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Comment by michael_j_x | Hacker News Reader

The monastic community of Mount Athos, Greece. It's free in the sense you don't pay anything, but you have to become an Orthodox monk, with whatever that entails

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Actually there are many orthodox monasteries (including in the US) where you can live for free and are open to women too. You have work whatever they give you, and of course obey the (pretty strict) rules.

You can live for free indefinitely as a non-monastic? I'm aware of these but only in that you can live at them for a few weeks or maybe months. Or indefinitely as you discern monastic life. But if you're determined to be ineligible due to worldly ties (debts, being a parent or eldest child) or incompatibility with the demands and lifestyles of being a monk you're supposed to leave.

With the plummeting popularity of becoming a monk or nun over the past half-century or so, I suspect that quite a few such communities would relax their requirements.

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.

I'm not sure orthodox monasteries are having that problem to the same degree. To my knowledge about twenty monasteries in the US are newly formed since the 1970s.

Anyway I know one person who became a monk at one and another who was rejected for not meeting the requirements. Exceptions have to be granted by the regional bishop, and they need a genuinely compelling reason. "There aren't enough monks" either isn't one, or they don't have that problem right now.

That is pretty much opposite of the freedom. That typically means that majority of decisions including trivial ones are done for you and you are expected to obey.

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