

My year of living without money - cesare
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/mark-boyle-money

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david
Money is just a medium of exchange. If I'm most productive as a fisherman, and
currently I want a new wooden table more than anything else, I'm much better
off if I can spend three hours fishing in exchange for enough money to buy a
table, rather than spend 10 hours trying to come up with something I can trade
the table-maker directly, or spending 20 hours trying to make a table myself.

The author made the association between working for money and dissociation
from the actual value of the products your using. So he might say that since
you didn't spend so much time making the table yourself, you would be too
distanced from the impact of throwing that table out or from the amount of
resources and labor that are going to be needed for making a new table.

I don't think that makes sense, whether it costs you a week of labor to build
a table, or a day to go fishing for a table, the cost to you isn't any less
precise. All you really get by doing away with money is inefficiency and less
free time. If that's how you enjoy spending your time, so be it, but that
doesn't have anything to do with the way millions of other people prefer to
spend their time.

The real factor that leads to dissociation from the actual cost/impact of
stuff in consumers' minds isn't money, it's any of the costs/expenses that for
political reasons are prevented from influencing the price of the final
product. So for example if farmers are given subsidies and are protected by
tariffs against competing goods, people are going to be a lot more wasteful
with their food than they should be, or if people are allowed to spread
pollution without having to pay for it, the environmental costs are not going
to be accurately reflected in the price of their products.

But I guess trying to crack that problem is a lot harder than living in a
trailer and making your own bread.

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jacquesm
In order to really live without money you'd have to isolate yourself from
anything that was produced directly or indirectly by using money too.

Good luck with that, it's a lot harder than it seems. Probably you'd have to
move to greenland or a place like it to be sure that you actually can achieve
the goal.

Living without touching money is not the same as living without money.

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randomtask
To be fair to the chap he did do without money more than most. If his ideal is
to absolutely avoid the use of money then he was significantly closer to that
ideal than most.

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Tichy
What if he gets sick or old and can't work at the farm anymore or barter away
his skills? Some saved cash might come in handy then.

I think it is good to try to reduce waste, but what does it have to do with
money?

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lionhearted
Kind of a cool story, and as someone whose generally a conservationist and
stoic, I admire the guy. But he does miss quite a big point with this:

> If we grew our own food, we wouldn't waste a third of it as we do today. If
> we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn't throw them out the moment we
> changed the interior decor. If we had to clean our own drinking water, we
> wouldn't waste it so freely.

We also wouldn't have time to do things like cure malaria, build
fortifications against natural disasters, and share information across great
distances.

If you were born 100 years ago in 1909, you'd expect to die in 1961. Current
life expectancy is 78 years, and there's a good chance babies born in 2009
will average living to 2109. That's frigging marvelous, despite wasting some
food and furniture.

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mjnaus
"If you were born 100 years ago in 1909, you'd expect to die in 1961. Current
life expectancy is 78 years, and there's a good chance babies born in 2009
will average living to 2109. That's frigging marvelous, despite wasting some
food and furniture."

This shouldn't automatically be considered a positive...

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lionhearted
> This shouldn't automatically be considered a positive...

Huh, interesting. I was going to write that I think it's straightup awesome,
but maybe there are some downsides. Are you thinking of any specifically?

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ableal
Perhaps mjnaus meant you should consider Swift's struldbrugs (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldbrug> ). Or possibly the material richness
of Huxley's _Brave New World_.

Not that I disagree with the gist of your point.

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CamperBob
I'm always amused by people who equate a parasitic existence with a truly
independent one.

~~~
donaq
Indeed. It is also highly ironic how he uses a laptop and has a blog, both of
which require the existence of a technologically advanced society.

~~~
robryan
I don't think he wanted to completely free himself of a modern world, just
free himself from money which he has done.

Unlike a lot of similar stories you read I don't think he was really trying to
prove anything.

