16 ms·

The man who lives without money

42 points by yeleti 13y ago

pedalpete 13y ago
Interesting that he's able to do it, but as he states in the last paragraph, this isn't something everybody could do, and I think that is a good thing. 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.
- icu 13y ago
  I think differently to you pedalpete, how fantastic that this guy can live by his beliefs. Although my beliefs about economics are different I can still respect his right to pursue them and it challenges me to more strongly stick to my own.
- skidoo 13y ago
  Most taxes do not go to food-aid or medical research. And by not contributing to or directly enabling so many of society's ills he is indeed giving back far more than most others ever will.
  - PLejeck 13y ago
    Complacency and apathy are not a form of protest.
    - rosser 13y ago
      Are you suggesting that what this guy's doing is "complacency and apathy"?
      - PLejeck 13y ago
        Not at all. I'm suggesting that arguing that doing nothing is better than doing something is something people do to promote complacency, and has no place in the world.
        skidoo 13y ago
        I don't see how depriving the machine of a cog can be construed as complacency. I've had several windows of unemployment and homelessness, sometimes by fate and sometimes by choice, and it is never an easy route. Like the saying goes, "If you are not an active part of the solution then you are just another part of the problem". In that respect, re-tweeting insolence and signing e-petitions and the like is closer to complacency.
      - gadders 13y ago
        No. Childish self-indulgence would be a better description.
        skidoo 13y ago
        In light of all the sacrifices he's making to live thusly? Very doubtful.
        gadders 13y ago
        He is making sacrifices, but he is also eschewing any responsibilities.
- logn 13y ago
  He didn't get into it, but I would guess he contributes a lot back to society, via his close-knit community. 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)
- loumf 13y ago
  If everyone of us decided to live like any one of us, it would be a disaster. 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.
ars 13y ago
His cure is worse than the disease. 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.
- brazzy 13y ago
  > If everyone did as he did we would cause MUCH more environmental damage to the world. 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.
  - ars 13y ago
    > using less than 1% of the energy everyone else And releasing thousands of times as much pollution. It's not worth the exchange.
    - manicdee 13y ago
      Thousands of times more pollution? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! 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).
kriro 13y ago
That close/like button on the site seems fairly unethical. It's very easy to accidentally click like if you want to click the x.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  You ought to see what it looks like on an iPhone!
mvanvoorden 13y ago
For people who like to know more about (almost) moneyless living: - http://moneyless.info http://moneyless.info - This interview: http://vimeo.com/65171169 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 http://totalism.org ). Feel free to come by and check it out some time!
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
To survive without money means do many things yourself. Do many things yourself means a broad knowledge of many things. A broad knowledge of many things means that the knowledge in any particular thing is shallow and primitive, only sufficient for the basic tasks. Therefore the life becomes a continuous sequence of primitive activities. 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.
- 6ren 13y ago
  Yes, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/ http://www.rationaloptimist.com/. Though this guy traded (barter).
- mvanvoorden 13y ago
  The only reason you see that human civilization doesn't gain anything from this is because you use knowledge/science to define progress. 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.
ericthegoodking 13y ago
money is important! I hope that when he gets sick he will not think of using traditional medicine (like the way the Chinese are killing rare animals, in the name of "medicine" amongst other funny and weird things). What he is doing is quite inspirational and admirable tho!
- mvanvoorden 13y ago
  A lot of modern medicine are based on traditional medicine. In a lot of cases working substances in the plant are isolated and then synthesized to minimize side effects caused by other substances in the plant. 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.
contextual 13y ago
The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that it now means we’re completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the ‘stuff’ we buy. 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.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I disagree; I'm pretty sure most people would tolerate it just fine after a period of habituation. 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.
  - contextual 13y ago
    I'm talking about empathy. You're talking about desensitization. Of course we disagree.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Neither can be ignored if you're predicting an outcome on this issue.
gadders 13y ago
So basically, he's living like people did in the middle ages. Good luck with that.
Fuxy 13y ago
His solution though admirable needs improvements. He's not living ecologically but without money which is admirable but completely ignores the effects living like our ancestors had on nature. 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.
volokoumphetico 13y ago
tl;dr - rich guy saw Ghandi and tries to become one because he always has the option to give it up unlike the billions out there who really doesn't have quite that.
gilgoomesh 13y ago
Oh dear. > 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.
- baq 13y ago
  > the former can grow indefinitely 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.
  - gilgoomesh 13y ago
    Note that I didn't say "grow infinitely", I said "grow indefinitely" – as in continuous, steady growth (historically, about 2-5% per annum). Basically, if you can keep working productively while the sun shines, this is growth. 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.
- pauletienney 13y ago
  Growth = increase in wealth quantity. It seems reasonable to state that on a finite planet an infinite increase in wealth quantity is impossible.
- manicdee 13y ago
  Human work cannot grow indefinitely. We already have the situation of heavily populated countries buying up farms in other nations in order to secure food supply. 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.
denysonique 13y ago
Balance.
sanoli 13y ago
Everytime I read one of these stories, it's always someone without kids. This guy has an economics degree. He has the luxury of going back. If he had children, and they had to live like this, could he still do it, and would it be good for the children?(honest question) It's also always someone not in their 60s, when they start needing more medical attention, more access to medicine, etc.
- rwallace 13y ago
  No junk food, no television, no Facebook, opportunity to learn practical skills, exposure to mild pathogens in the first five years of life to help the immune system develop properly; most aspects of the lifestyle would be good for children. 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.
  - sanoli 13y ago
    Maybe. But like I said, I never read about someone with kids doing this. What you describe can be found in very rural areas, but it's still different from what this guy is doing.
    - rwallace 13y ago
      Strikes me as fairly similar to the Amish? I get the impression they avail themselves of a few benefits of modern civilization like that subset of medicine that actually saves significant numbers of lives, while eschewing most of the glitter; are there significant differences that I'm missing?
      - sanoli 13y ago
        I think there are. This guy, and the people on the similar stories that are sometimes poste here on HN, are going it alone, or as a very small group of people, in the single digits at most. He's not joining a large, homogeneous, stable, long standing community. It's very different. Being born in an Amish community would be very different from being born as this guy's baby.

