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Comment by btbuildem | Hacker News Reader

OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. It usually seems to imply "away from others".

Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services.

The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life. Personally, I'd much prefer to live in society, and contribute part of my efforts towards sustaining it. That, to me, is living "for free" -- it's so much more of a free ride than trying to manually hack it and provide sustained food and shelter for decades.

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> I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times.

I think it's the fantasy of having complete autonomy, of being completely free in the sense of never having to do anything that you don't want to do[1]. At least, that's that's the aspect of it that resonates with me.

But it's only that -- a fantasy. Much like other things that we fantasize about, it's impossible as conceived because it dwells on the upsides and omits the downsides. Humans run in packs. We are social. It's that aspect that has always been the key to our ability to survive even in extremely bad circumstances.

The trade-off, looking purely from a selfish point of view, is that we give up some degree of autonomy in exchange for benefits that are so essential and fundamental that we are in great peril without them. We have better lives as part of a group than in isolation, despite being unable to do literally anything we want.

In that sense, it's a lot like some kinds of sexual fantasies. Hot as hell in your imagination, but not so great (or even possible) in reality.

[1] As the Frank Zappa lyric goes: "Free is when you don't have to pay for nothin' or do nothin'. I want to be free."

I think it's more nuanced than that. As it's currently ordered society is a forced participation regime. I don't get the option to say "no." to a great many things. This is due to a loss of security, I don't get to refuse work at a job or in general, and in the case that I do it becomes a compromise, and this compromise is largely arbitrary because there are really very few actual social distinctions in the world currently because the undergirding has overwhelmingly been hijacked by this weird captive environment that has been engineered to support the dominant status quo. However, it is not necessarily the case that this is the "final solution." but the level of ossification presents a substantial challenge. I think this is particularly salient in the American domestic politic, but as the reigning sovereign of the world that has very significant geopolitical impacts globally. Not to mention the fact that we're also the largest consumer market and the most profound conglomerate of companies the world over.

To the question of saying "no.", It's questionable that all but the elite suffer from such stricture. For instance if I were to purchase in full some allotment of land which I inhabited, the government would still extract taxes from it, taxes which I would be obliged to pay, and thus I would necessarily require some income. That's without considering the more likely case of mortgaging a home in the suburbs, taking a loan for a car, the myriad bills necessary to sustain a "functional" life, all the sundry little accessories that invariably set up a treadmill of break and replace... Factor in a family and the manifold complications it inserts - viola - no options available.

This is, of course, not actually the natural course of things and all of this is malleable. Overcoming the massive inertia of the antiquated systems and their underpinning ideas is a huge challenge though. This itself largely due to the overwhelming coherent mass.

But I think anyone would be insane to say they support things as they currently are at any level. But very few are positioned to refuse. It's indenture, but structured in such a way that "society" can point its finger and place blame on the individual.

> As it's currently ordered society is a forced participation regime

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 ?

> the government would still extract taxes from it, taxes which I would be obliged to pay, and thus I would necessarily require some income.

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.

Really cool perspective

Two corrections:

1. If you look at recent Treasury auctions, 30-year TIPS are actually yielding 1.5%, not 1.3% (https://treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-resul...).

2. In reality, you have a finite lifetime, so you can spend down the principal. Suppose you are 30 years old (about the youngest I could imagine this being possible), and that you plan on living to 100 (most people don't). That's 70 years. If you do the math, and use the 1.5% rate, it works out that you only need $43k, not $77k, to hit that $1k/yr number.

> 1. If you look at recent Treasury auctions, 30-year TIPS are actually yielding 1.5%, not 1.3%

Auction results only show the coupon rate on the TIPS, not the total yield.

All TIPS are currently yielding more than 2.1%: https://www.wsj.com/market-data/bonds/tips

> 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.

This math is wrong because you have to pay tax on the income from TIPS (unless you are low income enough that you net tax rate is 0%).

The real problem with that idea is that one's living expenses are almost certainly going to be more than $1000/year, even if you are able to grow enough calories and generate enough watts to be self sufficient.

In order to live off interest alone, you'd probably need $1M in assets or more. At that point, you could just live off the principle.

What is the natural course of things?

> I don't get to refuse work at a job or in general...

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.

> just taking things from society without trade or agreement

Isn't it what some arostocratic and monarchy families do?

This is a radical aside that extrapolates my meaning to an extreme. I don't mean to say people had ought to refuse work altogether, moreso that it would be ideal if one could refuse to pay taxes to a government insistent on fueling wars, or that one could withdraw from work or more generally systems which one views as egregious. Conversely some middle ground might be acceptable.

While this does exist in theory, as I said, there are significant caveats. These are largely derived from the structure. However, I argue that the function could be optimized outside of, or with modification of the system. But overall the system in and of itself is self-reinforcing so there is a substantial barrier to such improvements, and such alterations will be made against an "adversarial network" for lack of a better term.

>But it's only that -- a fantasy. Much like other things that we fantasize about, it's impossible as conceived because it dwells on the upsides and omits the downsides

If one is OK with the downsides, it's completely possible, and a lot of people have done it for extended periods of time, even whole decades...

