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OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this se

OP's premise of "living for free" seems to mean "not pay taxes" and "use what resources are available". I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. It usually seems to imply "away from others". Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life. Personally, I'd much prefer to live in society, and contribute part of my efforts towards sustaining it. That, to me, is living "for free" -- it's so much more of a free ride than trying to manually hack it and provide sustained food and shelter for decades.

CapstanRoller 3y ago
Community doesn't mean much when it's primarily mediated by money. I suspect OP wants to escape capitalist society, not society overall.
beedeebeedee 3y ago
> Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. I would say it is the opposite. Looking back at the millenia of human history, it is people migrating. Successive waves out of Africa and across the continents, and everywhere else, constantly moving in order to live more "free". Whether that is for more resources, or away from conflict within a family or tribe, or from without, with organized religions and governments, etc. Only recently have we stopped because, frankly, there is no place to go. We can still move around cities and countries (and that can help if you are escaping family or tribal issues), but most of the places we can go to are largely the same. If you have a problem with this economy, the proliferation of petro chemicals and other toxins, etc, there isn't really anywhere you can go to escape. The folks who leave or want to leave are often characterized as losers, loners, etc, and from the point of the view of the people who are happy with the situation that they are trying to escape, they are losers- but that is exactly why they are trying to escape.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  1) a community that moves is still a community. A loner that moves around, by contrast, is usually dead within a week or two. 2) we didn’t stop moving around because there’s nowhere else to go. There is a huge amount of totally unpopulated (by humans) land in nearly every region. We don’t choose to live out there because it sucks. We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow food right near you, then you can pick your favorite little bend in the river to shack up and live out your days with your buddies.
  - beedeebeedee 3y ago
    > We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow foor right near you... If that was all there was to it, why did we keep migrating after the agricultural revolution?
    - rebolek 3y ago
      Because of changes in the environment.
      - beedeebeedee 3y ago
        But just as importantly, changes in the community (which I suppose we could call the social environment). That has been as significant a driver for migration as changes in the natural environment if not more. Most migrations in the last few hundred years that I am aware of were driven by social issues (economic, political, religious, etc), and not from natural environmental changes. I.e., Ireland's Great Hunger was not an environmentally driven exodus, even if a potato blight was involved.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      For the same reason people still move and still found new towns and grow the borders of cities today? Because there are new places to go, and they might be better than the current place?
tsss 3y ago
If you're always the one who has to pay for everyone else you start asking yourself: why even take part in the community?
user3939382 3y ago
There are a few places with no property taxes. So you could setup a self sustaining home and after an initial investment live free forever, and still be part of a community.
- addaon 3y ago
  > live free forever Well, this requires not only that there be no taxes or external fees /today/, but /for all eternity/. Not very good predictive models on what tax regime will be in place a few civilizations down the road. But there's other challenges to living forever that, historically, have proven a bigger obstacle to most people than taxes. Fortunately, most people aren't overly concerned with living forever; and in that case, you only need a place that has no taxes for a finite amount of time. The goal, in this case, is to avoid taxes for the rest of your life. And in most jurisdictions, you can elect to just not pay taxes and not suffer consequences for a significant period of time, often five years or substantially more. As long as you intend for the rest of your life to be no more than five years or so (and have a mechanism to enforce this), a huge majority of the world has a favorable tax enforcement regime, even if the tax billing regime isn't to your taste.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Well, this requires not only that there be no taxes or external fees /today/, but /for all eternity/ Unless you have found the cure to death, it's enough that that holds for 5-6 decades for most of us here.
- tomcam 3y ago
  What places have no property taxes?
_8j50 3y ago
Everyone lives in their own world in their mind. A persistent theme I see in society in general is inability to grasp how others could have a completely different perspective and interpretation of anything. That said, OOP's sentiment is largely caused by housing costs across the world. Western society at least is two faced, on one hand liberty of the individual is emphasized but at the same time society is extremely hostile to those who either hold incompatible opinions or just don't fit in. If you think about it, no government or human has authority to regulate the fact that a human exists. What many like OOP look for is the ability to self-determine without being policed by society or being enslaved, not by our natural needs such as food, shelter and water but by the requirements of society such as paying taxes, registering in databases, having information collected about us and the used to control us. The typical american for example, simply to exist and sustain themselves as an adult has to get a birth certificate ,SSN, fingerprint taken, undergo drivers trainin and exam which involves more data collection, get a drivers license, can't