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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?

#341
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will not trigger Well I don't know what triggers you, so that's hard to say. If it's cold weather, then... nowhere in the Midwest > or just name one in general. Witchita, cedar rapids (Iowa), etc If you go to a much smaller town, there aren't even many studios, but you can find 1/2br for the same.

At some great risk I’m going to explain this to you. One of my sensitivities is to the new 5G towers they’ve been putting up everywhere. Yeah I have EHS. Some places like Wichita with the huge amount of mid band. 5G is just not tolerable for me. I’ve always had a problem with EMF. I used to work at Cisco and that’s when I had my first mental breakdown in a long time. It was a 1999 right when they started installing W…

EMF sensitivity is not a real thing, and there is nothing special about 5G radiation. What you actually need is psychological or psychiatric treatment.

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism Nope. Capitalism, at least 21st century western capitalism, consists of 3 things: 1. relatively free markets, in the sense that what can be bought/sold and for how much is only loosely regulated 2. an entrepeneurial culture that supports the idea of "starting a business" 3. the idea that the rewards of any given human ventu…

You're arguing about the definition of a word. I don't find that interesting.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

There are countless models available beyond this black and white, boxed thinking. The dichotomy presented between capitalism as the byproduct of division of labor and the inevitability of free-riding in its absence paints a rather stark picture. However, this view presumes a rigidity in human motivation and socio-economic structures that simply does not account for the complex tapestry of human innovation. Life is no…

Did... an AI write this?

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more nuanced than that. As it's currently ordered society is a forced participation regime. I don't get the option to say "no." to a great many things. This is due to a loss of security, I don't get to refuse work at a job or in general, and in the case that I do it becomes a compromise, and this compromise is largely arbitrary because there are really very few actual social distinctions in the world cur…

> the government would still extract taxes from it, taxes which I would be obliged to pay, and thus I would necessarily require some income. To solve this, you need to balance your obligations to the government (property taxes), against obligations from the government (bonds of some kind). I'll use TIPs for my example, because it's harder for the government to inflate away these obligations. A plot of land might have…

Really cool perspective

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

#345
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also immoral. EDIT: As this is collecting downvotes quite quickly, would any of the downvoters care to explain their stance?

> EDIT: As this is collecting downvotes quite quickly, would any of the downvoters care to explain their stance? No, it works the other way round: you should explain why you find it immoral, then we can explain why we disagree (or maybe agree) with you. Otherwise you will only get a downvote.

I did this in response to the first comment. [1] I did not elaborate on this in my first comment because I did not anticipate that this would be a contentious statement.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139825

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

#346
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without smallpox et al., it very likely would not have happened at all. The settlers/colonialists would have faced a massively larger existing population, and would almost certainly have lost the violent struggle. There would still be people of European descent in the Americas, but not as part of the dominant culture.

Which is completely different claim then that the land was empty and that ethnic cleansing by troops did not happened or did not played much role.

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

#347
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago I don't think you have a good idea of what life was like in the 1920s, even in the American West. Here is what Cheyenne looked like in the 1910s - http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cheyenne1900s.html . People had cars then - and horses. Train service started in 1867. The local library started in 1886 so you could get books for entertainment.…

The average person a hundred years ago obviously didn’t have YouTube, or the internet, or GPS phones, or a million other consumer goods we take for granted today as a baseline. That was my point. Whether some middle class people had a model T car or a library card is kind of missing the point I’m making entirely.

Then make your point using real examples, not made up ones ignorant of history that end up blunting your argument.

Yes, Louis XIV didn't have internet service. Does that make the Sun King poor?

Clearly, no.

The usual way to do this through something like measuring the cost-of-living - the US started gathering this information during World War I. Your $100/month now corresponds to $6.50/month in 1920, says https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ , or $78/year.

We can look up actual numbers. From the Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics #357 at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... dated May 1924 and covering the years 1918-1919 we can see breakdown of expenses for different places in the western US:

In Butte, Montana, the poorest family (1 out of 102 surveyed, with 4 people) made $900-$1,200 per year, and had $1,022.50 in expenses. (see page 14). Of that, about $900 was spend on food, clothing, rent, and fuel/light.

In the gold rush town of Cripple Creek District, Colorado (page 22) one family of 80, with 3 people, made under $900, and had expenses of $853.

In Trinidad, Colordo, 2 of 78 families (average of 4.5 people per family) made less than $900/year, and had expenses of $973.

And these are the poorest of the poor! They are in the city, which does affect the numbers - farm living can be cheaper, but surely not by a factor of 10.

So the idea that $78/year was in any way representative is clearly low-balling it by a lot, even if you only meant for a single person rather than a family.

The tables show a 1920 far different than the world you are thinking of. Look at the miscellaneous items for those in the Western states making at most $900/year, at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... . 72% of them had life insurance, 11% paid membership to social clubs, 50% paid for movies, 89% got a newspaper, 78% paid for a physician, 22% paid for glasses, and so on.

If 1920 is your comparable, then in 2023 you also need to pay for those, on top of lodging, food, heat, and furniture, for your $100/month.

I have no doubt there were a handful of people in 1920 who lived on $6.50/month, perhaps living by themselves in the back-country of Alaska, but that will be on the extreme low end, far below the baseline of nearly everyone living in the American West a hundred years ago, and hardly representative.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 beca…

I think it's more nuanced than that. As it's currently ordered society is a forced participation regime. I don't get the option to say "no." to a great many things. This is due to a loss of security, I don't get to refuse work at a job or in general, and in the case that I do it becomes a compromise, and this compromise is largely arbitrary because there are really very few actual social distinctions in the world cur…

What is the natural course of things?

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

#350
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also immoral. EDIT: As this is collecting downvotes quite quickly, would any of the downvoters care to explain their stance?

Presenting a one sentence expression of a value judgment as if it were a fact will tend to attract downvotes, because that doesn’t add any interesting perspective or information for anyone to take away other than they know your opinion on an individual topic. (Or they would, if they knew exactly what you were referring to with the unanchored pronoun. Are you referring to the state support program, the use of the stat…

It never occurred to me that someone would disagree with that statement, I just wrote this as some kind of reminder and did not think that it was necessary to elaborate. You take money to finance your life instead of working for it, money for which other people worked and which they provide to help others through hard times.
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