I'm sure that there are people who have done this, but I'm also sure they're exceedingly rare. Almost always, people living independently like that are still relying on some aspect of society to some degree. They trade for products they can't manufacture, for instance, or benefit more indirectly (such as benefiting from the society's efforts to maintain some level of peace).

>are still relying on some aspect of society to some degree

So? It's not like society would dissapear overnight, and those people would be left with no such recourse.

The person asking just asked for some place without taxes and no price on a plot of land you can claim. They didn't say they want to move all of society to that, or that they want to make a point by relying on their own self entirely.

(You were replying to my comment, so I took your comment in that context. My apologies is my reply is off the mark.)

The point being that you're still giving up some amount of personal liberty in order to be able to successfully interact with society, even if that interaction is minimal. You are still a part of that society. You are not completely independent of it.

Ashleigh Brilliant had a great one-liner about this: no man is an island, but some of us are very long peninsulas.

I mean have you not read Walden? This idea of being more self-reliant and independent is popular with a lot of people, it's a central precept of certain schools of philosophy and ethics as well. No, they weren't all miserable hermits who died young. If you don't like that lifestyle it's fine, but you don't need to pee in everyone else's Wheaties.

Hmm, Walden? You mean the book by the author who took his laundry back to his mother once a month (or thereabouts)?

Don't get me wrong - loved the book, love the concept. The distance between both and reality is a little larger than is immediately obvious, however.

I mean, have you not heard about how during the Walden years Thoreau was fully dependent on and subsidized by others?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand.

> Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand.

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

I take exception to your insulting of cats

Thank you for your concern

I feel like this is an extremely uncharitable take.

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.

>I think some people will never understand the desire of others to simply be left alone.

Is that what he really wanted thought? Nobody was preventing Thoreau from disappearing into the wilderness. He did not do that because it would have been 1) very difficult and 2) quite dangerous. He was perfectly willing to embrace society when it benefited him personally.

Yeah, I think that is a fair point, and basically the crux of things.

Some people want to engage with society only on their own terms, and to the extent it benefits them.

It it is the case now, as it was then, that social participation is a more of a package deal, not itemized interactions. Some people chafe under this.

Thoreau literally went home on the weekends.

Also, this dream ends the very moment you need an hospital. Hospitals are complex structures that require immense amount of resources to operate. Not not mention the resources needed to develop drugs, train doctors and so on.

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.

Thoreau had a strong social network and his mother still took care of him. he was very lucky in this regard that the people he depended on let him be free.

> Personally, I'd much prefer to live in society, and contribute part of my efforts towards sustaining it.

A lot of people are stingy and don't want to contribute unless they're getting the bargain.

If someone else is getting the better end of the stick, they view this as a loss, and it makes them miserable.

Essentially, they view taxation and society as a zero sum game, rather than a positive sum game.

I think political polarization and extremism is making this a more and more common view.

I can't pay any taxes if $1 is used even indirectly for abortions, to fund wars, etc

Society is complex and can't really be reduced like this, but a growing number of people think it can be.

Yea I think we all know That Guy like you describe: I have an acquaintance who is pretty far down this same rabbit hole. Anti-government, anti-taxes, he has actually gone and spoke at some kind of Public Comments thinggy at the county to complain that he should get an itemized tax bill that shows who each dollar is going to, so he can pick and choose and not let a single dollar of "his money" go to someone he thinks doesn't deserve it. Obviously not a big believer in "society" or "community".

Fed up with crazy government spending = "not a big believer in society or community"? Have you actually thought this through?

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.

Churches by and large are institutionalized mental illness. Do not recommend.

And while local institutions can be more responsive and flexible, they also cannot exist without a larger entity helping maintain their sovereignty. (Otherwise larger and stronger forces would overthrow them.) Local only can also be a hassle for things like commerce or civil rights. Imagine every city having their own currency or rules about what "kind of people" are welcome or unwelcome.

Of course local & regional groups and establishments can be flawed, you are correct that most are, some greatly so.

However the OP's point was that someone who is anti-tax (or just wants some accountability and transparency) is "obviously" both anti-community and anti-society. I'm simply saying that being deeply invested in one's community via direct participation in, and/or contributing to, any of a number of local outlets and groups, is not incompatible with frustration regarding the lack of control over the use of one's tax payments.

Good points. Thanks for clarifying.

>Essentially, they view taxation and society as a zero sum game, rather than a positive sum game

I think this is the crux of it. I think it all comes down to the counterfactual used in comparison.

One group of people say look, this is all positive sum because without society, you would be living in a mud hut, so be gratefully for everything you get to keep beyond that.

The other group of people say look, I contribute far more to this society than I get back. Sure, I'm better off than if I lived in mud hut, but worse off than if I lived in a society with less involuntary obligation.

> Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services.

I would say it is the opposite. Looking back at the millenia of human history, it is people migrating. Successive waves out of Africa and across the continents, and everywhere else, constantly moving in order to live more "free". Whether that is for more resources, or away from conflict within a family or tribe, or from without, with organized religions and governments, etc.

