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> If you opt out of the system, for the most part the system is not interested in you.

Opting out of the system, in this case, by living in a forest in Singapore, is not an option for most people.

People who are engaged in the system (by e.g. buying things, having jobs, raising a family) are touched by government policy every day.

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It is an option, just not the preference for most people. The guy had an alright life, married a woman from a nearby island in a different country, had a daughter and still tend to his garden. In a way, that’s how humans have lived for most of their existence except the last 100 years or so.

That's how most humans died except the last 100 years or so

> In a way, that’s how humans have lived for most of their existence except the last 100 years or so.

Sure. They would also die whenever there was a famine, some disease ran rampant, Mongols or crusaders pillaged everything, some recent council decreed they were all heretics, etc.

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