How to Drop Out (2004) | Hacker News Reader

How to Drop Out (2004)

ranprieur.com

17 pointsmooreds17 comments

I'm curious if this person has a partner or is sexually active. It seems like the biggest sacrifice required for this lifestyle, more than material, would be being undesirable to the vast majority of people they're sexually attracted to. It doesn't seem like any of writings I've read praising the rejection of material living have ever really touched on that topic. Are the adherents to these philosophies really just loaners?

> being undesirable to the vast majority of people they're sexually attracted to.

There was an episode of the radio show This American Life that ran the numbers on finding someone compatible in a large city.

It’s time to face facts.

The vast majority of us are undesirable to the vast majority of people we're sexually attracted to…by the numbers…

Good insight. In parallel, I wonder how efforts to decarbonise can ever be delinked from competition for sex in more than niche communities.

I'd guess the pool of people that think the same way is smaller but the competition is as well.

This is super interesting from an social movement perspective, but calling health care a "manufactured need" is pretty completely bonkers.

A lot of modern diseases emerge from modern lifestyles. Sugar, fat and obesity/diabetes. Salt and hypertension. Cancer and the chemical industry. Myopia and lack of time spent outside. A lot of healthcare is manufactured, although not by the healthcare industry itself.

I don't think he was questioning the utility of being able to go to the hospital when you break an arm. But clearly if everyone lived the lifestyle he describe, the size of the healthcare industry could be dramatically reduced. Living that lifestyle is not only healthier, but also, I think, prepares us better for accepting death and avoiding some nonsensical end-of-life treatments.

I mean, you don't really need health care. Have you just considered dying instead?

Wow, I guess How to Drop Out is 20 years old this year.

I would've found it a few years later, in my early twenties. Definitely influenced me to try to prioritize free time and pursuing my own interests over a concentional "career". Hard to say if it's been the right choice, overall, but I've done okay.

I don't think the essay was ever meant as a piece of rigorous social or moral philosophy, more like motivational writing in the anarchist/anti-civ style of the day. Even less so after the author distanced himaelf from it and added the disclaimers. But I still think it has a lot of good points for people feeling out of place in midern industrial society. Especially the parts about purity va pragmatism.

Not sure if you still lurk HN, but: Hi Ran, and Thank You!

His views have evolved since when this essay was written, and I believe he has gotten an inheritance from a deceased family member and now lives in a house in Washington.

I've enjoyed reading many of his essays nevertheless.

Previous discussion:

How to Drop Out - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=917051 - November 2009 (95 comments)

And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318285 from 2022, 86 comments.

I’ve never been in a situation like the author, but I grew up in an incredibly frugal family and I’ve had moments where income was very tight.

Those were some of the most stressful times of my life. My mind was fixated on making money and escaping that situation.

Now that I have a high paying stress free job, I finally feel able to enjoy other parts of life.

I applaud the authors ability to lean into that lifestyle. I know I couldn’t.

Honestly i stopped reading after "organic eggs from a dumpster" as this seems to be just one more person that is "out of the system" by just parasiting on the system itself. Like many "anarcho" punks i have personally met they really do not have an issue thinking that they are out of the system while living off its infrastructure and using its emergency rooms when needed. Im all for a different lifestyle and a better society ( whatever that might mean to you) but most of these approaches are just childish

He does answer some of these criticisms in another post:

https://ranprieur.com/essays/dropoutcrit.html

Yep this "system" falls apart without being linked inherently to the system it claims to be dropping out of. If a large number of people tried this they'd all starve.

If everybody did it seems like a weak argument to me as it is quite clearly a minority endeavour and will always be so.

Homelessness will stop being a minority endeavor once AI-driven job automation becomes widespread.

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