Only recently have we stopped because, frankly, there is no place to go. We can still move around cities and countries (and that can help if you are escaping family or tribal issues), but most of the places we can go to are largely the same. If you have a problem with this economy, the proliferation of petro chemicals and other toxins, etc, there isn't really anywhere you can go to escape.

The folks who leave or want to leave are often characterized as losers, loners, etc, and from the point of the view of the people who are happy with the situation that they are trying to escape, they are losers- but that is exactly why they are trying to escape.

1) a community that moves is still a community. A loner that moves around, by contrast, is usually dead within a week or two.

2) we didn’t stop moving around because there’s nowhere else to go. There is a huge amount of totally unpopulated (by humans) land in nearly every region. We don’t choose to live out there because it sucks. We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow food right near you, then you can pick your favorite little bend in the river to shack up and live out your days with your buddies.

> We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow foor right near you...

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

Because of changes in the environment.

But just as importantly, changes in the community (which I suppose we could call the social environment). That has been as significant a driver for migration as changes in the natural environment if not more.

Most migrations in the last few hundred years that I am aware of were driven by social issues (economic, political, religious, etc), and not from natural environmental changes. I.e., Ireland's Great Hunger was not an environmentally driven exodus, even if a potato blight was involved.

For the same reason people still move and still found new towns and grow the borders of cities today? Because there are new places to go, and they might be better than the current place?

> they might be better than the current place?

I think you are agreeing with me. People leave communities when they are not prospering within them.

> Only recently have we stopped because, frankly, there is no place to go

This is what I was disputing. We haven’t stopped, and to the extent that we have, it’s not because there’s no place to go.

Yeah, I think I'd mostly agree with you then. I think we are not moving around as much as we used to, and to many people, it feels as if we cannot move; either because we lack the funds to survive there if we do, or because it will just be more of the same. That is obviously a biased view on my part, because there are migrants moving from "developing" countries to the US and EU all the time- clearly, they believe they have some place to go that will be better.

My agenda in replying to the original comment is that this desire to move is not abnormal. It is as much a part of human history as building community is. I wanted to point that out, because I am familiar with many well-intentioned and well-off people not understanding (and even feeling contempt) for people who wish to leave their community. If you are not happy, and not prospering within a community, why would you want to stay? I don't know if understanding the roots of that dissatisfaction will help us achieve a kinder gentler society, but at least it might help them no longer refer to those people as loners or losers (and have a little empathy and understanding).

They often find a support network in the diaspora that preceded them. If you move within your own country without any friends or family in the destination, everyone there mainly has experience with people like you who are already established.

Because agriculture produces too much food that increase the population too much, so some of the offpring must find another site to cultivate.

That's a good point, and definitely operates over the long term (i.e., in this case, more than one generation). Also, overpopulation usually creates conditions that change the community and affect individuals and subgroups differently (prompting some to leave), so I don't think we are disagreeing about anything.

My purpose was to respond to the original comment that the desire to leave community is not as strange and abnormal as it seemed to state. I think there is an equally strong claim that human history is of us leaving community as it is building community.

For a lot of different reasons. But when migrations happen, they don't tend to be individuals. They tend to be entire subgroups. So it's not people leaving community, it's a subcommunity splitting off.

The average human did not moved anywhere majority of the history and the groups on the move typically stopped moving when they found a place they could settle in.

Migration waves happened, but those were notable events cause by something rather then norm. They also usually or often involved people moving in groups rather then alone.

Those who lost the war ran away to avoid being eradicated.

> The average human did not moved anywhere majority of the history and the groups on the move typically stopped moving when they found a place they could settle in.

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 didn’t migrate, entire communities did.

> Single individuals didn’t migrate, entire communities did.

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

Depends on the time period. Single individuals crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Single individuals helped colonize the new world.

Yes, I tend to call 1000 single individuals traveling together a community or group.

Single as in Not Married, with no kids. Not like a single person colonizing a continent. One person can make a house, not a nation.

War and persecution

Maybe I'm being overly-simplistic, but what a lot of these folks are actually aiming for is closest approximated to being "Trust fund kids".

Digging even deeper based on some conversations I've had with friends, a lot of these folks are running away from a string of bad bosses or toxic management.

Every means of making a living requires putting up with a bad boss, so its not surprising they start looking for alternative means of making a living/disconnecting etc. COVID exacerbated this.

> Every means of making a living requires putting up with a bad boss,

With a traditional job, if you have a bad boss, you've got up deal with that non-stop. If you're driving for Uber/Lyft, the platform as your "boss" is an app, for better or worse. More importantly though, if you get an unruly passenger, they're kinda your boss, but only for the duration of the ride (except for extreme cases), so you don't have to put up with them as a bad boss forever.

Exactly, which explains why app based platforms that underpay are so popular.

