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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?

#361

Post by pixl97 »

Ancapistani wrote: post #315
lotsofpulp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but with the nature of marketing and social pressure, almost no one is willing to make that kind of sacrifice today. Maybe people prefer having pressurized clean tap water and sewer systems due to something other than marketing and social pressure. I know the women in my life would definitely prefer it compared to my grandmothers who had to travel to get water from the well everyday.

This argument makes no sense to me - I didn’t live in a home with municipal water or sewer until I was 18 and living on my own. For that matter, my current home is inside city limits. While we have municipal water, we are not connected to the city sewer system and instead rely on a septic tank. It annoys me to no end that I’m not legally able to make major repairs to my septic system, as it’s only allowable under a g…

This argument makes no sense to you because you refuse to accept pollution at scale exists...

Already you're bitching about "omg its so easy for other people to practically end my life by messing up the tenuous balance I have between getting fresh water and the flow of untreated shit I produce"

Yea, this is easy when there is a few people working with plentiful water resources then it all works fine. When lots of people show up, you are shitting in each others mouths and dying of cholera and begging these "authorities" to save you. Think for 5 minutes about the argument you typed out and you'll figure out why these other complex systems exist.

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

#362

Post by eesmith »

campboy wrote: post #80
eesmith wrote: 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.…

> So, go back another 50 years, to the 1870s of "Little House in the Big Woods". It’s cute for sure but I don’t know if I’d use a novel for children as an accurate portrayal of the median subsistence living experience 150 years ago.

I wouldn't either, but it's meant to show that keiferski's views of 1920 are clearly wrong when a book that came out in 1932 was not laughed off as a wildly unrealistic portrayal of the 1870s.

Here is a glimpse of life in rural Oregon in the 1870s, as recorded in 1932: https://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh2.29080415/?sp=7 . Her mother carded and dyed the wool herself, to make clothes. Peddlers would come by with bundles to sell, with "fancy shawls, printed goods, silks, and such other luxuries", sometimes sold for as high as $150/bundle. She bought a statue of Dickens from a peddler.

"The menu for a fine dinner would be: Chicken stew with dumplings, mashed potatoes, peach preserves, biscuits, and hominy." Dumplings and cobbler were staples. They had brown sugar and molasses. There was bread and milk, and teas made from local herbs. They had a schoolhouse. Most women wore calico (store-bought) and linsey-wollsey (locally made). Seems they had geese too.

For the big 4th of July event in Corvallis, her mother made 200 gooseberry pies.

Young women enjoyed the magazines Godey's, Peterson's, and the Bazaar.

This seems in decent alignment with the children's story. It does not seem like the spartan life keiferski suggests for some 50 years later.

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

#363

Post by pixl97 »

keiferski wrote: post #108
lotsofpulp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The material costs are not consumer goods like clothing and food. It is the infrastructure, moving mountains to move water, paving land to move food, laying wires for electricity and communication, train lines to move fertilizer, refineries, ports, universities to study medicines, etc. $100 per month is not going to cover any of this, but I am pretty sure you are going to want the benefits.

My comment was from the viewpoint of an individual today. That’s what it says. It doesn’t say anything about society as a whole. So, no, an individual is not paying for train lines and ports from their personal budget. Perhaps there are some people who spend 90%+ of their income on food, shelter, and electricity, but I’m fairly certain that the majority of costs are “unnecessary” consumer goods.

>"Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."

I would like you for one day to stop, and each thing you use, break down the supply chain that is necessary to produce each step and part of that product, and then break those products that make each step of that process and so on until all you have is raw materials. It's highly likely you'll give up even before doing that on a very very simple item. But the inner connection between the crap you do need, and the crap you don't need isn't going to look like what you think.

Then I'd like you to do some research on tribes that lived outside of modern technologies. How many of those 'individuals' think of themselves like they are their own little gods, versus how many of them deeply understand they have on the members of their tribe to keep them alive?