buy a car outright so finance one which involves too much crap to list here, and get mandatory insurance for the car (forced to do business), mandatory health insurance enrollment unless they want to pay a tax penalty, piss in a cup to prove their drug usage innocence, in many physical jobs you have to let a guy massage your balls to prove you are not herniated (yes,really. Very common), if you do manage to get a job, you now need to live somewhere close which means renting for most and that in itself is a contract you enter where how you live in detail can get regulated by the landlord and the after you pay all these slave masters how you spend the money you have is also regulated heavily from food, drugs, sex,etc... and most people can't even get that far without working multiple jobs, if they are even that lucky. And if you have family, dependents, sickness anywhere that's a whole other story. I mean, I get your view and I am with you. I like instant online shopping, doordash, airbnb, uber, walmart,etc... and I am privileged enough to enjoy that right now but you must understand the frustration of this living. There is no breathing room for most, especially younger people in their 20s and early 30s. It's tempting to wonder, what if I could build a house from logs in the woods. Hunt and fish for food, read books for entertainment. Doesn't even have to be on your own. We all get just one life and it's a shame how it is wasted working from one weekend on to the other being regulated and puppetted until you die. Society benefits only those who are compliant with its rules and fit in properly. I mean these days, what society? It's just everything you say and do constantly recorded and scrutinized. Netflix had a moview recently "old dads" or something, it was frustratingly too real. Everything is political, no one is real, everyone is waiting for a chance to stab the non-conformist in the back. They know not the meaning of tolerance and inclusivity. Everyone seems to be an unauthentic murderous parrot if i can exagerate a bit. How can people manage not being themselves for so long!? If you don't already have your own trusted people and places, it's best to avoid people as much as possible. Life is meant to be lived, not barely survived, grateful society has tolerated your existence. In my opinion the focus on making life as long as possible or allowing a society to exist as long as possible is misplaced. A life well lived should be everyone's goal, whatever well lived means for you.
safety1st 3y ago
I mean have you not read Walden? This idea of being more self-reliant and independent is popular with a lot of people, it's a central precept of certain schools of philosophy and ethics as well. No, they weren't all miserable hermits who died young. If you don't like that lifestyle it's fine, but you don't need to pee in everyone else's Wheaties.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  Hmm, Walden? You mean the book by the author who took his laundry back to his mother once a month (or thereabouts)? Don't get me wrong - loved the book, love the concept. The distance between both and reality is a little larger than is immediately obvious, however.
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- velcrovan 3y ago
  I mean, have you not heard about how during the Walden years Thoreau was fully dependent on and subsidized by others? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand.
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  - anthomtb 3y ago
    > Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand. Brilliant but, as human owned by felines, "actively disdain" may be more accurate than "neither acknowledge nor understand".
  - 3y ago
JohnFen 3y ago
> I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. I think it's the fantasy of having complete autonomy, of being completely free in the sense of never having to do anything that you don't want to do[1]. At least, that's that's the aspect of it that resonates with me. But it's only that -- a fantasy. Much like other things that we fantasize about, it's impossible as conceived because it dwells on the upsides and omits the downsides. Humans run in packs. We are social. It's that aspect that has always been the key to our ability to survive even in extremely bad circumstances. The trade-off, looking purely from a selfish point of view, is that we give up some degree of autonomy in exchange for benefits that are so essential and fundamental that we are in great peril without them. We have better lives as part of a group than in isolation, despite being unable to do literally anything we want. In that sense, it's a lot like some kinds of sexual fantasies. Hot as hell in your imagination, but not so great (or even possible) in reality. [1] As the Frank Zappa lyric goes: "Free is when you don't have to pay for nothin' or do nothin'. I want to be free."
- brnaftr361 3y ago
  I think it's more nuanced than that. As it's currently ordered society is a forced participation regime. I don't get the option to say "no." to a great many things. This is due to a loss of security, I don't get to refuse work at a job or in general, and in the case that I do it becomes a compromise, and this compromise is largely arbitrary because there are really very few actual social distinctions in the world currently because the undergirding has overwhelmingly been hijacked by this weird captive environment that has been engineered to support the dominant status quo. However, it is not necessarily the case that this is the "final solution." but the level of ossification presents a substantial challenge. I think this is particularly salient in the American domestic politic, but as the reigning sovereign of the world that has very significant geopolitical impacts globally. Not to mention the fact that we're also the largest consumer market and the most profound conglomerate of companies the world over. To the question of saying "no.", It's questionable that all but the elite suffer from such stricture. For instance if I were to purchase in full some allotment of land which I inhabited, the government would still extract taxes from it, taxes which I would be obliged to pay, and thus I would necessarily require some income. That's without considering the more likely case of mortgaging a home in the suburbs, taking a loan for a car, the myriad bills necessary to sustain a "functional" life, all the sundry little accessories that invariably set up a treadmill of break and replace... Factor in a family and the manifold complications it inserts - viola - no options available. This is, of course, not actually the natural course of things and all of this is malleable. Overcoming the massive inertia of the antiquated systems and their underpinning ideas is a huge challenge though. This itself largely due to the overwhelming coherent mass. But I think anyone would be insane to say they support things as they currently are at any level. But very few are positioned to refuse. It's indenture, but structured in such a way that "society" can point its finger and place blame on the individual.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
