strategy.

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

#189

Post by photochemsyn » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

"I'm thinking of the early American homesteading days when a man could move in to land that had previously been occupied by Native Americans who were driven off or killed by the US Army and militias."

So, you just have to go and take some land from someone else by military force and then you can 'live there for free.' Historically, this would have involved a lot of subsistence agriculture (a widespread activity across the pre-European New World region) supplemented by hunting wild animals, which consumed a good fraction of time and energy - so, not 'free' at least in terms of energy expenditure.

Given the increase in human population over the 20th century, such approaches are infeasible today, since if the global transport of food produced by industrialized agriculture from zones of overproduction to zones of underproduction came to a halt, mass famine would quickly ensue.

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

#190

Post by watwut » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 3:16 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #182

aBioGuy wrote: post #68

No has mentioned that the initial assertion is incorrect? The US Government sent troops to remove native inhabitants. Then they gave the land away. Having an army clear the land ahead of time makes a lot of homesteading possible.

The Americas largely were empty land ready to be taken by colonists, because Europeans brought old world diseases that killed 90+% of the native people, often before they'd even seen a European.

The whole of westward expansion can not be explained with that alone at all. It took a lot of violence, multiple wars and like 400 years.