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Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

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Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#61

Post by natrius »

pj wrote: post #13
erlanger wrote: post #11

If everyone did this, he wouldn't have a thing to eat. I'm not knocking it, but it's something to think about. But that brings us to a more important point: Why does this guy have to forage to survive without money? Shouldn't he be able to save up, buy a few acres and grow his own resources? Nope, because of the absurdity known as the property tax (er, I mean "protection racket").

Right! It's impossible to own land in America. You merely rent it from the government. But also, he uses the library for internet access. I wonder if he considers that "government dole."

I have no problem with people having to pay to maintain ownership of their land. Land ownership is a useful farce. Every land owner is in possession of land that was "stolen", for lack of a more precise word. If we're going to protect people's right to claim land according to the "finders keepers" rule, we should ensure that the owner is making good use of that land. Property taxation helps to do that. (With many side effects, like exacerbating gentrification. That could be fixed, though.)

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#62

Post by JacobAldridge »

Oompa wrote: post #3

Interesting individual, I could never do anything like this myself.

Yes, I went through a similar thought pattern when I left high school - "I don't want to worry about money. Either I decide to never have money, or I'll put in the effort require to always have enough / too much."

Still working on the second choice. It's not easy, but I think the first option is much harder and never ends.

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#63

Post by ido »

nir wrote: post #26
seldo wrote: post #15

So, um, he's a homeless guy who lives in a cave. Congratulations, homeless guy, you have somehow managed to convince everybody that instead of a homeless guy, you're a cultural revolutionary. NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive me if this doesn't sound like the future of mankind.

"NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive me if this doesn't sound like the future of mankind" Forgive me if I say this sounds like a Reddit comment :) Why so negative? He doesn't harm or tries to convert. There is a difference between him and most homeless in that he actually chose this lifestyle, is able to quit it if he wants, and seems to be generally pretty happy with it.

"Forgive me if I say this sounds like a Reddit comment"

Forgive me if i say this makes you sound like an asshole - why do people on HN feel the need to belittle reddit in much the same way reddit users belittle digg users?

I wonder where on the net an even more "intelligent" site's users are using "hacker news comment" as a derogatory term?

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#64

Post by endtime »

dasil003 wrote: post #30
Xichekolas wrote: post #9

Money is merely a means to decouple the promise of payback from the promiser. Without money, you have to trust Joe to help you can tomatoes next fall since you helped him plow his field. With money, Joe can pay you to plow his field, and you can pay Sally to help you can tomatoes (because Joe moved to another town).

Sure, but the emergent effects of money on society--especially with computerized banking--are quite a bit more significant than the fundamental innovation. Computers are merely for shuffling 1s and 0s around.

>Computers are merely for shuffling 1s and 0s around.

If you're going to say that about computers, you might as well say it about people. As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, but same story.

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#65

Post by prodigal_erik »

ars wrote: post #27
mahmud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need kids to survive like that, most adults I know can do it all on their own~

Very funny :) However, could he still do it if he had kids? The article seems to suggest this is a good way to live, but if you can't live this way, and have kids too, then meh. He's not just an ordinary homeless guy - he wants a life without property (not money, any property), i.e. he's homeless guy with a principle. So I evaluate the principle: is it a good one? So far, it seems no, it's not. If he could have kids,…

It's a principle which currently has little visibility in society. What makes that less important than spending your effort on the same work literally billions of other people are already doing?

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#66

Post by robryan »

mjgoins wrote: post #33
erlanger wrote: post #11

If everyone did this, he wouldn't have a thing to eat. I'm not knocking it, but it's something to think about. But that brings us to a more important point: Why does this guy have to forage to survive without money? Shouldn't he be able to save up, buy a few acres and grow his own resources? Nope, because of the absurdity known as the property tax (er, I mean "protection racket").

If everyone in the world was an investment banker, no one would have anything to eat. Ditto hackers, unless they were hackers with an eye towards agriculture.

Hackers are more likely than investment bankers to come up with a mostly automated agricultural system.

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#67

Post by kragen »

madmanslitany wrote: post #39
mjgoins wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone in the world was an investment banker, no one would have anything to eat. Ditto hackers, unless they were hackers with an eye towards agriculture.

I don't think this is valid in the context of what the parent was saying about this guy; hackers and investment bankers are specialized professions which contribute to society in their own specialized way and specialization makes life better for everyone overall by enabling civilization. The subject of the article is hardly a specialized professional and while it's minimized to some extent, he even admits he sometime…

In the article, it says, "He moved to Moab and worked at a women's shelter for five years. He wanted to help people, but getting paid for it seemed dishonest—how real was help that demanded recompense?"

Looking at his blog, it sounds like he still does that kind of thing, doesn't it? He wouldn't have to work many shifts to compensate for the resources he draws from the rest of society. Also, he writes things that other people enjoy reading, which has traditionally been considered productive work, and he's presumably performing some kind of minimal service just by diminishing the waste stream.

So I don't think it's quite true that he's contributing nothing to society.

You write, "Articles about guys like this make me kind of angry." Well, that's not surprising. His value system is clearly very different from yours, and anger is a normal human reaction when you're confronted with someone behaving according to a different value system. It takes a lot of maturity to get past that point.

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#68

Post by JesseAldridge »

michaelneale wrote: post #16
wmeredith wrote: post #4

I'm pretty sure I could survive on the waste and charity of others as this guy does, but I wouldn't want to.

Thousands do in major cities every day. Often there are mental health issues at play, but anyone can do it.

This guy has some cool blog entries along those lines:

http://www.nevblog.com/labels/Homeless%20Experiment.html

Re: Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.

#70

Post by kragen »

ido wrote: post #63
nir wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive me if this doesn't sound like the future of mankind" Forgive me if I say this sounds like a Reddit comment :) Why so negative? He doesn't harm or tries to convert. There is a difference between him and most homeless in that he actually chose this lifestyle, is able to quit it if he wants, and seems to be generally pretty happy with it.

"Forgive me if I say this sounds like a Reddit comment" Forgive me if i say this makes you sound like an asshole - why do people on HN feel the need to belittle reddit in much the same way reddit users belittle digg users? I wonder where on the net an even more "intelligent" site's users are using "hacker news comment" as a derogatory term?

There are lots of places where people refer to the kinds of comments that show up on web message boards as, well, far from the epitome of rational, polite, interesting discussion. Maybe discussions on email mailing lists are the most common place where this happens.

I think a lot of us here are users both of Reddit and Hacker News, and that experience is why we don't want Hacker News to turn into Reddit. It's not that we're belittling Reddit's users, but that we don't like the kinds of discussions that occur on Reddit.

The comment at the top of this thread is a perfect example: instead of contributing to the discussion, its author thought it would be more worthwhile to express his disagreement with the subject of the article by using the word "fucking", without ever actually explaining why he disagreed. He succeeded in writing a funny comment (it got ten upvotes!) but not in writing anything worth reading.

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