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

#365

Post by pixl97 »

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…

>Even the quality of life circa 1950

Sure, go back to the post war era where countries right after the point we started building massive amounts of infrastructure debt to say 'look how good things are' with absolutely no understanding the situation was untenable. Houses leaked energy like mad, and we were already full bore pulling coal out of the ground to fuel that growth. And, jeesh, the chemicals we were releasing at the time were not pleasant at all.

You are looking for a golden past that didn't exist.

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

#366

Post by dartharva »

mopenstein wrote: post #30
defrost wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'It' ? What exactly is immoral and why?

It's the coercive nature by which wealth is redistributed to other people that brings upon the questions of morality. If I'm forced at the end of a barrel of a gun to give up any portion of the fruits of my labor to support others, it is immoral.

The fruits of your labor have already been facilitated a lot by the labor of others - you have received education, lived in an urban area with modern infrastructure and availed various public facilities from water to transportation at the cost of other people's efforts. Were you immoral then?

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

#367

Post by Ancapistani »

pixl97 wrote: post #361
Ancapistani wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument makes no sense to me - I didn’t live in a home with municipal water or sewer until I was 18 and living on my own. For that matter, my current home is inside city limits. While we have municipal water, we are not connected to the city sewer system and instead rely on a septic tank. It annoys me to no end that I’m not legally able to make major repairs to my septic system, as it’s only allowable under a g…

This argument makes no sense to you because you refuse to accept pollution at scale exists... Already you're bitching about "omg its so easy for other people to practically end my life by messing up the tenuous balance I have between getting fresh water and the flow of untreated shit I produce" Yea, this is easy when there is a few people working with plentiful water resources then it all works fine. When lots of peo…

Have you lived in these situation? I have, and I don’t share your view.

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

#368

Post by pixl97 »

vivekd wrote: post #142
lotsofpulp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are antibiotics and vaccines and other healthcare “available material goods”? I had two great grandmothers that lost the majority of their children as babies/toddlers. I think a lot of people are not accounting for the costs of risks during that time. If everything went well, the rain was on time, no other nations attacked, no one fell ill, there were no birthing complications, then life was okay. But nature usually…

This is an empirical question that I feel you are trying to twist into a political one. The sole question is can you on 100 dollars a month today live in a manner similar to what the average person in the 20s did The empirical questions are what does 100 a month buy you today and what was the average lifestyle of a person in the 20s in terms of how much would it cost to buy that lifestyle today Questions of how we go…

Attempting to argue counterfactuals while negating the factors that occured to cause the world to exist in a particular state at a particular time isn't ever going to lead to a conversation you like.

The resource cost and availability that existed in 1920 were because of non-empirical decisions like politics and societies adaptations to new technologies. It's like you're taking a still frame of an avalanche and looking for a flat spot to build a foundation.

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

#369

Post by em500 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #41
kzrdude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on Singapore's reputation, would they tolerate someone trying to camp in the airport?

I imagine you could get away with looking like a traveller at first, but over time, the various staff are going to recognise you and realise what's going on. It wouldn't surprise me if they specifically look out for people who aren't genuine travellers as a security measure.

Last year two vloggers tried to live at Amsterdam Airport for a week, but were caught by security after 3 days[1]. Modern Airports have security and cameras everywhere.

It might be possible though, see [2]

[1] https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2457188-kai-22-en-seba...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_lived_...

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

#370

Post by xnyan »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #298
velcrovan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like this is an extremely uncharitable take. Surely you can agree that interdependence is a spectrum, and people can find satisfaction at different levels. At least the newyorker article lays it's objections out clearly. It finds Thoreau repugnant for his libertarian outlook, and even more so when Thoreau comes to agreeable conclusions, but by different means than the author. >"This is not the stuff of a democ…

>I think some people will never understand the desire of others to simply be left alone.

Is that what he really wanted thought? Nobody was preventing Thoreau from disappearing into the wilderness. He did not do that because it would have been 1) very difficult and 2) quite dangerous. He was perfectly willing to embrace society when it benefited him personally.

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