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Could you Survive Without Money? Meet the Guy Who Does.
- pmorici 17y agoHis blog... http://zerocurrency.blogspot.com/ http://zerocurrency.blogspot.com/
- Oompa 17y agoInteresting individual, I could never do anything like this myself.
- JacobAldridge 17y agoYes, I went through a similar thought pattern when I left high school - "I don't want to worry about money. Either I decide to never have money, or I'll put in the effort require to always have enough / too much." Still working on the second choice. It's not easy, but I think the first option is much harder and never ends.
- wmeredith 17y agoI'm pretty sure I could survive on the waste and charity of others as this guy does, but I wouldn't want to.
- michaelneale 17y agoThousands do in major cities every day. Often there are mental health issues at play, but anyone can do it.
- mynameishere 17y agoPretty good documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4s78Db5OQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4s78Db5OQ
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- JesseAldridge 17y agoThis guy has some cool blog entries along those lines: http://www.nevblog.com/labels/Homeless%20Experiment.html http://www.nevblog.com/labels/Homeless%20Experiment.html
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- kragen 17y agoYou know, I used to live in a city named after a guy whose fame was due to doing that.
- ars 17y agoNo kids?
- mahmud 17y agoYou don't need kids to survive like that, most adults I know can do it all on their own~
- ars 17y agoVery funny :) However, could he still do it if he had kids? The article seems to suggest this is a good way to live, but if you can't live this way, and have kids too, then meh. He's not just an ordinary homeless guy - he wants a life without property (not money, any property), i.e. he's homeless guy with a principle. So I evaluate the principle: is it a good one? So far, it seems no, it's not. If he could have kids, then, interesting, maybe it's not for me, or for more people, but at least it's interesting. But if you can't live that way, and have kids too, then it's forgettable. PS. I did not say if he could/couldn't. My initial post was actually a question, worded a little short asking if it was possible. Especially in light of the ending of the article, where it talks about natural selection. If you are really committed to this, then have kids too.
- sfphotoarts 17y ago"He's not just an ordinary homeless guy - he wants a life without property" Isn't that what homeless means?
- mahmud 17y agoNo, homeless people usually don't want a life without property; at least not the sane ones who aren't on the run from the law. Homeless people do have property of some sort; they push around a shopping cart full of their items and they usually have "spots" where they sleep at night. Even under bridges, tunnels, and underground homeless areas; every one of them has a little corridor to himself. P.S. I am deliberately ignoring the much large population of working, "normal", homeless people. See "Persuit of Happyness".
- pj 17y agoIt very well could be the knowledge he has gained while living without money that will go toward educating masses of people out of work in our increasingly struggling economy moving forward. More people are losing jobs, homes, credit. Debt is increasing. How many people will know how to correctly identify edible cacti? I was thinking of my grandmother who survived the great depression. She has so much knowledge up there in her brain. How to can tomatoes for the winter. How to store potatoes in holes to keep them fresh during the cold months. How to stuff the gaps in the logs of a cabin with mud to stay warm. Countness numbers of the x-generation, y-generation, and even the baby boomers are going to die, simply because they do not know how to survive without money and a job and a grocery store. I feel lucky. I can go out into the woods and find an animal and kill it and skin it and cook it and eat it. Many of my friends can't even eat meat with bones in it because it reminds them it was alive.
- Xichekolas 17y ago> "Countness numbers of the x-generation, y-generation, and even the baby boomers are going to die, simply because they do not know how to survive without money and a job and a grocery store." What? The only reason people would need to be able to hunt their own food in our society is if that society totally and utterly collapsed. And not just a collapse of the government... I'm talking mass-fatality pandemic, nuclear holocaust, or zombies. Something that wipes out any local community that could band together and support itself. If anything that drastic happens, the average gen X'er/Y'er has a lot more to worry about than finding food (which can be scavenged for a while)... like surviving the initial die out, or roaming bands of looters.
