
Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does. - browngeek
http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_9817
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wmeredith
I'm pretty sure I could survive on the waste and charity of others as this guy
does, but I wouldn't want to.

~~~
michaelneale
Thousands do in major cities every day. Often there are mental health issues
at play, but anyone can do it.

~~~
mynameishere
Pretty good documentary

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4s78Db5OQ>

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Xichekolas
Money is merely a means to decouple the promise of payback from the promiser.

Without money, you have to trust Joe to help you can tomatoes next fall since
you helped him plow his field. With money, Joe can pay you to plow his field,
and you can pay Sally to help you can tomatoes (because Joe moved to another
town).

~~~
dasil003
Sure, but the emergent effects of money on society--especially with
computerized banking--are quite a bit more significant than the fundamental
innovation. Computers are merely for shuffling 1s and 0s around.

~~~
Xichekolas
Well yeah. My comment was originally much longer, pointing out some of the
things that money enabled.

But I was responding to his view that 'money is an illusion'. I was trying to
point out that it's not an 'illusion' (whatever that means), and we didn't
just make it up for fun or so some people could be rich and others poor. It
serves a fundamentally valuable purpose.

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pmorici
His blog... <http://zerocurrency.blogspot.com/>

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pj
It very well could be the knowledge he has gained while living without money
that will go toward educating masses of people out of work in our increasingly
struggling economy moving forward.

More people are losing jobs, homes, credit. Debt is increasing. How many
people will know how to correctly identify edible cacti?

I was thinking of my grandmother who survived the great depression. She has so
much knowledge up there in her brain. How to can tomatoes for the winter. How
to store potatoes in holes to keep them fresh during the cold months. How to
stuff the gaps in the logs of a cabin with mud to stay warm.

Countness numbers of the x-generation, y-generation, and even the baby boomers
are going to die, simply because they do not know how to survive without money
and a job and a grocery store.

I feel lucky. I can go out into the woods and find an animal and kill it and
skin it and cook it and eat it. Many of my friends can't even eat meat with
bones in it because it reminds them it was alive.

~~~
jerf
"I can go out into the woods and find an animal and kill it and skin it and
cook it and eat it."

What animals?

If society collapses to that point, deer will be hunted to extinction in a
matter of months, if not weeks, with smaller critters probably not getting
hunted to _extinction_ after that, but certainly to the point you won't find
them readily anymore. There's still too many people with the skill to do
_that_ for you to survive.

Thinking that you can Davy-Crockett your way out of a societal collapse is
underestimating the number of people who can still hunt, or overestimating the
amount of resources actually available. The brutality of such an outcome would
be well beyond what I've seen any survivalist even faintly dream of, because
if they looked at the truth (such as, "city folk are not a homogeneous mass of
morons who would instantaneously starve to death, there'd still be enough to
move out and cause trouble") they'd realize that it isn't a matter of
"ensuring survival" so much as "incrementally increasing my odds of survival
from the low single-digit percentages to the high single-digit percentages",
which is _way_ less fun to fantasize about.

What this guy does is not scalable. wmeredith is exactly right. There aren't a
whole lot of lessons to take away, except perhaps that we _need_ less than we
think we do, but that's hardly news anyhow.

~~~
erlanger
You forgot about the firearm aspect of survivalism.

~~~
jerf
Actually, part of my point is about the firearm aspect of _non_ survivalists.
# of armed people >>> # of survivalists. This is part of the reason I've not
dedicated a whole lot of time to survivalism.

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Arun2009
Reminded me a little of Diogenes
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope>).

As Buddha said, suffering ends when our craving for material things ends. We
don't have to be as extremely hardcore as the dude above, but following this
philosophy in a limited pragmatic manner I think can be very liberating.

~~~
kragen
You're right! I hadn't read about Diogenes in detail before. Thanks for the
link! It does sound like they have quite a bit in common.

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seldo
So, um, he's a homeless guy who lives in a cave. Congratulations, homeless
guy, you have somehow managed to convince everybody that instead of a homeless
guy, you're a cultural revolutionary. NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive
me if this doesn't sound like the future of mankind.

~~~
nir
"NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive me if this doesn't sound like the
future of mankind"

Forgive me if I say this sounds like a Reddit comment :) Why so negative? He
doesn't harm or tries to convert. There is a difference between him and most
homeless in that he actually chose this lifestyle, is able to quit it if he
wants, and seems to be generally pretty happy with it.

~~~
seldo
It did occur to me as I typed it that it would get downmodded for the
belligerent phrasing, but I was post-gym and blood sugar was low, which makes
me grumpy.

