Is there anywhere in the world someone can just live for free?

If that was all there was to it, why did we keep migrating after the agricultural revolution?

First thing, there really is no 'average' human that you can speak of without extensive qualifications about what you mean.

An enormous amount of people lived their lives nomadically up until recently. I don't just mean in North America but across Siberia into Europe, as well as in Africa and Australia and many other places.

If you go by sheer quantity of people (starting with anatomically modern humans) that would outweigh any sedentary people.

Single individuals did, but my comment was really about individuals or subcommunities leaving the larger commmunity when it became too oppressive.

Unless you have found the cure to death, it's enough that that holds for 5-6 decades for most of us here.

Brilliant but, as human owned by felines, "actively disdain" may be more accurate than "neither acknowledge nor understand".

Surely you can agree that interdependence is a spectrum, and people can find satisfaction at different levels.

At least the newyorker article lays it's objections out clearly. It finds Thoreau repugnant for his libertarian outlook, and even more so when Thoreau comes to agreeable conclusions, but by different means than the author.

>"This is not the stuff of a democratic hero. Nor were Thoreau’s actual politics, which were libertarian verging on anarchist. Like today’s preppers, he valued self-sufficiency for reasons that were simultaneously self-aggrandizing and suspicious: he did not believe that he needed anything from other people, and he did not trust other people to provide it. “That government is best which governs least,” Jefferson supposedly said. Thoreau, revising him, wrote, “That government is best which governs not at all.”"

>His moral clarity about abolition stemmed less from compassion or a commitment to equality than from the fact that slavery so blatantly violated his belief in self-governance.

The author seems upset that Thoreau is not appreciative or thankful for the society he lives in. I think the last paragraph sums it up well.

>Granted, it is sometimes difficult to deal with society. Few things will thwart your plans to live deliberately faster than those messy, confounding surprises known as other people. Likewise, few things will thwart your absolute autonomy faster than governance, and not only when the government is unjust; every law is a parameter, a constraint on what we might otherwise do. Teen-agers, too, strain and squirm against any checks on their liberty. But the mature position, and the one at the heart of the American democracy, seeks a balance between the individual and the society. Thoreau lived out that complicated balance; the pity is that he forsook it, together with all fellow-feeling, in “Walden.” And yet we made a classic of the book, and a moral paragon of its author—a man whose deepest desire and signature act was to turn his back on the rest of us

I think this same sentiment is what is expressed elsewhere in this tread. "how dare you be ungrateful for what society has given you, and how dare you not care for your fellow man". I think some people will never understand the desire of others to simply be left alone.

Maybe you could live a solitary life, on your own, using only what your land provides you, but there's no way you could access modern health care, then.

Same goes for Internet access (all those subway cables were laid by somebody, probably subsidised by some government, at least partially).

Same goes for roads, and so on.

This is a myth very few people could live because the others don't and one way or another support them.

Yes, as long as an entity owns the land they want to get paid for it - either to live on it, game, cross

I’d say the free life doesn’t scale but maybe it doesn’t have to for those that can find their own corner of Earth

Do Bedouin tribes pay taxes or tariff ?

To solve this, you need to balance your obligations to the government (property taxes), against obligations from the government (bonds of some kind).

I'll use TIPs for my example, because it's harder for the government to inflate away these obligations.

A plot of land might have taxes of $1,000/yr. It looks like TIPs give a fixed real rate of 1.3%. So, $77k in TIPS will balance out your taxes. You need to add that to the true price of the land.

Obviously, there is the question of how you obtain that capital. So in a sense we are generally born "in the red", and need to work our way out of these implicit debts. But it can be done, even within the system.

Living is work no matter where. The monestary, for example, is no different than having a job to generate tradeable value to live. The article might really be interested in places where you can live entirely self-sufficiently, without relying on inputs that society voluntarily grants.

For example, the Into the Wild guy in Alaska. He "lived" for "free", for a short time, but he still relied on an old vehicle for shelter (from society) and had a bunch of clothes and provisions. So, that fits the mold only if you include becoming a thief or outlaw and just taking things from society without trade or agreement, Not done successfully, anywhere, for any length of time.

Government spending, especially without oversight, is an extremely inefficient method for "building community". The vast majority of taxes go to enormous, bureaucratic departments or programs with virtually no connection to individual people within one's local sphere.

