A Victoria man has gone two decades without money • Hacker News Board

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#241

Post by samatman » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

VictorPath wrote: post #92

kangnkodos wrote: post #17

He wants everyone to suddenly stop using money. If that happened, who would wash the dishes? Many communes have failed over this exact issue. They go on for several years with several people, usually women, making the sacrifice and doing what needs to be done. But eventually, the people who do the dishes get fed up and stop, or leave. And then the whole thing collapses. The alternative is for the leaders to have some…

> If the society has no money, there's going to be a whole lot of punishment going on The mostly uncontacted hunter-gatherer bands in the Amazon jungle have no money, and not much punishment. Men all go out and hunt. If they are old or young or sick, the hunters give them food. If they are fine and refuse to go out on a hunt, they tend not to eat. There is not much coercion. The women gather berries and the men hunt.…

I highly encourage you to read some ethnography of the Yanomani, to purge this ludicrous and incorrect vision of noble savagery from your mind.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#242

Post by carlmr » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #219

saltdoo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rising inflation says otherwise. Worst effects may be yet to come.

And a great deal of that inflation is due to supply chain issues from the pandemic so it wasn't really an ideal experiment.

Yes, I don't really get why this often gets dropped. I would assume inflation goes down next year if the supply chains get better again.

A lot of the inflation I saw in the pandemic was perishable products where the supply was cut in some way or another. As long as people that want it badly can afford more they'll pay more for it. This is inflation, but it's not clear whether the money supply or the supply chains are the reason. The money supply was high in the preceding years as well, not leading to such high inflation.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#243

Post by brailsafe » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #171

noduerme wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the nobility of homelessness and joblessness expressed as an ethos countless times by people who wouldn't care for the work of living off-grid. I happen to work in a town with some of the highest taxes in the country that's also one of the most attractive places for indigent campers. The park across from where I live has become a tent city. I get the pleasure of paying for its "upkeep" while also having to…

He also has an unhealthy relationship with money. Withholding money from being spent is immoral because that money is needed to pay debts and saving money causes unemployment. Spending all the money you get is moral. Of course you are allowed to spend your money on stocks and bonds to maintain real savings.

If you accept that living exclusively off the handouts of others is immoral, then saving money of course is not inherently immoral. It helps you not do that.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#244

Post by samatman » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

kangnkodos wrote: post #51

CydeWeys wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's a leech on society. He has two children he could not support (and has no contact with), he's constantly mooching off others for his basic needs, and there's not a word in the article about him ever doing a single thing productive for society. And unlike many other homeless people who legitimately are unable to contribute productively, this is all his choice. He's lucky he's…

He is advocating for the homeless in order to help them not freeze in the winter. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.

A bit less noble when it's in his direct interest, wouldn't you say?

Which isn't to say that self-advocacy is in some way dirty, we should all stand up for our self-interest insofar as it is otherwise ethical.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#245

Post by miga » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

All of us have to use money, so we make every excuse to say it is the only way of life.

Homeless, jobless people prove otherwise. You can live without money, but the standard seems quite low.

I hear it is possible to survive without society too. But the standard seems even lower.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#246

Post by Jochim » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #118

kangnkodos wrote: post #17

He wants everyone to suddenly stop using money. If that happened, who would wash the dishes? Many communes have failed over this exact issue. They go on for several years with several people, usually women, making the sacrifice and doing what needs to be done. But eventually, the people who do the dishes get fed up and stop, or leave. And then the whole thing collapses. The alternative is for the leaders to have some…

>If that happened, who would wash the dishes? I'm genuinely shocked to see so many people disagreeing with this premise. Very few people will voluntarily perform shitty, low-status jobs unless you motivate them. Everyone wants to hand out toys to sick kids and pose for photos, nobody wants to clean up their chemo-smelling shit and puke. It's been a real issue in every single volunteer-run organisation I've been a par…

> I'm genuinely shocked to see so many people disagreeing with this premise. Very few people will voluntarily perform shitty, low-status jobs unless you motivate them.

Motivating them is the key word. Right now we depend on people being forced into stressful, precarious or life threatening situations in order to coerce them into doing jobs those of us in more stable circumstances would never do voluntarily. As a result, desperate people are paid far less than the work is actually worth. Personally I find the approach morally repugnant, we should instead guarantee a decent standard of living and allow wages for undesirable jobs to rise to their correct price. The crowd that thinks they're above cleaning their own toilet might be a bit put out but fuck them.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#247

Post by samatman » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

totony wrote: post #166

kypro wrote: post #16

I don't see how taking from everyone and giving very little in return is moral. If everyone did this we'd all live in a far worse world. This is basically the antithesis of my own moral code to give more than I receive. I relate to him in that I value money very little as a medium to facilitate my own happiness, but I still want to make a lot of it so I can give more. He seems sweet though. I think I would get on wit…

>This is basically the antithesis of my own moral code to give more than I receive. This is mathematically impossible to apply universally. Can it be a moral code if it can't be universal? Although this might be applicable if you live in a wealthy circle and there are poor circles.

It well and truly is not.

The Sun provides the Earth with enormous amounts of syntropy (this is the inverse of entropy), and we can capture this through productive labor before it inevitably dissipates off into space.

As a toy example, it is certainly mathematically possible for everyone to grow more calories than they consume. We wouldn't want this, for the obvious reason that we don't need more calories than we consume, and this would be labor-intensive enough to leave many useful tasks unfilled.

But it proves you wrong: there's nothing preventing "give more than you receive" from being a categorical imperative. Certainly nothing "mathematical".

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#248

Post by tejtm » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

xondono wrote: post #164

Aeolun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the post money society doesn’t need philosopher poets scavenging cigarettes from trash cans Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion. Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone.

> Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone. False dichotomy much? Name one odd philosopher poet that has brought anything to the table

Socrates

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#249

Post by FabiansMustDie » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

mikem170 wrote: post #162

s1artibartfast wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before money, people traded services and power. In this sense, money is just an accounting tool to track the same

Not exactly the same. Money changed a lot of things, much more than just an accounting tool. The use of money drastically changed the scale in which goods and services could be traded. Before money people kept track of who owed who a favor amongst the people they dealt with. Family, friends, and others learned who they could trust not to be a mooch. Money made possible much larger scale projects, enabling the industr…

Do you have a blog? Or a library?

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#250

Post by ratsforhorses » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

iamadog1029 wrote: post #198

vxNsr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go into the wild and grow/hunt food or trade some skill This is what I thought the article would be about. Instead it’s glorifying living on handouts and other people’s largesse.

That's far more complicated than you'd suspect, at least in the US. There are a litany of policies that criminalize self-sustainment. Granted I suppose one could consume pests without being harangued for poaching, but that doesn't mitigate property laws, and all property is owned if not privately then publicly and in either case most often requires license to be there, whether explicit or implicit. Certainly doing an…

Reminds me to recommend "Grapes of wrath" as a wonderful book to read, surprisingly relevant today, off my head there is the description about apples being too expensive to buy fresh so being sold to be canned... and the old guy having worked and suddenly having money in his pocket, not knowing what touse it for so buying some useless trinket....but maybe someone has a link for an online version so I could copy paste the relevant excerpts...