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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?

#201

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

"Jobs" exist because division of labor is an enormous generator of human welfare.

If I have to grow my own food, compose and perform my own music, build my own housing and vehicles, life will be shit.

If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism. If we don't pay each other, the incentives are very strong to be a free-rider.

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

#202

Post by huytersd »

pavlov wrote: post #7

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…

I would take this offer up immediately if it went in the cold north (and if I didn’t have an ethical opposition to living on welfare).

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

#203

Post by beedeebeedee »

rebolek wrote: post #184
beedeebeedee wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But just as importantly, changes in the community (which I suppose we could call the social environment). That has been as significant a driver for migration as changes in the natural environment if not more.

Most migrations in the last few hundred years that I am aware of were driven by social issues (economic, political, religious, etc), and not from natural environmental changes. I.e., Ireland's Great Hunger was not an environmentally driven exodus, even if a potato blight was involved.

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

#204

Post by bananapub »

tsss wrote: post #177
alwa wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for that matter, the clearance job wasn’t always exactly complete: part of the price of admission to your “free homestead” was fending off the occasional raid by its armed and rightfully furious former occupants. I suppose a similar sense of menace applies to some of the options on the linked inventory, but my first interpretation of the task was to think of places sufficiently remote/economically-irrelevant as t…

Rightfully? What right do they have to the fruit of the earth more than any other person? They only have the right to take it by force, if they can, as they did before from other people and animals.

[flagged]

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

#205

Post by MichaelZuo »

bigfudge wrote: post #188
MichaelZuo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe not for the median person, but many types of people do succeed with it, such as ascetic monks, stoics, many religious sects, etc...

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

#206

Post by huytersd »

bilsbie wrote: post #69

I think it would be cool if we had a kind of non religious Amish type communities.

It’s not possible. For those communities to thrive you need a hierarchy and authority figures that become impossible to justify over time unless you’re living in some kind of religious framework. The community has to collectively enforce against freeloaders, again only possible when you’re living under a framework that cannot be reasoned or argued against. You have to put free will and individualism to the side which I think would take the “fun” out of that experience. There’s a reason a lot of the freewheeling communes from the 60-70s didn’t make it.

Individualist communes, of the type I assume you’re looking for, will only become viable once we have reliable robot labor that have enough articulation to do most labor that humans can.

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

#207

Post by bigfudge »

keiferski wrote: post #52
softg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was typical, to be expected a century ago, but with the nature of marketing and social pressure It might be typical and expected but that doesn't mean it was desirable even then. People lived that way because they had to. It was always considered a difficult way of life. It's more likely that people gave it up as soon as they could when they had the chance. I think there are two different concepts here. You ca…

You don’t need to go back that far. Even the quality of life circa 1950 would be very inexpensive to have today. But then you have less electronics, toys, clothes, food variety etc. This would cost more than $100 a month today, but it would be dramatically cheaper than the typical modern lifestyle. With remote work, I’m not sure you really need transportation. If you do, a bicycle is $50. But again I’m not sure why y…

The other problem with this argument not noted above is that goods are ordered in many cases.

It would be possible to substantially reduce costs, but only by living among people who are objectively poor by current standards. Without passing any judgement, this brings disadvantages of its own. Where could we live on the reduced income without also forgoing society with educated, liberal, cosmopolitan people? To me that’s the harder part to give up than an iPhone each year or cable tv.

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

#209

Post by watwut »

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.

That is 9 years before great depression and right after WWI.

So, it is very shortly before economy goes boom and very shortly after everything literally went boom physically.

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

#210

Post by dsq »

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…

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