Donating to, and actively participating in, church, schools, parks, community centers, etc is typically a lot more effective in strengthening a community, and one can easily be anti-taxes and very much pro-community.

If local environments began to change, then your nomadic tribe moved along rather sitting around waiting to die. Birds fly south for the winter.

The relevant comparison here is to other citizens, not to other states.

Leaving aside the dubious benefits of police, Amish pay the same taxes as everyone else- with the exception of Social Security and workers' compensation, which they pay through their church. Those taxes entitle the Amish to their share of the national defense buff.

https://marketrealist.com/p/do-amish-pay-taxes/

> This means they aren’t truly independent. They’re dependent in a way they could never afford to pay for themselves.

That would seem to describe most, if not all, citizens of contemporary societies. Could you name someone who you consider truly independent? As the saying goes, "No man is an island."

And since I have to drive around so much to follow the weather It’s very hard to have long-term meaningful friendships.

The other thing is lack of stable healthcare but I am slowly weaning myself off of Western medicine so that has becoming less of a concern.

It’s not that I want to live this way, it’s the only solution I have right now unfortunately.

Come on now, people have done it for hundreds of thousands of years. Just because it’s different from what you used to doesn’t mean it can’t be done. And it doesn’t mean the children will come out harmed in anyway.

> In the USA we have a problem with cost of living, but at the end of the day the reason for this is almost always misguided government intervention.

If there is no government intervention after the 2008 recession (QE, 0% rates) then many more people would be living like I am living. That’s how much people don’t want to reduce their lifestyle, they push it out as far into the future as they can. No matter what the cost of that is later on.

But you seem to think that the government and the corporate state or two different things when they’re one and the same. All these measures were to save stock, prices, assets, etc..But you seem to think that the government and the corporate state or two different things when they’re one in the same. All these measures were to save stock prices, assets, etc.

I’m not a young person, but I can understand what young people think when they see the boomers, who are doing all the consuming, spending all their money which they got from the government interest rates. It’s both not consumers and it is, because the government instituting 0% rates just turned every asset market into a bubble. And this gave everyone with the assets the ability to consume. But you know the government needs people to consume because that’s what creates GDP right?

So all the boomers with the larger amount amount of increase in asset prices, they didn’t have to sell their prices for more money, they don’t have to go on vacation and buy more things, they could’ve live more simply, and there would’ve been no inflation. But it’s the consumption from the people with the assets that to inflation. It’s not 0% interest rates alone that Cause inflation.

By itself I think that this is a positive attribute. The problem comes when people believe that they deserve to live more comfortable lives than others, which seems true of most Americans.

For cooking I have MSR rocket and camping cookpot and a set of utensils.

Also a gym bag with a towel and my shower stuff.

Most of the things that take up space in my van or things that I need for the van, like shades for the window and tarps to keep the van cool when I’m in the desert. Also tools, of course. I also carry about 18 gallons of water with me so I can stay out in the desert for extended periods.

Basically, I have clothes, food and shelter so I’m OK. I just wish the shelter was not a van.

The problem is they are not the big expenses that improve someone's quality of life. Decent housing, health insurance/healthcare, education and transportation are the big spending items for most people, not toys or even phones. Most of the things you mentioned are affordable to almost everyone in the developed world, maybe in an inferior form (like a huawei instead of an apple, h&m instead of gap) but still available.

For an average joe who has two kids and has to be at work because most people can't and don't work remotely even today, "hacking" inexpensive living isn't so much about giving up on their huawei phone or h&m clothes. It's more about giving up on having a decent place to live, giving up on their children's education, not being able to commute to work, etc. And that's not quite doable at all.

Because you need a backup plan for when you lose that job. Or your employer does not increase your wages and you need other employers to sell to to earn income that keeps up with your expenses.

It would be possible to substantially reduce costs, but only by living among people who are objectively poor by current standards. Without passing any judgement, this brings disadvantages of its own. Where could we live on the reduced income without also forgoing society with educated, liberal, cosmopolitan people? To me that’s the harder part to give up than an iPhone each year or cable tv.