IMO the desire comes from a lack of a simple "base case", leaving you unable to truly reduce your level of consumption. You start looking at your monthly budget wondering what you can optimize. You can stop buying new consumer toys, you can cook food very cheaply, you can avoid entertainment/restaurants/drinks, etc. Yet housing rent is staring you in the face as a large unavoidable non-discretionary boat anchor, making the rest of your attempts at savings moot. So then you start asking what it would take to actually pull away from that economic millstone, and when you follow it far enough you get this question.

There's a cost to everything. Being self-reliant comes at a cost of increased labor and hardship. Being reliant on a society comes at a cost of independence and freedom. Most people pick the latter, a few choose the former.

> The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life

In the Pali Canon, the Buddha is often referred to as “the recluse Gautama”. Seems like he found a way to have a pretty good life though. Your generalization doesn’t account for the other path in history where hermits got away from the maddening crowd and found peace of mind and knowledge.

You’d prefer to live in society, and that’s fine, but everyone isn’t wired the same way. They may be outliers, but I would disagree with saying that they’re “doomed”.

India at the time of the Buddha was favorable to wandering ascetics. People were culturally conditioned to donate alms. And, indeed, alms-seeking is required by the vinaya for monks, so they can't live in complete seclusion from society.

Society today is very hostile to wandering folks. Many western monastics independent of monasteries (especially female monastics) have a hard time getting alms without a lot of organization.

I went on a bike tour this summer and for a week was living the life of a wandering folk. I experienced no hostility. People were all very friendly and helpful the whole way. Like, super friendly and super helpful, offering me meals and places to sleep. I had a tire blowout which stranded me at a small town gas station for a few hours, and about a dozen dudes came up over that time and offering me use of their tools and generally trying to be of assistance.

I'm very glad that you experienced generosity! But I don't think your experience is the norm. One week of wandering is not exactly a lifetime. I also can't help but assume from your plucky, overconfident dissent that is based on a very short duration of experience that you are a white man.

I am a white guy, but I don't get treated the same travelling through those areas in a car.

I'm pretty green to bicycle touring, but my anecdote reflects accounts I commonly read from other bicycle tourists, many who spend months and in some cases years on the go, all over the world.

Having spent half of every year for the last decade traveling the world by bike, I can confirm what the OP says: one meets helpful people, is often invited to meals or to stay in locals’ homes, etc. And instead of "white", perhaps a better distinction for trouble-free travel is “not black”. There’s a decent amount of South Korean, Japanese, and South American cyclists doing round-the-world or Alaska–Ushuaia journeys, and they have the same positive experiences as any person Americans consider “white”.

That is reassuring. Where were you?

My ride took me from Edmonton to Nelson BC, the town that served as the setting for the 1987 Steve Martin movie "Roxanne". The goal was to get to Vancouver but wildfire smoke got to be severe. That was my first taste of touring and I'm making plans for bigger trips next year.

India is still very favorable to wandering ascetics. A European friend of mine walked across India barefoot for a year with nothing but robe, staff, and begging bowl, as a spiritual exercise. He found this quite easy to do (indeed, he was well aware before setting off that it would be easy to do) because there is a vast infrastructure in place to support the local ascetics who do this.

Wow! Amazing to see that not much has changed in 2500 years with regard to the support of wandering ascetics. Culture can be very deeply rooted, especially in a civilization as old as India's.

There are a few places with no property taxes. So you could setup a self sustaining home and after an initial investment live free forever, and still be part of a community.

> live free forever

Well, this requires not only that there be no taxes or external fees /today/, but /for all eternity/. Not very good predictive models on what tax regime will be in place a few civilizations down the road. But there's other challenges to living forever that, historically, have proven a bigger obstacle to most people than taxes.

Fortunately, most people aren't overly concerned with living forever; and in that case, you only need a place that has no taxes for a finite amount of time. The goal, in this case, is to avoid taxes for the rest of your life. And in most jurisdictions, you can elect to just not pay taxes and not suffer consequences for a significant period of time, often five years or substantially more. As long as you intend for the rest of your life to be no more than five years or so (and have a mechanism to enforce this), a huge majority of the world has a favorable tax enforcement regime, even if the tax billing regime isn't to your taste.

>Well, this requires not only that there be no taxes or external fees /today/, but /for all eternity/

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

What places have no property taxes?

>Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services

Not in any magnitude comparable to today, which even brings several qualitative and technical differences.

>The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life

Those were much more common that you seem to think, and even a lot of otherise "community" life included much more "alone" time (e.g. whole weeks or months away from the village).

I think you're conflating community with government. You can have community without government, and government without community. You can be someone who hates government and rejects their authority, who also loves their community and readily admits dependence on them, and this is not contradictory. Voluntary communities and governments exist all the time

What happens when the community wants to build a road, or stop a member from assaulting others, or provide defense against invaders? What would you call the coalition of people who come together in the community and are given the authority to provide such actions?

All communities have some form of government. It is just called “the elders” or “the council” or whatever instead.

All humans are a mix of good and evil. So you need a system in place to minimise the negative impact of this.

This is BTW the reason why utopian societies always fail.

