Comment by athenot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by athenot | Hacker News Reader

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Perhaps we've overstated the benefits of linking our personal fare to the economy. Humans have lived for many years in autonomous or small tribes, living off the land. I'm not advocating a return to ancient times, but I think we can reduce our dependency towards the economy. The only thing that is really needed is land. Food is nearly free if you have the land to grow it on and the time to tend to it.

Shelter, well that's a huge variable: building your own house is almost impossible with many regulations that require a certain expertise to navigate. But once you have food, shelter—and friends/family—you're in a decent spot from a survival standpoint.

We don't have to live like the Amish, but perhaps a happy medium can be found, by being less dependent on the economy. Instead of buying 100% of your survival needs, perhaps it's possible to buy 50% of them and make the rest yourself. With the better telecommunications we have today, I often wonder about a society that's only 50% plugged in to the economy—and 50% self-reliant.

Disclaimer: I'm no macro-economist.

I think it's a bit naive approach. The food is cheap because of the highly efficent agriculture. If you are going to grow stuff yourself your output per square meter is probably going to be much lower and it's going to take a lot of time and energy than if you were to rely on the economy. It's simply not feasible for masses to go back, without changing their diet, ie having to eat less with smaller variety of food. And if you take into account the impact on the country's economy due to this shift, it would be disastrous and put your country behind every other country in the world. It would also mean that you were going to be exposed militarily because of the inferior war technology caused by the inefficient economy. And so on.

Here's the rub: The people who are the least dependent on getting a job in order to survive are the best positioned to succeed in the economy. They can take time to educate themselves. They can spend time networking, and building relationships. They don't have to struggle to be well fed, well clothed. They have lower levels of stress.

Contrast that to someone who is 100% self reliant. They don't have friends or family to lean on. Every day they have to figure out where their next meal comes from, where they will sleep. Basic safety is not even guaranteed. (You can't be 100% on guard, without break.) The constant demand to take care of one's basic needs slowly wears them down. They have to struggle just to stay clean and well dressed. If you live in a city, you see people like this all the time. They're not part of social support system that benefits economically successful people – and the results are tragic.

There's another point, which I should mention: the kind of job that is most suitable to part-time remote working is also the kind that happens to pay very well and, as you point out, not the lot of those who are the most dependent on getting a job.

So yes, there's a bias in my proposition.

It would be interesting to see studies on the overall happiness of individuals that are 100% "plugged in" or dependent and individuals leaning more towards the self reliant Amish living. If all the modern conveniences of a plugged in world aren't making us happier/healthier, maybe we should look at a major shift in the way we interact with the world and people around us.

You can analyze it in terms of your time budget.

Say growing your own food while limiting inputs from the broader economy would take 30% of your available time. You can compare that to how much time you are currently spending earning money to pay for food (probably less than that).

Is the greater certainty that comes with the self reliance a good trade?

Yes, undoing hundreds of years of development sounds like a fantastic idea.

There simply isn't enough land on earth to support substantial farming for 7 billion people. What you are advocating is to kill well over half the world's population.

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