There's a cost to everything. Being self-reliant comes at a cost of increased labor and hardship. Being reliant on a society comes at a cost of independence and freedom. Most people pick the latter, a few choose the former.
mindslight 3y ago
IMO the desire comes from a lack of a simple "base case", leaving you unable to truly reduce your level of consumption. You start looking at your monthly budget wondering what you can optimize. You can stop buying new consumer toys, you can cook food very cheaply, you can avoid entertainment/restaurants/drinks, etc. Yet housing rent is staring you in the face as a large unavoidable non-discretionary boat anchor, making the rest of your attempts at savings moot. So then you start asking what it would take to actually pull away from that economic millstone, and when you follow it far enough you get this question.
dimal 3y ago
> The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life In the Pali Canon, the Buddha is often referred to as “the recluse Gautama”. Seems like he found a way to have a pretty good life though. Your generalization doesn’t account for the other path in history where hermits got away from the maddening crowd and found peace of mind and knowledge. You’d prefer to live in society, and that’s fine, but everyone isn’t wired the same way. They may be outliers, but I would disagree with saying that they’re “doomed”.
- supertofu 3y ago
  India at the time of the Buddha was favorable to wandering ascetics. People were culturally conditioned to donate alms. And, indeed, alms-seeking is required by the vinaya for monks, so they can't live in complete seclusion from society. Society today is very hostile to wandering folks. Many western monastics independent of monasteries (especially female monastics) have a hard time getting alms without a lot of organization.
  - Fricken 3y ago
    I went on a bike tour this summer and for a week was living the life of a wandering folk. I experienced no hostility. People were all very friendly and helpful the whole way. Like, super friendly and super helpful, offering me meals and places to sleep. I had a tire blowout which stranded me at a small town gas station for a few hours, and about a dozen dudes came up over that time and offering me use of their tools and generally trying to be of assistance.
    - supertofu 3y ago
      I'm very glad that you experienced generosity! But I don't think your experience is the norm. One week of wandering is not exactly a lifetime. I also can't help but assume from your plucky, overconfident dissent that is based on a very short duration of experience that you are a white man.
      - 3y ago
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> Personally, I'd much prefer to live in society, and contribute part of my efforts towards sustaining it. A lot of people are stingy and don't want to contribute unless they're getting the bargain. If someone else is getting the better end of the stick, they view this as a loss, and it makes them miserable. Essentially, they view taxation and society as a zero sum game, rather than a positive sum game. I think political polarization and extremism is making this a more and more common view. I can't pay any taxes if $1 is used even indirectly for abortions, to fund wars, etc Society is complex and can't really be reduced like this, but a growing number of people think it can be.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Yea I think we all know That Guy like you describe: I have an acquaintance who is pretty far down this same rabbit hole. Anti-government, anti-taxes, he has actually gone and spoke at some kind of Public Comments thinggy at the county to complain that he should get an itemized tax bill that shows who each dollar is going to, so he can pick and choose and not let a single dollar of "his money" go to someone he thinks doesn't deserve it. Obviously not a big believer in "society" or "community".
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    Fed up with crazy government spending = "not a big believer in society or community"? Have you actually thought this through? Government spending, especially without oversight, is an extremely inefficient method for "building community". The vast majority of taxes go to enormous, bureaucratic departments or programs with virtually no connection to individual people within one's local sphere. Donating to, and actively participating in, church, schools, parks, community centers, etc is typically a lot more effective in strengthening a community, and one can easily be anti-taxes and very much pro-community.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Churches by and large are institutionalized mental illness. Do not recommend. And while local institutions can be more responsive and flexible, they also cannot exist without a larger entity helping maintain their sovereignty. (Otherwise larger and stronger forces would overthrow them.) Local only can also be a hassle for things like commerce or civil rights. Imagine every city having their own currency or rules about what "kind of people" are welcome or unwelcome.
pj_mukh 3y ago
Maybe I'm being overly-simplistic, but what a lot of these folks are actually aiming for is closest approximated to being "Trust fund kids". Digging even deeper based on some conversations I've had with friends, a lot of these folks are running away from a string of bad bosses or toxic management. Every means of making a living requires putting up with a bad boss, so its not surprising they start looking for alternative means of making a living/disconnecting etc. COVID exacerbated this.