Everyone lives in their own world in their mind. A persistent theme I see in society in general is inability to grasp how others could have a completely different perspective and interpretation of anything.

That said, OOP's sentiment is largely caused by housing costs across the world.

Western society at least is two faced, on one hand liberty of the individual is emphasized but at the same time society is extremely hostile to those who either hold incompatible opinions or just don't fit in.

If you think about it, no government or human has authority to regulate the fact that a human exists. What many like OOP look for is the ability to self-determine without being policed by society or being enslaved, not by our natural needs such as food, shelter and water but by the requirements of society such as paying taxes, registering in databases, having information collected about us and the used to control us.

The typical american for example, simply to exist and sustain themselves as an adult has to get a birth certificate ,SSN, fingerprint taken, undergo drivers trainin and exam which involves more data collection, get a drivers license, can't buy a car outright so finance one which involves too much crap to list here, and get mandatory insurance for the car (forced to do business), mandatory health insurance enrollment unless they want to pay a tax penalty, piss in a cup to prove their drug usage innocence, in many physical jobs you have to let a guy massage your balls to prove you are not herniated (yes,really. Very common), if you do manage to get a job, you now need to live somewhere close which means renting for most and that in itself is a contract you enter where how you live in detail can get regulated by the landlord and the after you pay all these slave masters how you spend the money you have is also regulated heavily from food, drugs, sex,etc... and most people can't even get that far without working multiple jobs, if they are even that lucky. And if you have family, dependents, sickness anywhere that's a whole other story.

I mean, I get your view and I am with you. I like instant online shopping, doordash, airbnb, uber, walmart,etc... and I am privileged enough to enjoy that right now but you must understand the frustration of this living. There is no breathing room for most, especially younger people in their 20s and early 30s.

It's tempting to wonder, what if I could build a house from logs in the woods. Hunt and fish for food, read books for entertainment. Doesn't even have to be on your own.

We all get just one life and it's a shame how it is wasted working from one weekend on to the other being regulated and puppetted until you die.

Society benefits only those who are compliant with its rules and fit in properly. I mean these days, what society? It's just everything you say and do constantly recorded and scrutinized. Netflix had a moview recently "old dads" or something, it was frustratingly too real. Everything is political, no one is real, everyone is waiting for a chance to stab the non-conformist in the back. They know not the meaning of tolerance and inclusivity. Everyone seems to be an unauthentic murderous parrot if i can exagerate a bit. How can people manage not being themselves for so long!?

If you don't already have your own trusted people and places, it's best to avoid people as much as possible.

Life is meant to be lived, not barely survived, grateful society has tolerated your existence.

In my opinion the focus on making life as long as possible or allowing a society to exist as long as possible is misplaced. A life well lived should be everyone's goal, whatever well lived means for you.

> The typical american for example, simply to exist and sustain themselves as an adult has to get a birth certificate ,SSN, fingerprint taken, undergo drivers trainin and exam which involves more data collection, get a drivers license, can't buy a car outright so finance one which involves too much crap to list ...

You literally don't have to do any of that at all.

If you are an American citizen the only way you are going to starve to death or die of medical neglect is if you do it deliberatly.

If you run out of food, just go into a store and take some and eat it. Worst case scenario you end up with free room and board and 3 meals a day until they kick you out and you get to start over again.

Find any somewhat populous city with a temperate climate and you can live 'free' until you die of old age.

> no government or human has authority to regulate the fact that a human exists

All laws are ultimately backed up by threats of violence. Including the laws of whatever country you live in.

Governments around the world and throughout history have routinely decided who gets to live and who gets to die.

I am not happy about this but it is unfortunately true.

You can make every claim you want about lack of authority but it is easily overruled by a fist in your face.

Not having a government simply means that there will be more than one militant group enforcing things using violence. See “failed state”.

> and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services.

This is the capitalistic narrative since the agricultural revolution, thousands of years ago, but it's not true of most of human history.

During pre-agriculture we coexisted with many species, all living off the fat of the land, resources were plentiful for hundreds of thousands of years.

A delightful counterpoint and quick read is the book "Ishmael."

https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375...

> resources were plentiful for hundreds of thousands of years

While they were plentiful. We chose agriculture because it means your entire tribe not dying of starvation because of minor variations in the local environment.

... and this tribalism led to the violent assembly of contiguous land and hoarding of resources to the alienation of everything/everyone outside the tribe. This pattern evolved into our modern system.

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

> then your nomadic tribe moved along rather sitting around waiting to die

Which sucks if you’re injured when the migration must occur. Or if you migrate incorrectly. The evidence we have is for periods of plenty followed by harrowing narrowing of the population. These events are few in between and globally notable in the agricultural era (Bronze Age collapse, fall of Rome, et cetera).

Are you referring to the Paleolithic? These "societies" (nomadic bands, really) generally operated on principles of reciprocity and gift economies.

Debt in that context was more of a social obligation - but served a similar purpose as what we understand debt to be today: to compel someone to do something. It engendered bonds of trust and interdependence, helping ensure the survival of the group. Food sharing was often obligatory: today's hunter who shares his catch with you becomes tomorrow's recipient when you make the kill.

