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

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

#191
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to make a system that sustains itself? Right now I've got a worm farm going that produces viable compost pretty often, but the Berkely Method would be faster. I have four chickens that produce yards and yards of compost every 3 months and require about a cup of corn a day. 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…

> Is it possible to make a system that sustains itself? Oh, definitely. We are doing it on a universal scale right now. If you meant smaller than that, then what are you restrictions?

Right now? Space to grow food. I grow tomatoes, lemons, basil, cucumbers, and strawberries in the basement. Most of that isn't good for chickens or worms, though. I'd need to scale my food production to a bigger variety for the system to feed itself so it does still take some input from me other than sweat equity.

The thing I started doing all of this for was renewable compost, though, so at least that goal is met. I also don't give away my yard trash anymore (leaves, clippings). They go into the compost piles and get spread across the yard a few months later. My question moreso centered around fertilizer - why do we keep needing synthetic fertilizer if we can produce renewable compost chains?

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

#192
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> One thing everyone forgets is that the Amish people benefit from police and national defence, like everyone else. Leaving aside the dubious benefits of police, Amish pay the same taxes as everyone else- with the exception of Social Security and workers' compensation, which they pay through their church. Those taxes entitle the Amish to their share of the national defense buff. https://marketrealist.com/p/do-amish-p…

This is only partly true. By opting out of most of the financial system and deliberately living on small normal incomes. They will pay very little tax and certainly not enough to pay for investment and healthcare national infrastructure projects which effectively underwrite the income they get from outside their communities. There’s no free lunch here. They do benefit from things they could not afford if they lived isolated from the mainstream US economy

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

#193

There is just a deep deep existential sadness in the question itself. The proximity of a better more just world is sometimes revealed in the simplest things. There is a contradiction at the tip of everyone's tongues, hidden in our language and moral assumptions. Something has to happen. I can't imagine anyone believes there will be CocaCola and McDonalds on Mars.

For a glimpse as to what this would look like, The Outer Worlds does a decent job showcasing exactly that situation.

Too many people shit on the brevity of this game, but it has an EXTREMELY SALIENT POINT and it beats you over the head with it.

We are living in the Outer Worlds and Jeffrey Bezos literally wants to build Spacer's Choice. Elon would be MSI, and I'd peg Richard Bronson as UDL. They all want to be on the Halcyon Board.

But we don't have to get off-planet to see these effects. Just look at rural decay and the clawing of wealth back to "Byzantium". You see rural areas and even suburbs falling apart because the Cities cannot pay for them, yet the Cities rely on the exploitation of the rural environment to survive. Without investment into the environment and participation in nature, colonies and civilizations collapse. The entire game is an allegory for American development and exploitation.

I played this game, then one of my best friends got a job offer to be a Rocket/Computer Scientist for Bezos making $105k/yr (which is just next-level insulting considering the domain and her level of skill). It has been horrifying to watch her mind twist from a leftist hippie into that of a conservative bootlicker. She now sounds like someone in Edgewater, bragging about being overworked. Believing she will some day go live in Byzantium.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live for free indefinitely as a non-monastic? I'm aware of these but only in that you can live at them for a few weeks or maybe months. Or indefinitely as you discern monastic life. But if you're determined to be ineligible due to worldly ties (debts, being a parent or eldest child) or incompatibility with the demands and lifestyles of being a monk you're supposed to leave.

With the plummeting popularity of becoming a monk or nun over the past half-century or so, I suspect that quite a few such communities would relax their requirements. OTOH, any "you can stay indefinitely" offers would be given on an individual basis, contingent on both your behavior and their own situation (including the financial viability of their organization), and rather unlikely to include substantial medical ca…

I'm not sure orthodox monasteries are having that problem to the same degree. To my knowledge about twenty monasteries in the US are newly formed since the 1970s.

Anyway I know one person who became a monk at one and another who was rejected for not meeting the requirements. Exceptions have to be granted by the regional bishop, and they need a genuinely compelling reason. "There aren't enough monks" either isn't one, or they don't have that problem right now.

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

#195
post #76
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it possible to make a system that sustains itself? Right now I've got a worm farm going that produces viable compost pretty often, but the Berkely Method would be faster. I have four chickens that produce yards and yards of compost every 3 months and require about a cup of corn a day. 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…

America had better tech except now everything is built to break otherwise the air backed monetary system would fall apart if planned obsolescence didn't exist.

The only reason costs are so high is because money can be printed at will so your savings will always be reduced.

Sadly most people don't learn anything about finance and think stocks and bonds are good investment vehicles and fractional reserve is great.

I guess if you go to a school that was designed to make you a factory worker then you will only learn how to be a worker and not the owner.

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

#196

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…

Everyone lives in their own world in their mind. A persistent theme I see in society in general is inability to grasp how others could have a completely different perspective and interpretation of anything.

That said, OOP's sentiment is largely caused by housing costs across the world.