Sure, go back to the post war era where countries right after the point we started building massive amounts of infrastructure debt to say 'look how good things are' with absolutely no understanding the situation was untenable. Houses leaked energy like mad, and we were already full bore pulling coal out of the ground to fuel that growth. And, jeesh, the chemicals we were releasing at the time were not pleasant at all.

You are looking for a golden past that didn't exist.

I found the whole thing pretty fascinating though, also in terms of what he believes about us here in Europe (we're not free anymore) or that USA government is moving towards making the Bible illegal, yet also having a lot of beliefs and knowledge that I consider exceptionally good, like not eating meat or animal products. I don't manage the latter myself but it would be the right thing to do and he just does it. Oh, and that his biggest mentioned expense is 90 dollars every month for a landline phone. Holy crap, for that you get 10 gigabit symmetrical around here if you're on the right fiber network, or otherwise the fastest Internet+phone+TV they can offer! Amazing he can make enough money raising horses to pay that bill every month on top of a few smaller expenses like dog food (it totaled up to 140/month, though I expect there's some forgotten/irregular costs). Who else has >50% of their living expenses be a phone contract!

I think that qualifies for "quite close to 0"

(I don't aim for zero, although I do live very cheaply compared to the US average)

It is the infrastructure, moving mountains to move water, paving land to move food, laying wires for electricity and communication, train lines to move fertilizer, refineries, ports, universities to study medicines, etc.

$100 per month is not going to cover any of this, but I am pretty sure you are going to want the benefits.

Already you're bitching about "omg its so easy for other people to practically end my life by messing up the tenuous balance I have between getting fresh water and the flow of untreated shit I produce"

Yea, this is easy when there is a few people working with plentiful water resources then it all works fine. When lots of people show up, you are shitting in each others mouths and dying of cholera and begging these "authorities" to save you. Think for 5 minutes about the argument you typed out and you'll figure out why these other complex systems exist.

Oh, definitely. We are doing it on a universal scale right now.

If you meant smaller than that, then what are you restrictions?

The only reason costs are so high is because money can be printed at will so your savings will always be reduced.

Sadly most people don't learn anything about finance and think stocks and bonds are good investment vehicles and fractional reserve is great.

I guess if you go to a school that was designed to make you a factory worker then you will only learn how to be a worker and not the owner.

Here is a glimpse of life in rural Oregon in the 1870s, as recorded in 1932: https://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh2.29080415/?sp=7 . Her mother carded and dyed the wool herself, to make clothes. Peddlers would come by with bundles to sell, with "fancy shawls, printed goods, silks, and such other luxuries", sometimes sold for as high as $150/bundle. She bought a statue of Dickens from a peddler.

"The menu for a fine dinner would be: Chicken stew with dumplings, mashed potatoes, peach preserves, biscuits, and hominy." Dumplings and cobbler were staples. They had brown sugar and molasses. There was bread and milk, and teas made from local herbs. They had a schoolhouse. Most women wore calico (store-bought) and linsey-wollsey (locally made). Seems they had geese too.

For the big 4th of July event in Corvallis, her mother made 200 gooseberry pies.

Young women enjoyed the magazines Godey's, Peterson's, and the Bazaar.

This seems in decent alignment with the children's story. It does not seem like the spartan life keiferski suggests for some 50 years later.

Yes, Louis XIV didn't have internet service. Does that make the Sun King poor?

Clearly, no.

The usual way to do this through something like measuring the cost-of-living - the US started gathering this information during World War I. Your $100/month now corresponds to $6.50/month in 1920, says https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ , or $78/year.

We can look up actual numbers. From the Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics #357 at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... dated May 1924 and covering the years 1918-1919 we can see breakdown of expenses for different places in the western US:

In Butte, Montana, the poorest family (1 out of 102 surveyed, with 4 people) made $900-$1,200 per year, and had $1,022.50 in expenses. (see page 14). Of that, about $900 was spend on food, clothing, rent, and fuel/light.

In the gold rush town of Cripple Creek District, Colorado (page 22) one family of 80, with 3 people, made under $900, and had expenses of $853.

In Trinidad, Colordo, 2 of 78 families (average of 4.5 people per family) made less than $900/year, and had expenses of $973.

And these are the poorest of the poor! They are in the city, which does affect the numbers - farm living can be cheaper, but surely not by a factor of 10.

So the idea that $78/year was in any way representative is clearly low-balling it by a lot, even if you only meant for a single person rather than a family.

