

The Man Who Quit Money: An Interview with Daniel Suelo - bemmu
http://www.becomingminimalist.com/the-man-who-quit-money-an-interview-with-daniel-suelo/

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vinceguidry
This reads a lot less like a scathing critique of modernity as it does yet
another affluent Westerner looking for self-actualization by excoriating
everything that made him rich and idle. He thinks he's not rich and idle any
more just because he gave away his life savings?

Whether he wants to believe it or not, he's the beneficiary of modern
largesse. He doesn't take government handouts or whatever, but the only reason
he can have the sorts of thoughts he's having about nature and religion is
because he was a Western-style education and enough free time to develop a
philosophy. He can dumpster dive, he can spend time on the Internet and at the
library figuring out how to live off grid. It's easy to take for granted the
careful, focused effort of millions of people over thousands of years to give
him all of this. The knowledge he finds in the library isn't cheap, even
though he's not paying for it.

Because I guarantee you, off-grid living wouldn't be nearly as much fun
without it.

I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing that.
I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer,
earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in
the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally superior
just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that brought you to
that point to where you could renounce the modern world.

~~~
urda
> I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing
> that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer,
> earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in
> the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally
> superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that
> brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world.

This is such a great statement. These articles when they come around make
finance, business, and work seem like such an "evil" thing, and should be
beneath people. But god forbid you tell them how dumpster diving and just
being a vagabond can also be a burden to everyone else in society.

~~~
shillster
He's only a burden in as much as the fall in his personal consumption reduces
the overall demand for things he might have purchased. In other words, its no
sweat off of anyone's brow. Being individually resourceful doesn't increase
the burden on anyone else.

~~~
vinceguidry
It's wasted potential. The modern world and all its conveniences and all its
resources didn't just come about. It was built up, out of nothing, by people
who saw how shitty the world looked then and wanted to live in a better one. A
better world is not being built by dumpster divers. It's certainly not being
built by dumpster divers managing to convince other people that dumpster
diving is somehow noble.

Every age had its dumpster divers, its people who, rather than to throw their
weight behind efforts to create better institutions, to better understand the
world around them, decided a better world wasn't worth the hassle. That this
world, with all these things that all their ancestors spent their lives
building, is stupid and should be renounced. These people are absolutely a
burden, and should not be listened to.

It made sense in a weird sort of way when the Jains were doing it, religious
renunciation is sometimes the _only_ way you can make a political statement
without getting killed, but it didn't take long until they had made their
point but kept on doing it after it stopped actually being noble.

Yes, there's a lot of crappy things about the world. Roll up your sleeves and
help fix them!

~~~
shillster
I wouldn't be so quick to cast anyone off, especially someone who undertakes
personal initiatives such as this to ensure their own survival. The "economy"
might suffer if more people adopted this attitude, but its hardly the end of
the world. It is not our position to judge if this person's potential is
wasted or not, you can't really be any more subjective.

------
grecy
Interesting read. I'm reminded of Chris McCandless [1] of Into The Wild fame.
I was so inspired by Chris' story I quit my job, sold all my stuff and spent
two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I made a trip to the now infamous
bus in Alaska [2] during my trip.

While Chris and myself have never gone moneyless like the article, I find
myself tending towards that every day. I now hunt all my own meat and fish,
grow as much of my own vegetables as I can, work on my own car and bike, etc.
etc. I try hard to not pay for anything I can do for myself.

I'm also once again disillusioned with work and consumption, so in a couple of
months I'm heading out to drive around Africa for a couple of years, then all
going well I'll drive Europe->SE Asia.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless)

[2] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-
magic-bus)

~~~
bglazer
Perhaps this is overly prying, but do you have a family?

~~~
grecy
No wife or children, no.

That being said, I met tons of people on the road traveling with their family
for extended periods of time - tons of tons of people are driving around the
world with kids. I had a pizza on the streets of Cartegena, Colombia with one
French family and one of the kids said "We hate homeschooling..... we love
worldschooling!"

Friends of mine paused their trip for a few months while they had a baby in
Santiago, Chile, then kept driving :)

~~~
bglazer
Interesting! I've always wondered how people managed to have families while
traveling the world.

I very much prefer to travel alone, because being stuck miles from home with
an unhappy partner is a special kind of hell. It can also be quite lonely to
be alone on the road though.

Good luck in your travels!

------
duncancarroll
"Money only exists because two or more people believe that it does."

Er.. I get the point he's trying to make here, but I think what he's not
seeing is that currencies basically spontaneously emerge out of the necessity
of conducting trade. So, sure, you can try to pretend the construct doesn't
exist, but you're just closing your eyes to the problem because you don't
happen to like it.

~~~
RodericDay
Do you have a source for that? The origins of money?

------
ucaetano
"he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah"

\- Which are wilderness regions because the entire population moved to cities.

"scavenges roadkill"

\- Which exists because people built roads and people drive there.

"pulls food from dumpsters"

\- Which exists because people built the dumpsters and throw food into it.

"sometimes fed by friends and strangers"

\- No comments.

The headline should be: "The Man Who Quit Money But Depends On It".

~~~
drivers99
I actually read [the first third of] the book "The Man Who Quit Money." He
only accepts what is freely given as long as there are no strings attached.
For example, he doesn't take from soup kitchens because the workers there are
required to do it as part of their jobs. I'm not sure what part of that you
think he's ignoring. He's not trying to live as if the rest of the world
doesn't exist, but to prevent others from controlling him via money and vice
versa.

~~~
ucaetano
So he didn't quit money, he quit being controlled by money. But still relies
on people who make money to survive.

------
cholmon
"When I left home for college, I studied other religions and found that all
the world's major religions teach giving up possessions and doing not for the
sake of reward. If all the separated witnesses are saying the same thing, it
must be true."

That's kind of...simplistic.

~~~
carapace
The important truths are all very very simple.

"He who works for the fruits of his labor is a miser." ~Krishna, in The Gita

------
aetherson
Mr. Suelo is certainly free to pursue his own happiness in whatever way he
wishes to. But his personal decisions do not provide a compelling template for
changes to any significant fraction of the population. We can't all -- we
can't even 1% of us -- live in caves and eat roadkill. Heck, my wife and I
can't do that if we want to have our daughter and not face, say, greater than
10% risk that my wife will die in the process.

And the rest of what he's saying seems to be, "Just treat each other like you
would family; do things for no reward and take what you need." That's not a
novel approach. It doesn't scale up well. The major experiments with trying to
scale it up resulted in the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people
in the 20th Century.

------
jayfuerstenberg
I wouldn't want to be a dumpster diver anymore than the next person but I
applaud this person for actually having a view outside of rampant consumerism
and following through on it.

~~~
icebraining
Meh, Ted Kaczynski went farther.

------
vaadu
How do people in these situations deal with the government? Obamacare has
mandates and one commenter mentioned a minimal existence with a motor vehicle,
which means license, insurance, inspection and registration requirements. All
requiring money which means some source of income.

In some places living completely off grid is illegal - you are required to be
connected and pay for utilities.

~~~
jarin
If you make less than $9,500/year you're exempt from the Obamacare penalty.

