Is there anywhere in the world someone can just live for free? • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #342

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"we've reinvented capitalism" .. ok, so i'll substitute "capitalism" with "phrenology". Who cares about the definition? It's just a word, right?

Claiming that A, B & C is the same as D surely needs to imply some concern about the actual meaning of D, no?

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

#382

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #346

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, so just to clarify ...

it is absolutely a different claim. The land was not empty at all, though it did have millions less people than it had had a century or two earlier. Ethnic cleansing by violence was absolutely a central part of the expansion of the US (and also New Spain before it). The only difference is the question of whether, in a violent struggle between the American peoples at their pre-smallpox population levels and arriving European settlers, the latter would have won (and with relative ease). My point/claim is that they probably would not.

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

#383

Post by dorfsmay » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

qup wrote: post #287

dorfsmay wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't watched the video, but paying off implies owning a title to the land which means paying taxes on it.

I also didn't watch it, but I have forty acres and a home and all that, and my yearly taxes are like $300 (different state from the video). I think that qualifies for "quite close to 0" (I don't aim for zero, although I do live very cheaply compared to the US average)

Close enough to zero indeed. I had not imagined it could be that low, I spent my entire life in towns and cities (and not in the US).

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

#384

Post by xnyan » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

Ancapistani wrote: post #326

stetrain wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Do those jobs still exist? Yes, albeit in a slightly different form. There are still lots of family farms out there, and they need workers of several stripes. Migrant labor for harvesting produce is commonly known, but there’s also a class of jobs out there where you basically act as an “apprentice farmer”. A family we’re close to has a poultry operation. They have around 15 houses (as in “chicken houses”), probabl…

>They’re having a lot of trouble finding people who they can trust to take that job

Let's be generous and say room and board in a rural farmhouse and use of an old farm truck is worth an additional $1500, you would still make more money working 40 hours a week at my town's McDonalds, and if it's like any farm I've ever worked at you'll be working at least twice as hard and twice as long.

That's not a job, it's exploitation, right down to the "slave for use and maybe, if we decide, at some unspecified point you may get something nice from us!" sales pitch.

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

#385

Post by efitz » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:23 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #114

mdekkers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Come on now, people have done it for hundreds of thousands of years. Come now, people also used to die from toothaches, and during those hundreds of thousands of years infant and child mortality was incredibly high, and education practically nonexistent. These “we have done this since the beginning of time” arguments always make me chuckle, they are so incredibly simplistic.

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.

But they don’t want that, and they are not wrong for wanting to live a more comfortable and less brutal life.

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

#386

Post by survirtual » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #343

survirtual wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is a human mind here. I am sorry my thinking and expression does not conform to your expectations.

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

#387

Post by MrMan » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:46 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #374

xnyan wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yeah, I think that is a fair point, and basically the crux of things. Some people want to engage with society only on their own terms, and to the extent it benefits them. It it is the case now, as it was then, that social participation is a more of a package deal, not itemized interactions. Some people chafe under this.

[dead]

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

#388

Post by monadINtop » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #318

monadINtop wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism. This is extremely wrong. Every society in human history has some degree of division of labour. Capitalism is a specific economic mode of production that emerged from the embers of Feudalism a few hundred years ago, as merchant guilds and private manufacturors in urban centres gradually grew more independent whilst the noble…

What exactly is the alternative which has ever been proven to work at scale? As long as we have private property which people are allowed to buy and sell then capitalism is the only possible result. The fact that some primitive tribes managed to eke out a basic existence for a while with a gift economy or whatever isn't a valid counterargument.

What are you talking about? Private property refers to the ownership of the organs of economic production - factories, steal mills, whatever - by private institutions (e.g shareholder-managed organisations). If your referring to markets in general, they have existed since the dawn of urban human civilisation, thousands of years before capitalism. Markets can even exist in the most despotic communist dictatorship, or decentralized anarchist collective. Buying and selling goods or having personal property is largely orthogonal to the mode of production employed by a given society.

Right now in spain, the largest buisness group in basque (10th largest overall) is the Mondragon corporation. It’s worker-owned (but not worker managed), although each worker has voting rights. Clearly it is possible - even within capialism - to have some worker autonomy over production.

In 1936, during the civil war in Spain, around 60-75% of urban industry and agriculture was restructured by anarchist labour unions and run and managed by the workers to varying degrees of collectivization. Some towns abandoned the use of fiat currency entirely and instead used systems of vouchers, in small villages goods where distributed even more informally. Industrial production is reported to have increased during this time, and agricultural yields rose by around 30%.

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

#389

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 10:59 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #371

Ancapistani wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not to be too snippy here, but I'm not sure you could possibly imagine anyone elses view but your own at this point... Start iterating over dozens of possible positions and you'll see yours is really a more extreme outlier. And while not Amish myself, I was born in the middle of Amish country and have quite a bit of experience with populations that choose to analyze technologies before they accept them into their liv…

I dont think that anyone denies the difficulty of self sufficiency in the middle of a dense urban city.

I think the Ancapistani was providing context that this is not a universal truth. There are plenty of areas, outside of cities, where people live much more self reliant lives, and they are not third world hellscapes.

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

#390

Post by unflxw » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 11:02 PM UTC

caskstrength wrote: post #307

unflxw wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your answer. It's hard to have these conversations online without it quickly devolving into a shouting match, hence my disclaimer. Not that I have any intent to defend this abstract group of people, but I don't generally get the impression that wealthy people who advocate for a greater social security net do so without understanding that it would necessarily be funded by their taxes. If they do, though,…

> Not that I have any intent to defend this abstract group of people, but I don't generally get the impression that wealthy people who advocate for a greater social security net do so without understanding that it would necessarily be funded by their taxes. If they do, though, it's certainly a nonsensical and unrealisable position. Why would it be nonsensical? There is no wealth tax in US, their property taxes are ca…

To be clear, I meant "nonsensical and unrealisable" in that there's no realistic, long-term sustainable way to greater public services without greater taxation. Nonsensical as public policy for them to advocate for. I didn't mean that it wouldn't make sense for their pockets to want that, all else equal.

Again, thank you for explaining your thoughts on it.