- pj 17y agoNot where I live. 5% of my state suffers from "food insecurity" which means they dont know where their next meal is coming from. I went on a field trip as a child through a state park and the game ranger warned us all, he said, "Don't poach deer kids. If you are hungry and your parents want to poach deer out of season, tell them to call me and we'll help." He wasn't saying this as a joke. Many families here do procure a lot of their meat from hunting and fishing. A white tail deer can give you 100 lbs of meat. Thats $300-400. Rabbits, squirrels, quail, dove. Commonly eaten around here and much cheaper than the meat section at Wal-Mart. Once, at wal-mart, I was checking out and a large family in front of us was buying chicken in ten pound bags and I could smell it -- it was cheap because it was rotten. It smelled foul. Thank goodness the check out lady smelled it too and told them to go grab a different bag. I think perhaps some had leaked out and tainted the outside of the bags. I actually do think that some people may starve. I asked my grandmother what her thoughts about the current financial situation, remember, she survived the great depression and she said, "I haven't seen anything like this." It's worse than we realize. Our faith in the system has collapsed. We don't believe in it anymore. That isn't something that can be fixed by flooding society with more imaginary paper money.
- PStamatiou 17y agoSometimes I like to think I do.. I have some passive income streams that pay rent.
- Xichekolas 17y agoMoney is merely a means to decouple the promise of payback from the promiser. Without money, you have to trust Joe to help you can tomatoes next fall since you helped him plow his field. With money, Joe can pay you to plow his field, and you can pay Sally to help you can tomatoes (because Joe moved to another town).
- dasil003 17y agoSure, but the emergent effects of money on society--especially with computerized banking--are quite a bit more significant than the fundamental innovation. Computers are merely for shuffling 1s and 0s around.
- Xichekolas 17y agoWell yeah. My comment was originally much longer, pointing out some of the things that money enabled. But I was responding to his view that 'money is an illusion'. I was trying to point out that it's not an 'illusion' (whatever that means), and we didn't just make it up for fun or so some people could be rich and others poor. It serves a fundamentally valuable purpose.
- endtime 17y ago>Computers are merely for shuffling 1s and 0s around. If you're going to say that about computers, you might as well say it about people. As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, but same story.
- NonEUCitizen 17y agobut with money, in each instance, the recipient has to pay 1/3 or so to the government.
- mhartl 17y agoThe subject of the story confuses money and wealth. He is not the first to do so, nor will he be the last.
- erlanger 17y agoIf everyone did this, he wouldn't have a thing to eat. I'm not knocking it, but it's something to think about. But that brings us to a more important point: Why does this guy have to forage to survive without money? Shouldn't he be able to save up, buy a few acres and grow his own resources? Nope, because of the absurdity known as the property tax (er, I mean "protection racket").
- pj 17y agoRight! It's impossible to own land in America. You merely rent it from the government. But also, he uses the library for internet access. I wonder if he considers that "government dole."
- mikeytown2 17y agoNot entirely true, If you own patented land then I believe that is tax free forever; at least under current US law.
- jonah 17y agoWow thanks. I had to look that up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_patent
- miles 17y agoFrom the Wikipedia article cited by Jonah: "A Land Patent is permanent and cannot be changed by the government after its issuance except in case of fraud, clerical error, or failure to pay taxes." (emphasis mine)
- natrius 17y agoI have no problem with people having to pay to maintain ownership of their land. Land ownership is a useful farce. Every land owner is in possession of land that was "stolen", for lack of a more precise word. If we're going to protect people's right to claim land according to the "finders keepers" rule, we should ensure that the owner is making good use of that land. Property taxation helps to do that. (With many side effects, like exacerbating gentrification. That could be fixed, though.)
- seldo 17y agoSo, um, he's a homeless guy who lives in a cave. Congratulations, homeless guy, you have somehow managed to convince everybody that instead of a homeless guy, you're a cultural revolutionary. NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive me if this doesn't sound like the future of mankind.
- erlanger 17y agoAnother example that with this government (and most) it's their way or the highway. I'm with you -- there's nothing ideal about it. But it's certainly noble.