42 points by yeleti 13y ago

Interesting that he's able to do it, but as he states in the last paragraph, this isn't something everybody could do, and I think that is a good thing. 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.

icu 13y ago
I think differently to you pedalpete, how fantastic that this guy can live by his beliefs. Although my beliefs about economics are different I can still respect his right to pursue them and it challenges me to more strongly stick to my own.
skidoo 13y ago
Most taxes do not go to food-aid or medical research. And by not contributing to or directly enabling so many of society's ills he is indeed giving back far more than most others ever will.
- PLejeck 13y ago
  Complacency and apathy are not a form of protest.
  - rosser 13y ago
    Are you suggesting that what this guy's doing is "complacency and apathy"?
    - PLejeck 13y ago
      Not at all. I'm suggesting that arguing that doing nothing is better than doing something is something people do to promote complacency, and has no place in the world.
      - skidoo 13y ago
        I don't see how depriving the machine of a cog can be construed as complacency. I've had several windows of unemployment and homelessness, sometimes by fate and sometimes by choice, and it is never an easy route. Like the saying goes, "If you are not an active part of the solution then you are just another part of the problem". In that respect, re-tweeting insolence and signing e-petitions and the like is closer to complacency.
    - gadders 13y ago
      No. Childish self-indulgence would be a better description.
      - skidoo 13y ago
        In light of all the sacrifices he's making to live thusly? Very doubtful.
        gadders 13y ago
        He is making sacrifices, but he is also eschewing any responsibilities.
logn 13y ago
He didn't get into it, but I would guess he contributes a lot back to society, via his close-knit community. 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)
loumf 13y ago
If everyone of us decided to live like any one of us, it would be a disaster. 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.

ars 13y ago

His cure is worse than the disease. 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.

brazzy 13y ago
> If everyone did as he did we would cause MUCH more environmental damage to the world. 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.
- ars 13y ago
  > using less than 1% of the energy everyone else And releasing thousands of times as much pollution. It's not worth the exchange.
  - manicdee 13y ago
    Thousands of times more pollution? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! 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).

kriro 13y ago

That close/like button on the site seems fairly unethical. It's very easy to accidentally click like if you want to click the x.

chris_wot 13y ago
You ought to see what it looks like on an iPhone!

mvanvoorden 13y ago

For people who like to know more about (almost) moneyless living: - http://moneyless.info http://moneyless.info - This interview: http://vimeo.com/65171169 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 http://totalism.org ). Feel free to come by and check it out some time!

