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Comment by sushshshsh | Hacker News Reader

Thanks to technology, the need for employment is at the lowest it has ever been, if someone is willing to make a lot of sacrifices when it comes to modern luxuries.

However, if one desires to live with luxuries such as, gasp, housing and medical care, then life becomes extremely expensive, especially in US cities.

So increasingly as I see it, you either need to be making big bucks as a developer/executive, or you need to be living in a tent on BLM public land with your only expenses being food and a phone bill.

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> your only expenses being food and a phone bill.

Just hope you don't get sick.

Also, food expenses add up. State food assistance programs are already overloaded (even before COVID), if you're a single dude living as a hermit you go to the back of the line.

It really makes the US sound like a third world country to me. I have a confession: I've never ever not once in my life worked a job for pay. I have free housing, medical care, electricity and a fair amount of money to spend on food, even the occasional luxury. The social security landscape benefitting me has allowed me to live my life in pursuit of arts and technology, at no cost and no sacrifice. Computers are cheap, and living here is free. I'm in the poorest underclass in my society, yet I feel wealthier and luckier than an average American, apparently. Best of all, I almost never have to wake up to an alarm clock. ^_^

> or you need to be living in a tent on BLM public land with your only expenses being food and a phone bill.

Can you actually [legally] do this?

You just have to move around every 20 something days, although I don't know if it's enforced.

I can confirm it's not enforced, as it is difficult to track. I imagine that the worst that would happen is you are just asked to move, particularly if you have a giant camper or are making quite a bit of impact on the land you are occupying.

> Dispersed camping is allowed on public land for a period not to exceed 14 days within a 28 consecutive day period. The 28 day period begins when a camper initially occupies a specific location on public lands. The 14 day limit may be reached either through a number of separate visits or through 14 days of continuous overnight occupation during the 28 day period. After the 14th day of occupation, the camper must move outside of a 25 mile radius of the previous location until the 29th day since the initial occupation. The purpose of this special rule is to prevent damage to sensitive resources caused by continual use of any particular areas. In addition, campers must not leave any personal property unattended for more than 10 days (12 months in Alaska).

https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping

So I guess you would need two or three spots to cycle between if you wanted to do it legally, but you could continuously occupy public land like this.

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