- nir 17y ago"NB: you live in a fucking cave. Forgive me if this doesn't sound like the future of mankind" Forgive me if I say this sounds like a Reddit comment :) Why so negative? He doesn't harm or tries to convert. There is a difference between him and most homeless in that he actually chose this lifestyle, is able to quit it if he wants, and seems to be generally pretty happy with it.
- seldo 17y agoIt did occur to me as I typed it that it would get downmodded for the belligerent phrasing, but I was post-gym and blood sugar was low, which makes me grumpy. I think the reason it irritates me is, as others have mentioned, that he doesn't really live without money. He just lives without his own money, and relies on the kindness of strangers to provide him with things he needs. He's not self-sufficient and he's not bartering for everything he needs. He's just an eloquent beggar.
- nir 17y agoFrom the article it seems he largely lives on stuff that he finds in nature or dumpsters. Occasionally he may be invited to a meal. Obviously he wouldn't have canned spam without a modern economy, but he would probably have a lot more wildlife to hunt & fish so it balances out. The media is full of stories of the hyper-consuming celebs and millionaires, so it's nice to see a story on someone from the other extreme once in a while.
- krisneuharth 17y agoThis story reminded me of a grown-up version of the children's book "My Side Of The Mountain" for some reason. I love this kind of story because it reminds me that we could all do well to learn to live with less, and that there are some that do.
- erlanger 17y agoOn the other hand, I found On the Far Side of the Mountain to be depressing.
- korch 17y agoI highly respect what this guy is doing, even though I don't yet have the guts to live like this myself. As Tyler Durden said, "the things you own end up owning you." The best I can do is smugly re-read Thoreau while sitting in a Starbucks and twittering from my iPhone in debt up to my eyeballs. What I appreciate most about guys like this is how they make us face the mirror. Like fish unaware of the water in which they swim, American culture is so hyper-materialist that great numbers of us cannot even conceive of this guy's reasoning. Commercial interests can't have good, little fear-driven, obedient consumers dropping off the grid now can they? The spiritual dimension to his lifestyle choice also deserves consideration. The article says he lived in a Buddhist monastery in Asia for several years up until 1999. He's obviously not even comparable to the typical crazy, drug-addled de-humanized homeless people we encounter in our day to day lives in our own urban zoo cages.
- Arun2009 17y agoReminded me a little of Diogenes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope). As Buddha said, suffering ends when our craving for material things ends. We don't have to be as extremely hardcore as the dude above, but following this philosophy in a limited pragmatic manner I think can be very liberating.
- kragen 17y agoYou're right! I hadn't read about Diogenes in detail before. Thanks for the link! It does sound like they have quite a bit in common.
- rjett 17y agoInteresting article but it would have been even more interesting if the author had chosen to go more in depth about his daily activities and how Suelo copes with loneliness and boredom. IMO, these problems would be much more difficult than the physical hardships he faces.
- zackattack 17y agoLoneliness and boredom are not real issues. They're issues fabricated by the mind. With presence, they disappear. That's the whole point of his lifestyle: presence. The reason he dislikes money is because money indicates a distaste of the present and an obsession with the future. I recommend reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now for more information.
- sethb 17y agoLoneliness is definitely a real issue. The fact that this guy keeps a blog and Eckhart Tolle expects an audience shows the value they place on social contact.
- zackattack 17y agoIt's only an issue if you place importance on it.
- philwelch 17y agoHow exactly does one avoid placing importance on the company of others?
- kragen 17y agoYou should read his blog. It sounds like he's pretty social and has a lot to think about.
- blhack 17y agoMoney is a unit of work. It is an almost universally accepted abstraction of the "worth" of somebody's time. You could replace "dollars" with "bananas" if you wanted to, it is irrelevant.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoThis is far from surviving. This is coming up with excuses and going to the extreme. Anyone with a psychology background want to diagnose this?
- c0nsilience 17y ago"Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present." Spoken like a man who doesn't know how to manage money. Good article, though. It shows what copping out looks like.
- known 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_subsistence_techniques http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_subsistence_techniques to live without money.