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

To survive without money means do many things yourself. Do many things yourself means a broad knowledge of many things. A broad knowledge of many things means that the knowledge in any particular thing is shallow and primitive, only sufficient for the basic tasks. Therefore the life becomes a continuous sequence of primitive activities. 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.

6ren 13y ago
Yes, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/ http://www.rationaloptimist.com/. Though this guy traded (barter).
mvanvoorden 13y ago
The only reason you see that human civilization doesn't gain anything from this is because you use knowledge/science to define progress. 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.

ericthegoodking 13y ago

money is important! I hope that when he gets sick he will not think of using traditional medicine (like the way the Chinese are killing rare animals, in the name of "medicine" amongst other funny and weird things). What he is doing is quite inspirational and admirable tho!

mvanvoorden 13y ago
A lot of modern medicine are based on traditional medicine. In a lot of cases working substances in the plant are isolated and then synthesized to minimize side effects caused by other substances in the plant. 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.

contextual 13y ago

The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that it now means we’re completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the ‘stuff’ we buy. 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.

icebraining 13y ago
I disagree; I'm pretty sure most people would tolerate it just fine after a period of habituation. 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.
- contextual 13y ago
  I'm talking about empathy. You're talking about desensitization. Of course we disagree.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Neither can be ignored if you're predicting an outcome on this issue.

gadders 13y ago

So basically, he's living like people did in the middle ages. Good luck with that.

Fuxy 13y ago

His solution though admirable needs improvements. He's not living ecologically but without money which is admirable but completely ignores the effects living like our ancestors had on nature. 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.

volokoumphetico 13y ago

tl;dr - rich guy saw Ghandi and tries to become one because he always has the option to give it up unlike the billions out there who really doesn't have quite that.

gilgoomesh 13y ago

Oh dear. > 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.

baq 13y ago
> the former can grow indefinitely 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.
- gilgoomesh 13y ago
  Note that I didn't say "grow infinitely", I said "grow indefinitely" – as in continuous, steady growth (historically, about 2-5% per annum). Basically, if you can keep working productively while the sun shines, this is growth. 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.
pauletienney 13y ago
Growth = increase in wealth quantity. It seems reasonable to state that on a finite planet an infinite increase in wealth quantity is impossible.
manicdee 13y ago
Human work cannot grow indefinitely. We already have the situation of heavily populated countries buying up farms in other nations in order to secure food supply. 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.

denysonique 13y ago

Balance.

sanoli 13y ago

Everytime I read one of these stories, it's always someone without kids. This guy has an economics degree. He has the luxury of going back. If he had children, and they had to live like this, could he still do it, and would it be good for the children?(honest question) It's also always someone not in their 60s, when they start needing more medical attention, more access to medicine, etc.

rwallace 13y ago
No junk food, no television, no Facebook, opportunity to learn practical skills, exposure to mild pathogens in the first five years of life to help the immune system develop properly; most aspects of the lifestyle would be good for children. 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.
- sanoli 13y ago
  Maybe. But like I said, I never read about someone with kids doing this. What you describe can be found in very rural areas, but it's still different from what this guy is doing.
  - rwallace 13y ago
    Strikes me as fairly similar to the Amish? I get the impression they avail themselves of a few benefits of modern civilization like that subset of medicine that actually saves significant numbers of lives, while eschewing most of the glitter; are there significant differences that I'm missing?
    - sanoli 13y ago
      I think there are. This guy, and the people on the similar stories that are sometimes poste here on HN, are going it alone, or as a very small group of people, in the single digits at most. He's not joining a large, homogeneous, stable, long standing community. It's very different. Being born in an Amish community would be very different from being born as this guy's baby.