You're right to note that the agricultural revolution was special -- in that the accumulation of surplus allowed people to store it, and lend it out. This lead to wealth being quantified and introduced the concept of interest.

"Capitalism" - as characterized by the drive to continuously reinvest in order to generate more wealth - doesn't come into play for another ten thousand years. The different prerequisites (wage labour, financial systems, property relations) arrive at different times - but we could say, ballpark, around the 16th century, with the advent of the chartered companies (eg, East India)?

If you're always the one who has to pay for everyone else you start asking yourself: why even take part in the community?

Why "not pay taxes" means "away from others"?

because living in a community requires financing of community facilities, which depends on contributions from every member of the community, aka taxes.

Why do you think its a condition for living in community?

how can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything?

sure, many services can be provided by for-profit businesses for a fee, but who helps to put out fires for example? who pays for equipment used by firefighters?

i see no way to make firefighting work unless everyone contributes.

unless you rely on generosity of some, but that would not be fair, nor is it sustainable.

how do you build streets? a public park? do you want to charge for their use?

how do you pay for cleaning streets? street lights? traffic lights? street signs? police? judges? jails?

there are many other examples that work better if the whole community collaborates to achieve them. taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution.

- How can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything?

How would that people make money?

how was money invented?

as i said: taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution

Ah yes, but that is huge difference. Supporting private businesses that makes sense (free market) sounds more effective for me than collecting taxes and distribute it by centralised power. Decentralisation of financial system is a way that could fix many inequalities in society.

the problem is that this is not an exclusive either taxes or free market question.

also taxes are simply mandatory contributions. that doesn't require a centralized power. but they are not a free market either.

the examples i gave can not be solved in a free market.

there are more: access to water in areas where i can't dig my own well (or where uncontrolled water use causes problems).

solving this with a free market inevitably means that there will be some people who won't have access to water because connecting them is to expensive. we see this problem now with access to internet in rural areas. pretty soon access to internet will be required, and that means, we as a community have to pay for it to enable everyone to get access to it.

another good example to look at is waste removal. while waste removal can be done trough private businesses and paid by the amount of waste you have, in cities it must be mandatory, because if it is not, then some people will simply throw the trash into the street. if it is mandatory, it is no longer a free market. but rather similar to taxes. but without a central power.

Where there is demand, there is supply. Price, that is not shaped or regulated by central authority, evolves with possibilities.

Why would anyone throw trash on street, with full of bins? Mandate usualy change human behavior in opposite direction.

this is evolving into an argument about the efficiency of the free market, which i am not interested in. there is plenty of evidence that the completely unregulated free market doesn't work, because for example it favors services that are profitable.

Why would anyone throw trash on street

because it is to expensive to pay for someone to clean it up.

Believe or not, not all businesses are interested in to maximalism of profit. At the end, regulations are shaped by lobby. Otherwise we wouldn't drive and buy heavier cars every year and at same time care about co2 consumption for example.

- because it is to expensive to pay for someone to clean it up.

Isn't that one of reasons to throw it in to bin instead?

Believe or not, not all businesses are interested in to maximalism of profit

that's easy to disprove. there are businesses that do not care about maximizing profit, but have other goals. (look up b-corp for one form of that. in my own business the goal is to maximize the number of jobs that i can create)

regulations are shaped by lobby

which is really bad, because it means those who are the loudest get their way and everyone else suffers.

throw it into trash bins? and who empties the trash bins?

the point you are missing is that if noone pays for trash removal then trash doesn't get removed. so either everyone pays for their own, or the community collects money and everyone contributes to that. there is no way around that.

Lobby is absent in non regulated environment. Only competition maters.

Bin empties a company that is payed for its job. Now it doesn't matter how much waste you produce, because its mandated and same for all for same price. But not all litter a same. Which makes inequalities. Same for health care (EU), education, etc.

mandated aka forced contribution aka taxes.

you might argue that taxes are not the same thing, but i disagree. the point is that it is a required contribution, which is a condition for living in a community, which was the argument that i started with.

You miss my point here. Im strongly against manadatory and forced contributions. If you don't see a purpose in financing something, force to do it brings inequalities and in long term create conflicts. I prefer reasonable choices that have sense for you or community.

Imagine businesses in private sector that would charge you for things that you don't ordered. Its nonsense, somehow tolerable if done by state.

then who cleans up the trash?

charge you for things that you don't ordered

that is not what is happening here. the state is not some foreign entity, but the elected representative will of the community. i want the trash taken care of, and so does the majority of the community.

if your government does not do what your community wants then you don't live in a functioning democracy. that is a different problem alltogether.

in summary: free market will not take care of those problems i mentioned. if you disagree, then i'd like to see a specific explanation how a free market can take care of those issues.

anything mandatory is not a free market.

to get these things taken care of, the community will have to enact rules or delegate someone to do it. how it makes that decision is is up to the community. it doesn't require a government that is not under the control of the community. nor does the existence of taxes imply the existence of such a government.

