The man who lives without money
worldobserveronline.com
worldobserveronline.com
For the most part, it seems in the current state, Mr. Boyle is actually living off the goodwill of others while actually giving very little back to society. He has a caravan, a bike, was given a place park and is off the grid for electricty. He barters (which is as good as using money, but let's ignore that for now).
He talks about being happier and healthier than he had ever been before, which is important. But think about what would happen if everybody did as he does. We'd use up all our waste, which would be great, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too long before we would run out. We wouldn't have the things he relies on others giving away, like his bicycle and caravan. He's been healthier over the past year, but what about when he does get sick? He may be able to rely on the kindness of others to care for him, but what if he needs drugs or surgery?
What initially struck me was that he is able to live off the land, but being a non-practicing member of society, he isn't helping to take care of those who are less fortunate in other parts of the world. His taxes aren't paying for food-aid, or medical research.
I'm surprised how strongly I feel about this, why should I care what this guy does, but as this is being promoted as a positive thing, I'm concerned that more and more people might take up the practice, and the long-term implications for those who live in less fortunate environments.
Childish self-indulgence would be a better description.
> Most taxes do not go to food-aid or medical research.
And for benefits to the whole of society I see two positives:
1- If he's able to live off the land and teach other how to do so, I think that's a great contribution in that it might be important in disasters.
2- Also, if more people take up this practice, we might relieve the burden of the state to manage an increasingly complex society where many people might not possess the skills (or desire) to earn a decent living, but still do possess skills to live off the land and be productive in small communities. Just days ago EBT (food stamps) computers crashed and it made national news; how can it be bad to be self-sufficient?
(edited this comment for clarity)
The world works because we have diversity of jobs, lifestyles, etc. He is obviously an outlier case that we don't seriously need to worry will be emulated in any significant way.
If everyone did as he did we would cause MUCH more environmental damage to the world.
Wood fire? There is nothing worse for the environment except maybe coal, and even that (in the US) is not necessarily worse. Wood smoke is a very serious pollutant, which in quantity would blacken the sky.
A rocket stove is pretty good - but it doesn't come close to the efficiency of a natural gas one. So he's using a worse fuel, and being less efficient at it.
Beeswax candles? Is he trying to find the most wasteful and most inefficient way to light something? And candles make smoke too.
Absolutely not - but a lot of people would starve without industrial-scale agriculture.
> Wood fire? There is nothing worse for the environment except maybe coal
Except that he's probably using less than 1% of the energy everyone else does. No car. No fancy applicances. No food transported across the globe and packaged in aluminum cans. No meat.
And releasing thousands of times as much pollution. It's not worth the exchange.
The energy content of wood varies based on how dry it is (obviously, water can't burn so you remove the water to increase the proportion of remaining mass that burns compared to the energy released when burning the combustible mass) abut ends up being approximately 15Mj/kg. Using an efficient wood stove you can extract about 70% of this energy as heat, for the purpose of heating and cooking.
The energy content of coal is about double that of wood. Typically we don't burn coal in home fires, rather we burn the coal in a large power plant, carry the energy as electricity then consume that energy in various forms at home. The typical efficiency of coal fired power plants is in the order of 30–40%. So you are basically at parity with wood fuel, with the convenience of a large power plant where it becomes economically viable to scrub ash and soot out of the exhaust.
So how much less pollution does as coal fired power plant produce than a wood fire at home? It turns out that scrubbers are anywhere from 95–99% efficient depending on design, energy input and maintenance.
So what we are left with is an estimate of the pollution produced by a wood fire being in the order of hundreds of times worse than pollution produced by the same energy production at a coal fired power plant. To qualify for "thousands" of times more pollution, the scrubbers at the coal fired plant would have to be 99.9% efficient without consuming a significant portion of the energy produced by the power plant (this is the goal of "clean coal" projects).
But even comparing coal, and being a few hundred times worse, 1% of the energy usage is nothing to celebrate.
Carbon monoxide, man. It's damaging stuff.
>Do areas in which wood fires are the norm have blackened skies?
I agree on Beeswax. As nice as it is to smell (and I rather like the warmer glow than a paraffin candle) it's a luxury; not a proper solution.
Although the carbon you release by burning wood was recently sequestered by the tree, rather than Ga ago, as with petrochemicals, so the net carbon shift is relatively neutral.
Point taken re: nanoparticulates, but wood is nowhere near as bad as fossil fuels.
That is not true. Wood smoke is much worse.
And he profits of the fact that people around him live in a world where they produce and exhange goods that he can use for himself as well.
Another modern Bobo (french word for Bourgeois Boheme).And yeah capitalism is super flawed obviously since the whole world is getting out of poverty as a whole. Indeed we are doomed!
Obviously trees that fall naturally aren't sustainable on a large scale but for an individual it's feasible.
Human civilization does not gain anything from it. We must specialize more and more if we want to push everything further. By numbing out our skills we won't achieve anything but unnecessary independence from others, which would only be beneficial if you were physically isolated from other people.
What if you tie progress to overall happiness? Living a simpler life, without the stress of i.e. too much choice or needing to have at least the same material wealth as your neighbour will be way more fulfilling than working your assoff all day, doing a job you don't like to be able to pay the loans with which you have acquired things you don't need :)
We have nothing to gain from more knowledge, it only gives us more questions, more possibilities, and with that more areas to specialize in, so more jobs, to just keep us all working on finding more questions and creating more of those jobs. Endless cycle that will make life more complex every day, adding up to more stress every day and slowly making us drift away from ourselves and each other.