- fragmede 3y ago
  > Every means of making a living requires putting up with a bad boss, With a traditional job, if you have a bad boss, you've got up deal with that non-stop. If you're driving for Uber/Lyft, the platform as your "boss" is an app, for better or worse. More importantly though, if you get an unruly passenger, they're kinda your boss, but only for the duration of the ride (except for extreme cases), so you don't have to put up with them as a bad boss forever.
  - pj_mukh 3y ago
    Exactly, which explains why app based platforms that underpay are so popular.
DoubleDerper 3y ago
> and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. This is the capitalistic narrative since the agricultural revolution, thousands of years ago, but it's not true of most of human history. During pre-agriculture we coexisted with many species, all living off the fat of the land, resources were plentiful for hundreds of thousands of years. A delightful counterpoint and quick read is the book "Ishmael." https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407/ https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375...
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > resources were plentiful for hundreds of thousands of years While they were plentiful. We chose agriculture because it means your entire tribe not dying of starvation because of minor variations in the local environment.
  - DoubleDerper 3y ago
    ... and this tribalism led to the violent assembly of contiguous land and hoarding of resources to the alienation of everything/everyone outside the tribe. This pattern evolved into our modern system. If local environments began to change, then your nomadic tribe moved along rather sitting around waiting to die. Birds fly south for the winter.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > then your nomadic tribe moved along rather sitting around waiting to die Which sucks if you’re injured when the migration must occur. Or if you migrate incorrectly. The evidence we have is for periods of plenty followed by harrowing narrowing of the population. These events are few in between and globally notable in the agricultural era (Bronze Age collapse, fall of Rome, et cetera).
- btbuildem 3y ago
  Are you referring to the Paleolithic? These "societies" (nomadic bands, really) generally operated on principles of reciprocity and gift economies. Debt in that context was more of a social obligation - but served a similar purpose as what we understand debt to be today: to compel someone to do something. It engendered bonds of trust and interdependence, helping ensure the survival of the group. Food sharing was often obligatory: today's hunter who shares his catch with you becomes tomorrow's recipient when you make the kill. You're right to note that the agricultural revolution was special -- in that the accumulation of surplus allowed people to store it, and lend it out. This lead to wealth being quantified and introduced the concept of interest. "Capitalism" - as characterized by the drive to continuously reinvest in order to generate more wealth - doesn't come into play for another ten thousand years. The different prerequisites (wage labour, financial systems, property relations) arrive at different times - but we could say, ballpark, around the 16th century, with the advent of the chartered companies (eg, East India)?
coldtea 3y ago
>Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services Not in any magnitude comparable to today, which even brings several qualitative and technical differences. >The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life Those were much more common that you seem to think, and even a lot of otherise "community" life included much more "alone" time (e.g. whole weeks or months away from the village).
freedomben 3y ago
I think you're conflating community with government. You can have community without government, and government without community. You can be someone who hates government and rejects their authority, who also loves their community and readily admits dependence on them, and this is not contradictory. Voluntary communities and governments exist all the time
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  What happens when the community wants to build a road, or stop a member from assaulting others, or provide defense against invaders? What would you call the coalition of people who come together in the community and are given the authority to provide such actions?
- deterministic 3y ago
  All communities have some form of government. It is just called “the elders” or “the council” or whatever instead. All humans are a mix of good and evil. So you need a system in place to minimise the negative impact of this. This is BTW the reason why utopian societies always fail.
t0bia_s 3y ago
Why "not pay taxes" means "away from others"?
- em-bee 3y ago
  because living in a community requires financing of community facilities, which depends on contributions from every member of the community, aka taxes.
  - t0bia_s 3y ago
    Why do you think its a condition for living in community?
    - em-bee 3y ago
      how can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? sure, many services can be provided by for-profit businesses for a fee, but who helps to put out fires for example? who pays for equipment used by firefighters? i see no way to make firefighting work unless everyone contributes. unless you rely on generosity of some, but that would not be fair, nor is it sustainable. how do you build streets? a public park? do you want to charge for their use? how do you pay for cleaning streets? street lights? traffic lights? street signs? police? judges? jails? there are many other examples that work better if the whole community collaborates to achieve them. taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution.
      - t0bia_s 3y ago
        - How can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? How would that people make money?
        em-bee 3y ago
        how was money invented? as i said: taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution

CapstanRoller 3y ago

Community doesn't mean much when it's primarily mediated by money. I suspect OP wants to escape capitalist society, not society overall.

beedeebeedee 3y ago

> Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. I would say it is the opposite. Looking back at the millenia of human history, it is people migrating. Successive waves out of Africa and across the continents, and everywhere else, constantly moving in order to live more "free". Whether that is for more resources, or away from conflict within a family or tribe, or from without, with organized religions and governments, etc. Only recently have we stopped because, frankly, there is no place to go. We can still move around cities and countries (and that can help if you are escaping family or tribal issues), but most of the places we can go to are largely the same. If you have a problem with this economy, the proliferation of petro chemicals and other toxins, etc, there isn't really anywhere you can go to escape. The folks who leave or want to leave are often characterized as losers, loners, etc, and from the point of the view of the people who are happy with the situation that they are trying to escape, they are losers- but that is exactly why they are trying to escape.

ethanbond 3y ago
1) a community that moves is still a community. A loner that moves around, by contrast, is usually dead within a week or two. 2) we didn’t stop moving around because there’s nowhere else to go. There is a huge amount of totally unpopulated (by humans) land in nearly every region. We don’t choose to live out there because it sucks. We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow food right near you, then you can pick your favorite little bend in the river to shack up and live out your days with your buddies.
- beedeebeedee 3y ago
  > We stopped moving around because we discovered that instead of chasing food down all over the place, you can grow foor right near you... If that was all there was to it, why did we keep migrating after the agricultural revolution?
  - rebolek 3y ago
    Because of changes in the environment.
    - beedeebeedee 3y ago
      But just as importantly, changes in the community (which I suppose we could call the social environment). That has been as significant a driver for migration as changes in the natural environment if not more. Most migrations in the last few hundred years that I am aware of were driven by social issues (economic, political, religious, etc), and not from natural environmental changes. I.e., Ireland's Great Hunger was not an environmentally driven exodus, even if a potato blight was involved.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    For the same reason people still move and still found new towns and grow the borders of cities today? Because there are new places to go, and they might be better than the current place?

tsss 3y ago

If you're always the one who has to pay for everyone else you start asking yourself: why even take part in the community?

user3939382 3y ago

There are a few places with no property taxes. So you could setup a self sustaining home and after an initial investment live free forever, and still be part of a community.

addaon 3y ago
> live free forever Well, this requires not only that there be no taxes or external fees /today/, but /for all eternity/. Not very good predictive models on what tax regime will be in place a few civilizations down the road. But there's other challenges to living forever that, historically, have proven a bigger obstacle to most people than taxes. Fortunately, most people aren't overly concerned with living forever; and in that case, you only need a place that has no taxes for a finite amount of time. The goal, in this case, is to avoid taxes for the rest of your life. And in most jurisdictions, you can elect to just not pay taxes and not suffer consequences for a significant period of time, often five years or substantially more. As long as you intend for the rest of your life to be no more than five years or so (and have a mechanism to enforce this), a huge majority of the world has a favorable tax enforcement regime, even if the tax billing regime isn't to your taste.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Well, this requires not only that there be no taxes or external fees /today/, but /for all eternity/ Unless you have found the cure to death, it's enough that that holds for 5-6 decades for most of us here.
tomcam 3y ago
What places have no property taxes?