I think the reason it irritates me is, as others have mentioned, that he
doesn't _really_ live without money. He just lives without his _own_ money,
and relies on the kindness of strangers to provide him with things he needs.
He's not self-sufficient and he's not bartering for everything he needs. He's
just an eloquent beggar.

~~~
nir
From the article it seems he largely lives on stuff that he finds in nature or
dumpsters. Occasionally he may be invited to a meal. Obviously he wouldn't
have canned spam without a modern economy, but he would probably have a lot
more wildlife to hunt & fish so it balances out.

The media is full of stories of the hyper-consuming celebs and millionaires,
so it's nice to see a story on someone from the other extreme once in a while.

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mhartl
The subject of the story confuses money and wealth. He is not the first to do
so, nor will he be the last.

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jasonlbaptiste
This is far from surviving. This is coming up with excuses and going to the
extreme. Anyone with a psychology background want to diagnose this?

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Oompa
Interesting individual, I could never do anything like this myself.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Yes, I went through a similar thought pattern when I left high school - "I
don't want to worry about money. Either I decide to never have money, or I'll
put in the effort require to always have enough / too much."

Still working on the second choice. It's not easy, but I think the first
option is much harder and never ends.

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rjett
Interesting article but it would have been even more interesting if the author
had chosen to go more in depth about his daily activities and how Suelo copes
with loneliness and boredom. IMO, these problems would be much more difficult
than the physical hardships he faces.

~~~
zackattack
Loneliness and boredom are not real issues. They're issues fabricated by the
mind. With presence, they disappear. That's the whole point of his lifestyle:
presence. The reason he dislikes money is because money indicates a distaste
of the present and an obsession with the future.

I recommend reading Eckhart Tolle's _The Power of Now_ for more information.

~~~
sethb
Loneliness is definitely a real issue.

The fact that this guy keeps a blog and Eckhart Tolle expects an audience
shows the value they place on social contact.

~~~
zackattack
It's only an issue if you place importance on it.

~~~
philwelch
How exactly does one avoid placing importance on the company of others?

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blhack
Money is a unit of work. It is an almost universally accepted abstraction of
the "worth" of somebody's time.

You could replace "dollars" with "bananas" if you wanted to, it is irrelevant.

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krisneuharth
This story reminded me of a grown-up version of the children's book "My Side
Of The Mountain" for some reason. I love this kind of story because it reminds
me that we could all do well to learn to live with less, and that there are
some that do.

~~~
erlanger
On the other hand, I found _On the Far Side of the Mountain_ to be depressing.

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_subsistence_techniques> to live without
money.

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PStamatiou
Sometimes I like to think I do.. I have some passive income streams that pay
rent.

------
ars
No kids?

~~~
mahmud
You don't need kids to survive like that, most adults I know can do it all on
their own~

~~~
ars
Very funny :)

However, could he still do it if he had kids? The article seems to suggest
this is a good way to live, but if you can't live this way, and have kids too,
then meh.

He's not just an ordinary homeless guy - he wants a life without property (not
money, any property), i.e. he's homeless guy with a principle.

So I evaluate the principle: is it a good one? So far, it seems no, it's not.

If he could have kids, then, interesting, maybe it's not for me, or for more
people, but at least it's interesting. But if you can't live that way, and
have kids too, then it's forgettable.

PS. I did not say if he could/couldn't. My initial post was actually a
question, worded a little short asking if it was possible. Especially in light
of the ending of the article, where it talks about natural selection. If you
are really committed to this, then have kids too.

~~~
sfphotoarts
"He's not just an ordinary homeless guy - he wants a life without property"

Isn't that what homeless means?

~~~
mahmud
No, homeless people usually _don't want_ a life without property; at least not
the sane ones who aren't on the run from the law. Homeless people do have
property of some sort; they push around a shopping cart full of their items
and they usually have "spots" where they sleep at night. Even under bridges,
tunnels, and underground homeless areas; every one of them has a little
corridor to himself.

P.S. I am deliberately ignoring the much large population of working,
"normal", homeless people. See "Persuit of Happyness".

------
erlanger
If everyone did this, he wouldn't have a thing to eat. I'm not knocking it,
but it's something to think about.

But that brings us to a more important point: Why does this guy have to forage
to survive without money? Shouldn't he be able to save up, buy a few acres and
grow his own resources? Nope, because of the absurdity known as the property
tax (er, I mean "protection racket").

~~~
pj
Right! It's impossible to own land in America. You merely _rent_ it from the
government.

But also, he uses the library for internet access. I wonder if he considers
_that_ "government dole."

~~~
mikeytown2
Not entirely true, If you own patented land then I believe that is tax free
forever; at least under current US law.

~~~
miles
From the Wikipedia article cited by Jonah:

"A Land Patent is permanent and cannot be changed by the government after its
issuance except in case of fraud, clerical error, or _failure to pay taxes_."
(emphasis mine)

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c0nsilience
"Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things
in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present."

Spoken like a man who doesn't know how to manage money. Good article, though.
It shows what copping out looks like.

------
korch
I highly respect what this guy is doing, even though I don't yet have the guts
to live like this myself. As Tyler Durden said, "the things you own end up
owning you." The best I can do is smugly re-read Thoreau while sitting in a
Starbucks and twittering from my iPhone in debt up to my eyeballs.

What I appreciate most about guys like this is how they make us face the
mirror. Like fish unaware of the water in which they swim, American culture is
so hyper-materialist that great numbers of us cannot even conceive of this
guy's reasoning. Commercial interests can't have good, little fear-driven,
obedient consumers dropping off the grid now can they?

The spiritual dimension to his lifestyle choice also deserves consideration.
The article says he lived in a Buddhist monastery in Asia for several years up
until 1999. He's obviously not even comparable to the typical crazy, drug-
addled de-humanized homeless people we encounter in our day to day lives in
our own urban zoo cages.

