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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?

#231

Post by beedeebeedee »

ethanbond wrote: post #186
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?

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?

> they might be better than the current place?

I think you are agreeing with me. People leave communities when they are not prospering within them.

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

#233

Post by bhelkey »

Podgajski wrote: post #221
dmoy wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even a mess of a studio costs $800 a month which I can’t afford There are definitely cities in the Midwest where you can get studios for <$500/mo still.

Please name one that one that will not trigger my suicidal ideation. or just name one in general.

I found this in Pittsburgh. It is sub $500, has flexible dates, and includes all utilities except for electric.

https://www.zillow.com/apartments/pittsburgh-pa/hampshire-ha...

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

#234

Post by velcrovan »

safety1st wrote: post #211
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…

I mean have you not read Walden? This idea of being more self-reliant and independent is popular with a lot of people, it's a central precept of certain schools of philosophy and ethics as well. No, they weren't all miserable hermits who died young. If you don't like that lifestyle it's fine, but you don't need to pee in everyone else's Wheaties.

I mean, have you not heard about how during the Walden years Thoreau was fully dependent on and subsidized by others?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand.

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

velcrovan wrote: post #234
safety1st wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean have you not read Walden? This idea of being more self-reliant and independent is popular with a lot of people, it's a central precept of certain schools of philosophy and ethics as well. No, they weren't all miserable hermits who died young. If you don't like that lifestyle it's fine, but you don't need to pee in everyone else's Wheaties.

I mean, have you not heard about how during the Walden years Thoreau was fully dependent on and subsidized by others? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand.

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by ethanbond »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #231
ethanbond wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> they might be better than the current place? I think you are agreeing with me. People leave communities when they are not prospering within them.

> Only recently have we stopped because, frankly, there is no place to go

This is what I was disputing. We haven’t stopped, and to the extent that we have, it’s not because there’s no place to go.

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

#237

Post by BurningFrog »

watwut wrote: post #190
BurningFrog wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. Note that I wrote "largely", not "completely".

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

#238

Post by JohnFen »

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…

> I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times.

I think it's the fantasy of having complete autonomy, of being completely free in the sense of never having to do anything that you don't want to do[1]. At least, that's that's the aspect of it that resonates with me.

But it's only that -- a fantasy. Much like other things that we fantasize about, it's impossible as conceived because it dwells on the upsides and omits the downsides. Humans run in packs. We are social. It's that aspect that has always been the key to our ability to survive even in extremely bad circumstances.

The trade-off, looking purely from a selfish point of view, is that we give up some degree of autonomy in exchange for benefits that are so essential and fundamental that we are in great peril without them. We have better lives as part of a group than in isolation, despite being unable to do literally anything we want.

In that sense, it's a lot like some kinds of sexual fantasies. Hot as hell in your imagination, but not so great (or even possible) in reality.

[1] As the Frank Zappa lyric goes: "Free is when you don't have to pay for nothin' or do nothin'. I want to be free."

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

#239

Post by gus_massa »

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 agriculture produces too much food that increase the population too much, so some of the offpring must find another site to cultivate.

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

#240

Post by stetrain »

keiferski wrote: post #15

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 think it comes down to the same reasons people pay insane housing costs to live in major cities rather than buying a $50k house in the rustbelt. The former is often more net profitable due to job prospects, despite the higher cost of living. In addition to non-work amenities like social circles and dating pools.

Maybe you can live for $100/mo somewhere, if you can solve the part of actually getting the deed to some land and splitting taxes, cost of basic infrastructure, etc. with enough people. But could you earn an income to support this indefinitely? Would you find satisfying social relationships, friends, a spouse?

Perhaps in the American West you could get a job as a farm hand, where they wouldn't care so much whether you showered daily or had presentable modern clothing. Do those jobs still exist? Would they expect you to have your own transportation, rather than the old-fashioned style of providing worker housing?

At some point the gears of your life need to mesh at least a little with some other gears around you, unless you have built up a large capital fund by participating in society first and then wish to disappear from it altogether.

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