- if your government does not do what your community wants then you don't live in a functioning democracy.

Democracy is rule of majority and make inequalities by definition. Minorities needs to accept rules that they do not agree with. It's like monopoly except it is forbidden to do competition by law. Decentralisation of taxes or financial system could solve many issues that escalate recently.

- i'd like to see a specific explanation how a free market can take care of those issues.

I don't think free market solve issues. Decentralisation and gathering in local communities could. Less mandateds = less laws = less taxes = more personal responsibility which means more effective solving problems that really matter for you and your close one.

- to get these things taken care of, the community will have to enact rules or delegate someone to do it. how it makes that decision is is up to the community. it doesn't require a government that is not under the control of the community. nor does the existence of taxes imply the existence of such a government.

I agree with that.

those are interesting points. i think on the first one i think i am using a different definition of democracy. in short, for me democracy means something that actually works and respects the will of all people including minorities. simple rule of majority is not really democratic in my view. the flip side of that is that i do not believe that there is any country in the world today that has a functioning democracy.

in short, it looks like we both actually want something similar here. what that is needs more discussion.

my idea of democracy also has a heavy focus on decentralization. basically i believe that decisions or rules should be made at the lowest level needed for that rule to be useful.

that means, things like traffic rules should be made at a national or better even global level because it is not helpful to have different rules for that in every city. same goes for issues like polution. those are global problems. but many other problems are local, and it is better to decide those on a local level. i'd even go as far as suggesting to make every possible choice at a local level first and only escalate to a higher level if the local decisions create a conflict with neighboring localities.

so i am 100% with you on decentralization. though i don't see less laws or less taxes as a goal or as an obvious result. decentralization could lead to less laws or taxes, but it doesn't have to. personally i don't care either way. that is up to each community to work out for themselves.

i think the problem at the start of the thread was that the claim was that there should be zero taxes or zero mandated contributions of any form. and that is something i disagree with. and it appears that you are not asking for that either.

the next question would be: how would a political or electoral system look like that enables those things? whether it is called democracy or something else.

- i do not believe that there is any country in the world today that has a functioning democracy.

Because we are not living in ideal word. Truly functioning democracy require freedom of knowledge to have free and conscious decision in voting. Our decisions are shaped mostly by media. Which is, again, centralized. Also, if you want to be elected by people, you need to be a populist. So democratic system tend to shape peoples mind either on left or right and gather them about specific ideas. For me, it makes unnatural dividing of people to categories and instead of solving problems together, we fight each other.

- basically i believe that decisions or rules should be made at the lowest level needed for that rule to be useful.

Absolutely agree.

- that means, things like traffic rules should be made at a national or better even global level because it is not helpful to have different rules for that in every city. same goes for issues like polution. those are global problems.

I don't agree with global level. Nations has different wealth, different technologies, etc. You cannot apply same rules for US or India. Same for pollution. For example US made huge capital on pollution in 20th century. Would you ban developing country to obtain their capital from pollution today and made similar wealth as US previously?

- there should be zero taxes or zero mandated contributions of any form.

There should be absolute minimal taxes and no mandates. Consequences forces communities naturally to finance what is important.

- how would a political or electoral system look like that enables those things?

I'm not sure how it should look like, but I would like to free ourselves from the idea of needed rulers above our lives. We willing to put our responsibilities to authority, which dispatch our decisions from consequences.

Because we are not living in ideal word.

i agree with every point in that paragraph.

I don't agree with global level. Nations has different wealth, different technologies, etc. You cannot apply same rules for US or India

with traffic rules i meant the general stuff, like on which side to drive on, the colors of traffic lights, the design of street signs. those are pretty much already a global standard, and rightly so. because it does not make sense to have those work differently in different countries. of course there should always be carveouts for regional specifics. we don't need kangaroo warning signs in austria.

other examples are things that are for the most part already global standards. like the metric system. yes, the US should literally be forced to change here. it's become the laughing stock of the world on that issue. also copyright law. etc. money should be global. we don't need different currencies. maybe punishment for serious crimes. human rights. but on the other side there are many things that are global or almost global now, that should not, or need not be.

Same for pollution. For example US made huge capital on pollution in 20th century. Would you ban developing country to obtain their capital from pollution today and made similar wealth as US previously?

well, yes and no. i agree with you that it is not fair to just stop everyone from polluting when their economy depends upon it. but as pollution is destroying our climate, we have to do something about it. we can't just allow some areas to pollute the world while other areas don't. it would not work. what would, and does happen is that that those countries that decided to limit their pollution just export their production to pollute elsewhere.

what we do need to do however is to then enable other ways for these countries to prosper. we need to invest into those countries and build them up much like we built up some countries in asia and europe after world war 2. see more discussion on that in the thread on chocolate here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38073378

in particular this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38079451

I would like to free ourselves from the idea of needed rulers above our lives

agreed. partly i see this as a historical problem. we started out with rulers being absolute, like kings, etc.

eventually some started to elect their kings. etc. you know the history. that history is the reason we look at elected leaders as rulers above us.