Western society at least is two faced, on one hand liberty of the individual is emphasized but at the same time society is extremely hostile to those who either hold incompatible opinions or just don't fit in.

If you think about it, no government or human has authority to regulate the fact that a human exists. What many like OOP look for is the ability to self-determine without being policed by society or being enslaved, not by our natural needs such as food, shelter and water but by the requirements of society such as paying taxes, registering in databases, having information collected about us and the used to control us.

The typical american for example, simply to exist and sustain themselves as an adult has to get a birth certificate ,SSN, fingerprint taken, undergo drivers trainin and exam which involves more data collection, get a drivers license, can't buy a car outright so finance one which involves too much crap to list here, and get mandatory insurance for the car (forced to do business), mandatory health insurance enrollment unless they want to pay a tax penalty, piss in a cup to prove their drug usage innocence, in many physical jobs you have to let a guy massage your balls to prove you are not herniated (yes,really. Very common), if you do manage to get a job, you now need to live somewhere close which means renting for most and that in itself is a contract you enter where how you live in detail can get regulated by the landlord and the after you pay all these slave masters how you spend the money you have is also regulated heavily from food, drugs, sex,etc... and most people can't even get that far without working multiple jobs, if they are even that lucky. And if you have family, dependents, sickness anywhere that's a whole other story.

I mean, I get your view and I am with you. I like instant online shopping, doordash, airbnb, uber, walmart,etc... and I am privileged enough to enjoy that right now but you must understand the frustration of this living. There is no breathing room for most, especially younger people in their 20s and early 30s.

It's tempting to wonder, what if I could build a house from logs in the woods. Hunt and fish for food, read books for entertainment. Doesn't even have to be on your own.

We all get just one life and it's a shame how it is wasted working from one weekend on to the other being regulated and puppetted until you die.

Society benefits only those who are compliant with its rules and fit in properly. I mean these days, what society? It's just everything you say and do constantly recorded and scrutinized. Netflix had a moview recently "old dads" or something, it was frustratingly too real. Everything is political, no one is real, everyone is waiting for a chance to stab the non-conformist in the back. They know not the meaning of tolerance and inclusivity. Everyone seems to be an unauthentic murderous parrot if i can exagerate a bit. How can people manage not being themselves for so long!?

If you don't already have your own trusted people and places, it's best to avoid people as much as possible.

Life is meant to be lived, not barely survived, grateful society has tolerated your existence.

In my opinion the focus on making life as long as possible or allowing a society to exist as long as possible is misplaced. A life well lived should be everyone's goal, whatever well lived means for you.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they purposefully misinterpret or was the original comment poorly thought out dismissal of modern life that ignores, very real things like medicine and clean water?

No, I’m pretty certain it’s just nitpicking and uncharitable interpretations that quibble over irrelevant details and miss the bigger point being made.

I think it’s more complicated than that though. Whether a nitpick or not in that comment, the money to sustain modern levels of infrastructure to support, clean, water, sewage, healthcare, et cetera are probably only possible because of the consumer economy more broadly.

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

#198
You can go out in the middle of nowhere in Siberia and live like the Lykovs[1]. It's a very difficult life.

Another alternative is being a yachty and living on a boat and sailing to uninhabited islands. Mostly you can live undisturbed, but after a few years people will show up and bug you if it's part of a well organized country. There's the Chagos archipelago for example which is only visited by people who do open ocean sailing in the Indian Ocean. Yachties have set up a weird "lord of the flies" type village on one of the uninhabited islands. It's thousands of miles from anywhere that's not a British military base. SVDelos visited it on their trip around the world.[2]

I heartily recommend watching SVDelos from the beginning. It is a great sailboat show that starts off as two brothers who set up to sail around the world. They eventually meet their wives and have kids, so it becomes less fun in the newest seasons. They eventually get drones, 4k cameras, solar panels, satellite internet and the video production quality steadily increases over the years, so it's also sort of a story of consumer tech progress. When they are sailing it's only a few hundred dollars a month for living expenses and I don't think they pay much in taxes being permanent tourists.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2mSsQ4Smyg

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

#199

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…

Single individuals didn’t migrate, entire communities did.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and you are willing to forego the services of any healthcare professional? Because most people consider being able to go to the emergency room as “normal”. My point was to dispute this overly simplistic assertion: >but with the nature of marketing and social pressure, almost no one is willing to make that kind of sacrifice today.

Again, I thought it was obvious that I was talking about consumer goods, as the sentence before that one was about consumer goods. Why would marketing have anything to do with healthcare? You’re trying very hard to completely miss the broader point and are instead nitpicking something that I didn’t even claim. This is entirely a waste of time. It’s also why discussion culture has gotten so terrible on the internet, b…

I don’t think this is nitpicking I actually disagree with you. I think it’s an empirical question how much money could be saved by disavowing only the frivolous consumer items that you’re talking about. My hunch is, it’s less than you think.
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