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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?

#441

Post by mopenstein »

broscillator wrote: post #111
mopenstein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whole point of society is to be able to support those who can't support themselves. It's not to have a pool of resources from which you can accumulate and hold on to as many resources as you can. If you are able at all to give up any portion of the fruits of your labor you should be grateful for the conditions set up before you that allowed you to reach such place.

>The whole point of society is to be able to support those who can't support themselves.

And the only way to do that is to threaten those that can support themselves with imprisonment and death if they don't support the weak? There's no other way where people might voluntarily help those people? You don't see the hyprocisy?

>It's not to have a pool of resources from which you can accumulate and hold on to as many resources as you can.

And violence is the only solution.

>If you are able at all to give up any portion of the fruits of your labor you should be grateful for the conditions set up before you that allowed you to reach such place.

Because my parents and grandparents where coerced, I should be grateful and repay them with more coercion?

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

#442

Post by mopenstein »

kuschku wrote: post #42
mopenstein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they are truly just the fruits of your labor, and the society contributed nothing, you are free to move to a zero-tax third world country and live there. And if society did contribute more to your work than these taxes cost — which it likely did, considering you didn't move to a third world country yet — then society is free to take its fair share in return.

Why is coercion the chosen course and not voluntarism?

I actually like your reply the most. You almost proudly admit to being in favor of violence against your fellow man but didn't quite get there. I'll help finish your thought:

> then society is free to take its fair share in return. And if you don't give up what society thinks is fair, then society will imprison you and if you resist their agents, society will authorize them to kill you.

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

#443

Post by JohnFen »

coldtea wrote: post #439
JohnFen wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that there are people who have done this, but I'm also sure they're exceedingly rare. Almost always, people living independently like that are still relying on some aspect of society to some degree. They trade for products they can't manufacture, for instance, or benefit more indirectly (such as benefiting from the society's efforts to maintain some level of peace).

> are still relying on some aspect of society to some degree So? It's not like society would dissapear overnight, and those people would be left with no such recourse. The person asking just asked for some place without taxes and no price on a plot of land you can claim. They didn't say they want to move all of society to that, or that they want to make a point by relying on their own self entirely.

(You were replying to my comment, so I took your comment in that context. My apologies is my reply is off the mark.)

The point being that you're still giving up some amount of personal liberty in order to be able to successfully interact with society, even if that interaction is minimal. You are still a part of that society. You are not completely independent of it.

Ashleigh Brilliant had a great one-liner about this: no man is an island, but some of us are very long peninsulas.

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

#444

Post by giantrobot »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #432
giantrobot wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And going to his mom's house on weekends and washing his clothes and eating out of the pantry.

I was aware of that, not sure what it has to do with the conversation here though. Nor what a failing visiting your mum on weekends is.

It's not a personal failing but it's a huge dissonance with the themes in Walden. It's annoying when people hold up Walden as an example of personal independence but ignoring or not knowing the context in which it was written.

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

#445

Post by hyperliner »

pixl97 wrote: post #349
brnaftr361 wrote: post #274

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…

What is the natural course of things?

[dead]

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

#447

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #309
brnaftr361 wrote: post #274

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…

Two corrections:

1. If you look at recent Treasury auctions, 30-year TIPS are actually yielding 1.5%, not 1.3% (https://treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-resul...).

2. In reality, you have a finite lifetime, so you can spend down the principal. Suppose you are 30 years old (about the youngest I could imagine this being possible), and that you plan on living to 100 (most people don't). That's 70 years. If you do the math, and use the 1.5% rate, it works out that you only need $43k, not $77k, to hit that $1k/yr number.

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

#448

Post by ac29 »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #309
brnaftr361 wrote: post #274

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…

> A plot of land might have taxes of $1,000/yr. It looks like TIPs give a fixed real rate of 1.3%. So, $77k in TIPS will balance out your taxes.

This math is wrong because you have to pay tax on the income from TIPS (unless you are low income enough that you net tax rate is 0%).

The real problem with that idea is that one's living expenses are almost certainly going to be more than $1000/year, even if you are able to grow enough calories and generate enough watts to be self sufficient.

In order to live off interest alone, you'd probably need $1M in assets or more. At that point, you could just live off the principle.

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

#449

Post by ac29 »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #447
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Two corrections: 1. If you look at recent Treasury auctions, 30-year TIPS are actually yielding 1.5%, not 1.3% ( https://treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-resul... ). 2. In reality, you have a finite lifetime, so you can spend down the principal. Suppose you are 30 years old (about the youngest I could imagine this being possible), and that you plan on living to 100 (most people don't). That's 70 years.…

> 1. If you look at recent Treasury auctions, 30-year TIPS are actually yielding 1.5%, not 1.3%

Auction results only show the coupon rate on the TIPS, not the total yield.

All TIPS are currently yielding more than 2.1%: https://www.wsj.com/market-data/bonds/tips

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

#450

Post by s1artibartfast »

Tade0 wrote: post #358
s1artibartfast wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying it works? You just have to have 2.5 children.

The species can survive this way. Individuals - not really.

If the species is also alive, that means individuals are alive.
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