so we need to change the understanding. that those elected representatives are there to serve us. not we serve them. their responsibility is to take care of our problems, and find and propose just solutions and rules for us to be able to live together.

there are a few things we can change to make the election system fairer:

first of the whole party system is designed for conflict and not cooperation. get rid of it. each representative should be independent. no more toeing the party line. make decisions only based on your conscience.

next point is a bit harder: get rid of the concept of candidates. don't allow election campaigns. don't allow media to promote certain people. let people get elected only based on their reputation as good citizens. this prevents influence of the elections by those who have more funding.

but that only works in small communities, where people have a chance to know each other. for big cities that practically means elections per neighborhood.

elect multiple people per neighborhood. also give each person multiple votes. maybe as many votes as the number of people to be elected. multiple votes avoids that a majority of votes concentrate on a single person. because everyone has to still assign the other votes they have.

these are then the community/neighborhood representatives, and they make decisions for their neighborhood.

elections on a higher level are made from those elected at a lower level. all the way to the top. this levels the playing field and it allows good people to become elected without financial resources.

i don't think a perfect system is possible. but this system would remove a lot of friction, combined with favoring decisions at a local level, it would be a lot better than anything we have currently.

...we need to invest into those countries and build them up much like we built up some countries

I find investment like this quite a problematic. It makes places, that would be naturally inhabited, artificially alive with huge cost. It's not sustainable approach.

Generally all kinds of grants makes inequalities in society. Either, you have free market that naturally shape possibilities. Or you brake it by investments and grants. Learning process how to obtain a capital and manage it is more valuable than giving sources to dilettantes. Sure, we have mechanisms that control, how well is grant spent but then you invest time to control, instead of developing.

we started out with rulers being absolute, like kings, etc.

Kings, in history, has much less impact to personal life than politics nowadays. Due to globalization, technology and overall amount of laws, restrictions and regulations spread in it. 2020 is great example how fear that has been spread in mass media, lockdown almost whole world.

They will serve to power. Because being elected in democracy means being a populist. It's not about serving to people at first place. You cannot win elections with this in democratic system.

no more toeing the party line. make decisions only based on your conscience.

While I agree, I'm not sure if individualism is a way to go. Conscience is shaped, mostly in childhood by your parents. If you grow up in pathological environment, later you spread same behavior. Notice that normalization of being a victim, unstable and a deviant is strong nowadays. I prefer dialogue, going out from comfort zone and cultivation of mind by active socialization. Note that this is not rhetoric we can observe today with amount of time spent affront of screen. Alone in our safe bubbles.

also give each person multiple votes.

There are some methods, that could improve voting system, like D21 (1.) Basically it operate with possibilities of voting with two plus votes and one negative vote. That negative vote could eliminate populism in political campaigns. I'm not saying its perfect, but idea of giving one vote to someone, who is chosen by party or promoted by public opinion polls is just an illusion of free vote.

i don't think a perfect system is possible.

It never will be. But more dangerous is a thinking, that we have perfect democratic system and there are no other options. Usually those who are afraid of changes comes up with communism. Well... I live in post-communistic country and we still face communistic rhetoric in democratic state, usually from those, who name themselves as anti-communists. So again, we came back to circle, where political system tend to put individuals to categories and let them fight each other.

(1.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D21_%E2%80%93_Jane%C4%8Dek_met...

...we need to invest into those countries and build them up much like we built up some countries

I find investment like this quite a problematic. It makes places, that would be naturally inhabited, artificially alive with huge cost. It's not sustainable approach.

i agree that there are problematic investments, but the statement as it is is way to generic. consider some african megacities, like kampala in uganda that i was able to visit recently. the city has literally no public transport infrastructure, roads are in a bad shape and growth is uncontrolled.

it will take a massive investment to make that city livable. ideally, that investment comes from local sources. i am not suggesting that foreign funds should just swoop in and spend money without cooperating with locals to consider their needs. but a better infrastructure is definitely needed.

i am also not talking about grants. that's charity. an investment is something that has the expectation of a return of some form. i agree that learning how to obtain capital is important. what i was thinking of is to do more trade with those countries. fair trade, not the kind of exploitative trade that i referenced as example.

They will serve to power. Because being elected in democracy means being a populist. It's not about serving to people at first place. You cannot win elections with this in democratic system.

that is something that we need to change. the only way i see that this can be achieved is education. it will take decades, but it is not out of reach to teach us how to build a society that fosters unity and cooperation instead of competition.

If you grow up in pathological environment, later you spread same behavior.

this too can only be counteracted with better education.

I prefer dialogue, going out from comfort zone and cultivation of mind by active socialization.

i agree. this is part of it.

giving one vote to someone, who is chosen by party or promoted by public opinion polls is just an illusion of free vote

exactly that is how i see it too. which is why i conclude that the current systems are not democratic.

more dangerous is a thinking, that we have perfect democratic system and there are no other options

very much so.

Community doesn't mean much when it's primarily mediated by money. I suspect OP wants to escape capitalist society, not society overall.

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