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A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

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Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#351

Post by bennysomething »

noduerme wrote: post #343
LightBearer wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound mad that this fellow has found a way to not contribute to the society you think everyone should. Jealous?

No, I think he's missing out on the best part of life - building creative things for others to enjoy and to improve their lives. And elevating the total refusal to add an iota of value to the world from your own existence into a form of sainthood is the apogee of lazy Gen Z culture, isn't it? I pity the guy, as any sane person should, but I also think it's grotesque that hangers-on are attracted to his lame opinions.

He's entitled to point out how he thinks tax he is paying is being wasted. Deriving multiple traits from this seems irrational. Especially given its based on a paragraph or two of text.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#352

Post by [deleted] »

musingsole wrote: post #348
jerry1979 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any resources that explain how saving money hurts others?

It's a pretty natural conclusion from many economics teachings that will highlight money only has value in the middle of a transaction and is virtually ethereal while sitting in any account.

[deleted]

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#353

Post by giantg2 »

mikem170 wrote: post #280
missedthecue wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way to phrase it would be "compelled by reality".

Reality being land owners backed by the state who don't allow people to wander off and grow their own food?

During the depression, some governments actually had areas in the government land, like parks, that people could sign up for a garden plot. You could grow your own food. This allowed people in the towns and city land to grow on.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#354

Post by Dudeman112 »

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…

>real liberty, real autonomy, real independence

How many people have ever existed with real liberty, autonomy and independence?

Maybe the concepts simply aren't achievable for your regular human

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#355

Post by wizzwizz4 »

markzzerella wrote: post #312
TheRealPomax wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would society need to even be a predator though? The whole point of society is that we organized into large enough groups that what the "natural order" was no longer applies: societies literally rise above the natural order by replacing that order with something we as society control. That means things like corporations, and working hard for your money, but also means things like "meaningless art", and allowing p…

>the whole point of society is that we don't need this ridiculous "natural" nonsense. We beat it. It can stay outside. We replaced it with society. When the silent part is said out loud. "We" didn't beat anything, and "we" certainly aren't gods that managed to counter natural law, despite the current zeitgeist that likes to pretend it is so. Humans are predators, and to pretend otherwise will be the folly of our spec…

> Humans are predators,

Look at our teeth. We're actually omnivorous.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#356

Post by fogihujy »

cgh wrote: post #322
SavantIdiot wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go into the wild and grow/hunt food It is easy to radically underestimate how much food a human needs every day and how hard it is to acquire, especially when living a non-sedentary life as a hunter/gatherer. Trying to accumulate 2000+ calories per day growing food requires a rather significant farm and skill (and weather); doing so with meat requires daily hunting, or a permanent storage facility with refrigeratio…

Yes, and in the northern hemisphere at least, you quickly realize that foraging for plants is a waste of time. There just isn’t enough calories. Re daily hunting, meat actually keeps for quite a while when hung in cooler temps (heat is not your friend when hunting). This is routinely done with eg deer. And it is easy to dry meat of all sorts, or even smoke it as that has the same effect and also makes it even more de…

It's not for vegans, that's for sure.

There's a lot of plant and mushroom-based food to be had during the end of the summer, though, and one would have to forage for plants first thing when spring came in order to get a nutritionally complete diet.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#357

Post by fogihujy »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #355
markzzerella wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the whole point of society is that we don't need this ridiculous "natural" nonsense. We beat it. It can stay outside. We replaced it with society. When the silent part is said out loud. "We" didn't beat anything, and "we" certainly aren't gods that managed to counter natural law, despite the current zeitgeist that likes to pretend it is so. Humans are predators, and to pretend otherwise will be the folly of our spec…

> Humans are predators, Look at our teeth. We're actually omnivorous.

Foraging scavengers, who figured out that the stone used to crack skulls of already-dead animals could also crack the one of animals that were still alive.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#358

Post by Chris2048 »

Retric wrote: post #350
Chris2048 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anything productive as a moral stance If Disneyland is harmful, it isn't productive > rest of the economy which this guy is also dependent on

> Of Disneyland is harmful, it isn’t productive. Any activity that burns fossil fuels directly produces measurable harm. Feel free to think about what that means for all current economic activity.

So does any activity that produces CO2, including natural forest fires, and breathing.

The whole idea that CO2 is harmful, came from modern scientific knowledge - also part and product of the economy/society. The same economy could come up with solutions e.g. carbon taxes or other tech advances.

You are taking a complex issue, CO2, the economy and its planetary effects, and turning it into a simplified concept of "harm". Humans have consumed some amount of CO2 forever, it's only an issue now because there are significantly more humans (who also create more CO2, but that's beside the point of the first).

In order to survive in growing numbers, humanity will need to manage its CO2. Incidentally this isn't the first time something like this has happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

Nothing about this the hobo lifestyle suggests it will produce a solution to this problem beyond the fact that it's unlikely to support communities of a certain size for other reasons.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#359

Post by fexl »

jerry1979 wrote: post #234
imtringued wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any resources that explain how saving money hurts others?

I never understood the animus against saving. Saving just means you have produced more than you consumed, and I admire that.

Re: A Victoria man has gone two decades without money

#360

Post by jimbob21 »

indigochill wrote: post #98
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…

I don't understand why the dishwashers leaving needs to cause societal breakdown, though. After they leave, surely someone thinks "Hm, we have no clean dishes any more and nobody's volunteering, so I guess I'll need to clean some dishes, if only for myself, but then once I'm in dishwashing mode it's efficient to clean more dishes than I personally need, and even better if someone decides to reward me for cleaning the…

You'd be fine with doing a number of people's dishes every single day, dishes that are never cleaned by their user, for multiple hours with no pay because you're in dishwashing mode?
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