_8j50 3y ago

Everyone lives in their own world in their mind. A persistent theme I see in society in general is inability to grasp how others could have a completely different perspective and interpretation of anything. That said, OOP's sentiment is largely caused by housing costs across the world. Western society at least is two faced, on one hand liberty of the individual is emphasized but at the same time society is extremely hostile to those who either hold incompatible opinions or just don't fit in. If you think about it, no government or human has authority to regulate the fact that a human exists. What many like OOP look for is the ability to self-determine without being policed by society or being enslaved, not by our natural needs such as food, shelter and water but by the requirements of society such as paying taxes, registering in databases, having information collected about us and the used to control us. The typical american for example, simply to exist and sustain themselves as an adult has to get a birth certificate ,SSN, fingerprint taken, undergo drivers trainin and exam which involves more data collection, get a drivers license, can't buy a car outright so finance one which involves too much crap to list here, and get mandatory insurance for the car (forced to do business), mandatory health insurance enrollment unless they want to pay a tax penalty, piss in a cup to prove their drug usage innocence, in many physical jobs you have to let a guy massage your balls to prove you are not herniated (yes,really. Very common), if you do manage to get a job, you now need to live somewhere close which means renting for most and that in itself is a contract you enter where how you live in detail can get regulated by the landlord and the after you pay all these slave masters how you spend the money you have is also regulated heavily from food, drugs, sex,etc... and most people can't even get that far without working multiple jobs, if they are even that lucky. And if you have family, dependents, sickness anywhere that's a whole other story. I mean, I get your view and I am with you. I like instant online shopping, doordash, airbnb, uber, walmart,etc... and I am privileged enough to enjoy that right now but you must understand the frustration of this living. There is no breathing room for most, especially younger people in their 20s and early 30s. It's tempting to wonder, what if I could build a house from logs in the woods. Hunt and fish for food, read books for entertainment. Doesn't even have to be on your own. We all get just one life and it's a shame how it is wasted working from one weekend on to the other being regulated and puppetted until you die. Society benefits only those who are compliant with its rules and fit in properly. I mean these days, what society? It's just everything you say and do constantly recorded and scrutinized. Netflix had a moview recently "old dads" or something, it was frustratingly too real. Everything is political, no one is real, everyone is waiting for a chance to stab the non-conformist in the back. They know not the meaning of tolerance and inclusivity. Everyone seems to be an unauthentic murderous parrot if i can exagerate a bit. How can people manage not being themselves for so long!? If you don't already have your own trusted people and places, it's best to avoid people as much as possible. Life is meant to be lived, not barely survived, grateful society has tolerated your existence. In my opinion the focus on making life as long as possible or allowing a society to exist as long as possible is misplaced. A life well lived should be everyone's goal, whatever well lived means for you.

safety1st 3y ago

I mean have you not read Walden? This idea of being more self-reliant and independent is popular with a lot of people, it's a central precept of certain schools of philosophy and ethics as well. No, they weren't all miserable hermits who died young. If you don't like that lifestyle it's fine, but you don't need to pee in everyone else's Wheaties.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Hmm, Walden? You mean the book by the author who took his laundry back to his mother once a month (or thereabouts)? Don't get me wrong - loved the book, love the concept. The distance between both and reality is a little larger than is immediately obvious, however.
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velcrovan 3y ago
I mean, have you not heard about how during the Walden years Thoreau was fully dependent on and subsidized by others? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand.
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- anthomtb 3y ago
  > Walden bros are like house cats: fully reliant on a system of support they neither acknowledge nor understand. Brilliant but, as human owned by felines, "actively disdain" may be more accurate than "neither acknowledge nor understand".
- 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago

> I wonder what the motivation is here, I've heard this sentiment expressed many times. I think it's the fantasy of having complete autonomy, of being completely free in the sense of never having to do anything that you don't want to do[1]. At least, that's that's the aspect of it that resonates with me. But it's only that -- a fantasy. Much like other things that we fantasize about, it's impossible as conceived because it dwells on the upsides and omits the downsides. Humans run in packs. We are social. It's that aspect that has always been the key to our ability to survive even in extremely bad circumstances. The trade-off, looking purely from a selfish point of view, is that we give up some degree of autonomy in exchange for benefits that are so essential and fundamental that we are in great peril without them. We have better lives as part of a group than in isolation, despite being unable to do literally anything we want. In that sense, it's a lot like some kinds of sexual fantasies. Hot as hell in your imagination, but not so great (or even possible) in reality. [1] As the Frank Zappa lyric goes: "Free is when you don't have to pay for nothin' or do nothin'. I want to be free."

brnaftr361 3y ago
I think it's more nuanced than that. As it's currently ordered society is a forced participation regime. I don't get the option to say "no." to a great many things. This is due to a loss of security, I don't get to refuse work at a job or in general, and in the case that I do it becomes a compromise, and this compromise is largely arbitrary because there are really very few actual social distinctions in the world currently because the undergirding has overwhelmingly been hijacked by this weird captive environment that has been engineered to support the dominant status quo. However, it is not necessarily the case that this is the "final solution." but the level of ossification presents a substantial challenge. I think this is particularly salient in the American domestic politic, but as the reigning sovereign of the world that has very significant geopolitical impacts globally. Not to mention the fact that we're also the largest consumer market and the most profound conglomerate of companies the world over. To the question of saying "no.", It's questionable that all but the elite suffer from such stricture. For instance if I were to purchase in full some allotment of land which I inhabited, the government would still extract taxes from it, taxes which I would be obliged to pay, and thus I would necessarily require some income. That's without considering the more likely case of mortgaging a home in the suburbs, taking a loan for a car, the myriad bills necessary to sustain a "functional" life, all the sundry little accessories that invariably set up a treadmill of break and replace... Factor in a family and the manifold complications it inserts - viola - no options available. This is, of course, not actually the natural course of things and all of this is malleable. Overcoming the massive inertia of the antiquated systems and their underpinning ideas is a huge challenge though. This itself largely due to the overwhelming coherent mass. But I think anyone would be insane to say they support things as they currently are at any level. But very few are positioned to refuse. It's indenture, but structured in such a way that "society" can point its finger and place blame on the individual.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

