In Praise of a Nomadic Life • Hacker News Board

Re: In Praise of a Nomadic Life

#11

Post by ido » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 11:34 AM UTC

peterbraden wrote: post #10

ido wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why incentivize people to have children when there is no shortage of them?

Actually, in many Western countries there is, much of Europe for example. Sustainable demographics are why there are subsidies for having children in Italy for example.

I live in Germany, the country with the lowest birth rate in the world. The population is still slowly growing due to immigration.

Even once the developing countries reduce fertility below replacement (which will not happen for a long time yet) with increasing life spans and improving medicine the world's population will still continue growing(slow growth is still projected in the year 2100), then stagnate and then one day very far from today slowly decline...

but it will still take centuries to reach the population levels of the early 20th Century (only reached 2 billion people in 1927). In the meanwhile we have too many, not too few, people around.

Re: In Praise of a Nomadic Life

#12

Post by cprayingmantis » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 1:51 PM UTC

While the nomadic life does sound appealing to me I see it as the ultimate form of instant gratification. You sacrifice all stability and ability to effectively change the world around you in order for some momentary pleasure and as they say in the article they just seem to keep pinning their happiness on future events. It seems to me that pinning your joy on future events is a sure way to accumulate happiness debt (much like tech-debt) that you're effectively unable to pay down.

Re: In Praise of a Nomadic Life

#13

Post by carsongross » Fri, Mar 31, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #8

carsongross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were in charge I would institute a basic income for all citizens over the age of 18 (no additional money for children) and would make each child someone had a significant tax break against income. People who could afford them would be incentivized to have them.

Why incentivize people to have children when there is no shortage of them?

Idiocracy.

Re: In Praise of a Nomadic Life

#14

Post by borplk » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 5:48 AM UTC

What do people think about a real solo nomadic life?

I'm a huge introvert and used to being alone and lonely all the time yet I cannot quite imagine myself enjoying being a moving ghost from an exotic location to another alone and getting much out of it.

I hear people talk about finding local friends and so on however I cannot imagine that is going to be that satisfying or practical. Making some broken language hello-how-are-you conversation and never seeing them again.

I think the feeling of not having someone to share any of the experience with would overwhelm me and dominate my experience.

I see people talk some feel-good stuff about learning to enjoy things on their own and so on but I don't really see practical examples of it. And as I said, if there was one person who would be comfortable spending time on their own that would be me, yet I don't find the idea of solo nomadic life appealing.

The few people that I have seen appear to be homesick and isolated they claim they are loving the solo trip but in reality they seem to be desperate to share it with someone and they seek that on Twitter and Instagram and on their blogs.