The tables show a 1920 far different than the world you are thinking of. Look at the miscellaneous items for those in the Western states making at most $900/year, at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... . 72% of them had life insurance, 11% paid membership to social clubs, 50% paid for movies, 89% got a newspaper, 78% paid for a physician, 22% paid for glasses, and so on.

If 1920 is your comparable, then in 2023 you also need to pay for those, on top of lodging, food, heat, and furniture, for your $100/month.

I have no doubt there were a handful of people in 1920 who lived on $6.50/month, perhaps living by themselves in the back-country of Alaska, but that will be on the extreme low end, far below the baseline of nearly everyone living in the American West a hundred years ago, and hardly representative.

A "job" is not a spontaneous effect of a desire, its not a natural thing, but simply a formalization step in capitalism for the sake of exchanging labor for pay.

"Post-work" generally doesn't mean "nobody can work anymore," its more "nobody needs to work anymore." People will always "work" insofar as that just means to live, learn, and share fruits of our skill and creativity.

If I have to grow my own food, compose and perform my own music, build my own housing and vehicles, life will be shit.

If we do have division of labor and pay each other for the work, we've reinvented capitalism. If we don't pay each other, the incentives are very strong to be a free-rider.

Let's be generous and say room and board in a rural farmhouse and use of an old farm truck is worth an additional $1500, you would still make more money working 40 hours a week at my town's McDonalds, and if it's like any farm I've ever worked at you'll be working at least twice as hard and twice as long.

That's not a job, it's exploitation, right down to the "slave for use and maybe, if we decide, at some unspecified point you may get something nice from us!" sales pitch.

For raising a family on $18K/yr + free rent?

It's basically, everything considered, the equivalent of entry -level fast-food pay, but worse because its mostly in non-monetary form, for a job with much greater skill and responsibility demands.

Yeah, I bet its hard to fill.

> All of that said - farmers like that don’t see their long-term help as just “employees”. They feel responsible for their welfare, and end up seeing them as part of the family.

Even if its true, what that ultimately means is that, as employers, they expect employees to sacrifice obligated, contractual compensation for the hope of future non-obligatory generosity in am a patron-client relationship rather than a bargained-for-exchange market relationship.

If I'm forced at the end of a barrel of a gun to give up any portion of the fruits of my labor to support others, it is immoral.

Just making decision to live off that and spend time doing hobbies is abusing good thing and asocial. People who openly advocate for something like that are endangering existence of those programs for those who really need it because of mental health or physical issues.

Moreover, those programs typically comes with social workers and requirements designed to make you change your life. You should cooperate with that goal so that you cease to be so dependent.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38139825

Is the implication that if you personally enjoy a high standard of living through capitalism, it is therefore hypocritical to advocate for everyone to enjoy a high standard of living through socialism? How come?

(I am asking this question in good faith. Note that at no point I am stating that socialism would or could actually achieve a high standard of living for everyone. I am neither interested in having that discussion or claiming that position. Please don't reply with a Wikipedia copy-paste about the great famine)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz_crisis for more background information about the causes and eventual government bailout that ensued.

Source: my wife grew up on a kibbutz and while it does have a nice small village vibe to it, economic prospects inside the community are pretty abysmal. The kibbutz mostly survives because it owns one of the largest chicken farms in Israel and most employees of that farm are not kibbutz members.

Secondly you just live more "rough" - you don't go to a doctor or dentist until it's really required. Life is harder, without a doubt.

OTOH, any "you can stay indefinitely" offers would be given on an individual basis, contingent on both your behavior and their own situation (including the financial viability of their organization), and rather unlikely to include substantial medical care as you got older.

Only started to explore his blog. I watched this video [1] to get an idea about the man and his boat design philosophy and it's very cool.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bca5_uyH9E4

A couple catching their food, doing their own boat maintenance. $300k over ten years is the line below which you are arguably living homeless like transient vanlife, but on water - that is, living on the margins of society, on borrowed time.

So buying a boat ($$), getting it fitted initially ($$), after that, maybe $2,500/month.

On my bucket list :D

"Cheap" is relative, but you're comparing apples with oranges if you compare the purchase price of a boat to all the expenses of living in a house - all the expenses are still there, and everything is more expensive in the sea.