Nice example: nowadays, in my country smart phones are used by all ages, even young children. Everywhere they are, and mostly in the train, people are not talking to each other anymore, instead they are all looking at their phones. Need to wait on something for 5 minutes? There comes the phone again. Result: nobody takes time to reflect anymore, patience is getting scarce, people are bored quickly, while the occasional case of boredom is very important.
Not that I'm against scientific progress, we invented some really cool stuff, but I don't agree that numbing out our skills would achieve unnecessary independence. In a society/community where everyone is able to take care of themselves, everybody knows how tough it can be and everybody will be willing to help one another out when something goes wrong. That's not independence, that is cooperation.
You are talking about Gross National Happiness, a measure that was used in Bhutan. You can read about it more to see the results. I, for one, do not wish to live in this "happy" country.
> That's not independence, that is cooperation. Cooperation that relies on specialization is a better strategy than cooperation that relies on quantity. This is essentially argument equivalent to farmers from villages - sustaining themselves, no need outside help, vs specialists/engineers from cities, who need everything except the very thing they do.
That is very popular but false example.
1) In my country when there were no much phones around children played tamagochies and tetrisis. Teens used to listen to their CD and before that cassette players. Is was relatively popular among youth to read fiction books in the trains. It's a popular mantra today: "phones are evil, but book is good!". But what about cassette players - were they evil too? What if I read a book from my phone - is it evil or good?
2) It's quite popular today to stare in phones but guess what.. I used to do weekly 2.5 hours commutes between cities in public transport - and most people just stared.. in the window.. and still nobody was talking with strangers. The same situation applies to the trains. Of course people get acquainted if you are in the same compartments, but they don't otherwise (generally). So it's more a culture thing (maybe like in city - rural etc) then the curse of the phone.
As a species, it would be nice if we stopped for a second and ask ourselves what is it that we value the most?
Medicine has never been better, small children almost don't die anymore, and epidemics are extremely rare.
People are the happiest they have ever been.
Spirituality needs to die out with the old philosophies and lay together with all the other mythologies of the centuries.
Environment have never been cared more than it is cared about now. There are many species of animals who have been literally saved by the preservation of their natural habitats. Many governments are pushing towards cleaner technologies, less and less electricity proportionally is being produced by burning fossil fuels.
> More people are unhappy/depressed, more people are obese
These all are first world problems. These problems can be solved by the people themselves.
> most of us are addicted to technology/cheap entertainment, most of us consume way more than we produce etc
No, MOST of us produce more than consume. But there are small part of world population that consumes large part of world production. Countries like US and few others to be specific. If you are from that country, then congratulations, you got lucky.
- This interview: http://vimeo.com/65171169
Inspired by these things but not ready to go totally without, I'm moving to the first "live-in hackerspace", based on Lanzarote, where life is cheap and the weather is good. CyberHippieTotalism ( http://totalism.org ). Feel free to come by and check it out some time!
> my final year of a business and economics degree [ ... ] capitalism is fundamentally flawed, requiring infinite growth on a finite planet
I'd ask for a refund on that degree if you never learned that growth requires no resources.
Economic growth is simply a measure of human work and promises of future work – the former can grow indefinitely while the sun shines and the latter is entirely abstract.
Explain, because for all I know that isn't true and it looks like you need to get an economics degree to believe otherwise. Physicists disagree and guess whose word I trust more.
Physicists deal with real objects (virtual particles and string theorists notwithstanding). Wealth isn't real – it's abstract.
As for abstract wealth... here, I'll give you an "I owe you" for $5. You now have an asset. You can trade that asset with other people since I'm a respected individual that others trust. I'll fulfil the value in future (maybe) but for now – the value came from absolutely nothing. It's entirely abstract.
You want an infinite amount of them? Here you go.
It seems reasonable to state that on a finite planet an infinite increase in wealth quantity is impossible.
There is a simple solution of course, but a one child policy was hard enough to enforce in China, I don't see how we would get the entire world to participate.
Growing the population actually doesn't necessarily help GDP per capita growth (the best measure of economic growth). If the country isn't managing population well, then increasing population actually hurts growth.
Of course, the value of "work" is entirely abstract. You can value anything at any price you want. Society haggles "work" to within certain bounds but there's no basis in the non-abstract world for these bounds.
If he were more open to using modern technology he would be able to live in more balance with nature.
Solar panels for instance although causing harm to the environment when produced help you generate some energy which is a great return on investment by my book.
The key is not living like our ancestors the key is using modern technology in an attempt to live in harmony with nature. Grow your own foods make you're house as self sufficient as possible.
Of course, you would still want to make an exception to the lifestyle to get the children the usual set of vaccines; nothing puts a damper on a healthy childhood like dying of whooping cough. All things in moderation, including moderation.
Don't forget that a lot of traditional medicine have been around for thousands of years and kept us alive and growing in population ever since.
I'm convinced this is why animal-testing and factory farming even exist, because we don't see it. Out of sight, out of mind. We see the marketing campaigns with ads of radiant beautiful people using consumer products, but the much uglier side of product research is kept from the public's view.
If the public could see what is happening to our animal friends, it wouldn't tolerated. We would find another way.
You say that it's because we don't see it that we can tolerate what happens to animals; I say it's because we don't see it that we feel horrified whenever we happen to catch a glimpse of it. Light is only painful when you're used to living in the dark.