There's a cost to everything. Being self-reliant comes at a cost of increased labor and hardship. Being reliant on a society comes at a cost of independence and freedom. Most people pick the latter, a few choose the former.

mindslight 3y ago

IMO the desire comes from a lack of a simple "base case", leaving you unable to truly reduce your level of consumption. You start looking at your monthly budget wondering what you can optimize. You can stop buying new consumer toys, you can cook food very cheaply, you can avoid entertainment/restaurants/drinks, etc. Yet housing rent is staring you in the face as a large unavoidable non-discretionary boat anchor, making the rest of your attempts at savings moot. So then you start asking what it would take to actually pull away from that economic millstone, and when you follow it far enough you get this question.

dimal 3y ago

> The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life In the Pali Canon, the Buddha is often referred to as “the recluse Gautama”. Seems like he found a way to have a pretty good life though. Your generalization doesn’t account for the other path in history where hermits got away from the maddening crowd and found peace of mind and knowledge. You’d prefer to live in society, and that’s fine, but everyone isn’t wired the same way. They may be outliers, but I would disagree with saying that they’re “doomed”.

supertofu 3y ago
India at the time of the Buddha was favorable to wandering ascetics. People were culturally conditioned to donate alms. And, indeed, alms-seeking is required by the vinaya for monks, so they can't live in complete seclusion from society. Society today is very hostile to wandering folks. Many western monastics independent of monasteries (especially female monastics) have a hard time getting alms without a lot of organization.
- Fricken 3y ago
  I went on a bike tour this summer and for a week was living the life of a wandering folk. I experienced no hostility. People were all very friendly and helpful the whole way. Like, super friendly and super helpful, offering me meals and places to sleep. I had a tire blowout which stranded me at a small town gas station for a few hours, and about a dozen dudes came up over that time and offering me use of their tools and generally trying to be of assistance.
  - supertofu 3y ago
    I'm very glad that you experienced generosity! But I don't think your experience is the norm. One week of wandering is not exactly a lifetime. I also can't help but assume from your plucky, overconfident dissent that is based on a very short duration of experience that you are a white man.
    - 3y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> Personally, I'd much prefer to live in society, and contribute part of my efforts towards sustaining it. A lot of people are stingy and don't want to contribute unless they're getting the bargain. If someone else is getting the better end of the stick, they view this as a loss, and it makes them miserable. Essentially, they view taxation and society as a zero sum game, rather than a positive sum game. I think political polarization and extremism is making this a more and more common view. I can't pay any taxes if $1 is used even indirectly for abortions, to fund wars, etc Society is complex and can't really be reduced like this, but a growing number of people think it can be.

ryandrake 3y ago
Yea I think we all know That Guy like you describe: I have an acquaintance who is pretty far down this same rabbit hole. Anti-government, anti-taxes, he has actually gone and spoke at some kind of Public Comments thinggy at the county to complain that he should get an itemized tax bill that shows who each dollar is going to, so he can pick and choose and not let a single dollar of "his money" go to someone he thinks doesn't deserve it. Obviously not a big believer in "society" or "community".
- listenallyall 3y ago
  Fed up with crazy government spending = "not a big believer in society or community"? Have you actually thought this through? Government spending, especially without oversight, is an extremely inefficient method for "building community". The vast majority of taxes go to enormous, bureaucratic departments or programs with virtually no connection to individual people within one's local sphere. Donating to, and actively participating in, church, schools, parks, community centers, etc is typically a lot more effective in strengthening a community, and one can easily be anti-taxes and very much pro-community.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Churches by and large are institutionalized mental illness. Do not recommend. And while local institutions can be more responsive and flexible, they also cannot exist without a larger entity helping maintain their sovereignty. (Otherwise larger and stronger forces would overthrow them.) Local only can also be a hassle for things like commerce or civil rights. Imagine every city having their own currency or rules about what "kind of people" are welcome or unwelcome.

pj_mukh 3y ago

Maybe I'm being overly-simplistic, but what a lot of these folks are actually aiming for is closest approximated to being "Trust fund kids". Digging even deeper based on some conversations I've had with friends, a lot of these folks are running away from a string of bad bosses or toxic management. Every means of making a living requires putting up with a bad boss, so its not surprising they start looking for alternative means of making a living/disconnecting etc. COVID exacerbated this.

fragmede 3y ago
> Every means of making a living requires putting up with a bad boss, With a traditional job, if you have a bad boss, you've got up deal with that non-stop. If you're driving for Uber/Lyft, the platform as your "boss" is an app, for better or worse. More importantly though, if you get an unruly passenger, they're kinda your boss, but only for the duration of the ride (except for extreme cases), so you don't have to put up with them as a bad boss forever.
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  Exactly, which explains why app based platforms that underpay are so popular.

DoubleDerper 3y ago

> and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services. This is the capitalistic narrative since the agricultural revolution, thousands of years ago, but it's not true of most of human history. During pre-agriculture we coexisted with many species, all living off the fat of the land, resources were plentiful for hundreds of thousands of years. A delightful counterpoint and quick read is the book "Ishmael." https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407/ https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375...

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> resources were plentiful for hundreds of thousands of years While they were plentiful. We chose agriculture because it means your entire tribe not dying of starvation because of minor variations in the local environment.
- DoubleDerper 3y ago
  ... and this tribalism led to the violent assembly of contiguous land and hoarding of resources to the alienation of everything/everyone outside the tribe. This pattern evolved into our modern system. If local environments began to change, then your nomadic tribe moved along rather sitting around waiting to die. Birds fly south for the winter.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > then your nomadic tribe moved along rather sitting around waiting to die Which sucks if you’re injured when the migration must occur. Or if you migrate incorrectly. The evidence we have is for periods of plenty followed by harrowing narrowing of the population. These events are few in between and globally notable in the agricultural era (Bronze Age collapse, fall of Rome, et cetera).
btbuildem 3y ago
Are you referring to the Paleolithic? These "societies" (nomadic bands, really) generally operated on principles of reciprocity and gift economies. Debt in that context was more of a social obligation - but served a similar purpose as what we understand debt to be today: to compel someone to do something. It engendered bonds of trust and interdependence, helping ensure the survival of the group. Food sharing was often obligatory: today's hunter who shares his catch with you becomes tomorrow's recipient when you make the kill. You're right to note that the agricultural revolution was special -- in that the accumulation of surplus allowed people to store it, and lend it out. This lead to wealth being quantified and introduced the concept of interest. "Capitalism" - as characterized by the drive to continuously reinvest in order to generate more wealth - doesn't come into play for another ten thousand years. The different prerequisites (wage labour, financial systems, property relations) arrive at different times - but we could say, ballpark, around the 16th century, with the advent of the chartered companies (eg, East India)?

coldtea 3y ago

>Looking back at the millennia of human history, we've always formed communities, always assumed more-or-less specialized roles, and always used some form of debt to manage the social fabric and facilitate the exchange of goods and services Not in any magnitude comparable to today, which even brings several qualitative and technical differences. >The loners, the hermits, the "self-sufficient" seem to be outliers, doomed for a hard, brief life Those were much more common that you seem to think, and even a lot of otherise "community" life included much more "alone" time (e.g. whole weeks or months away from the village).

freedomben 3y ago

I think you're conflating community with government. You can have community without government, and government without community. You can be someone who hates government and rejects their authority, who also loves their community and readily admits dependence on them, and this is not contradictory. Voluntary communities and governments exist all the time

Eisenstein 3y ago
What happens when the community wants to build a road, or stop a member from assaulting others, or provide defense against invaders? What would you call the coalition of people who come together in the community and are given the authority to provide such actions?
deterministic 3y ago
All communities have some form of government. It is just called “the elders” or “the council” or whatever instead. All humans are a mix of good and evil. So you need a system in place to minimise the negative impact of this. This is BTW the reason why utopian societies always fail.

t0bia_s 3y ago

Why "not pay taxes" means "away from others"?

em-bee 3y ago
because living in a community requires financing of community facilities, which depends on contributions from every member of the community, aka taxes.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  Why do you think its a condition for living in community?
  - em-bee 3y ago
    how can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? sure, many services can be provided by for-profit businesses for a fee, but who helps to put out fires for example? who pays for equipment used by firefighters? i see no way to make firefighting work unless everyone contributes. unless you rely on generosity of some, but that would not be fair, nor is it sustainable. how do you build streets? a public park? do you want to charge for their use? how do you pay for cleaning streets? street lights? traffic lights? street signs? police? judges? jails? there are many other examples that work better if the whole community collaborates to achieve them. taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution.
    - t0bia_s 3y ago
      - How can you have a functioning community where noone contributes anything? How would that people make money?
      - em-bee 3y ago
        how was money invented? as i said: taxes need not be only money but could be some other form of contribution