9 ms·

The Man Who Quit Money: An Interview with Daniel Suelo

34 points by bemmu 12y ago

grecy 12y ago
Interesting read. I'm reminded of Chris McCandless [1] of Into The Wild fame. I was so inspired by Chris' story I quit my job, sold all my stuff and spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I made a trip to the now infamous bus in Alaska [2] during my trip. While Chris and myself have never gone moneyless like the article, I find myself tending towards that every day. I now hunt all my own meat and fish, grow as much of my own vegetables as I can, work on my own car and bike, etc. etc. I try hard to not pay for anything I can do for myself. I'm also once again disillusioned with work and consumption, so in a couple of months I'm heading out to drive around Africa for a couple of years, then all going well I'll drive Europe->SE Asia. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless [2] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus
- urda 12y ago
  > I was so inspired by Chris' story I hope only up to and not including the part of starving to death after eating the wrong thing. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- bglazer 12y ago
  Perhaps this is overly prying, but do you have a family?
  - grecy 12y ago
    No wife or children, no. That being said, I met tons of people on the road traveling with their family for extended periods of time - tons of tons of people are driving around the world with kids. I had a pizza on the streets of Cartegena, Colombia with one French family and one of the kids said "We hate homeschooling..... we love worldschooling!" Friends of mine paused their trip for a few months while they had a baby in Santiago, Chile, then kept driving :)
    - bglazer 12y ago
      Interesting! I've always wondered how people managed to have families while traveling the world. I very much prefer to travel alone, because being stuck miles from home with an unhappy partner is a special kind of hell. It can also be quite lonely to be alone on the road though. Good luck in your travels!
vinceguidry 12y ago
This reads a lot less like a scathing critique of modernity as it does yet another affluent Westerner looking for self-actualization by excoriating everything that made him rich and idle. He thinks he's not rich and idle any more just because he gave away his life savings? Whether he wants to believe it or not, he's the beneficiary of modern largesse. He doesn't take government handouts or whatever, but the only reason he can have the sorts of thoughts he's having about nature and religion is because he was a Western-style education and enough free time to develop a philosophy. He can dumpster dive, he can spend time on the Internet and at the library figuring out how to live off grid. It's easy to take for granted the careful, focused effort of millions of people over thousands of years to give him all of this. The knowledge he finds in the library isn't cheap, even though he's not paying for it. Because I guarantee you, off-grid living wouldn't be nearly as much fun without it. I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer, earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world.
- user24 12y ago
  Great explanation of priviledge.
- urda 12y ago
  > I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer, earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world. This is such a great statement. These articles when they come around make finance, business, and work seem like such an "evil" thing, and should be beneath people. But god forbid you tell them how dumpster diving and just being a vagabond can also be a burden to everyone else in society.
  - 12y ago
duncancarroll 12y ago
"Money only exists because two or more people believe that it does." Er.. I get the point he's trying to make here, but I think what he's not seeing is that currencies basically spontaneously emerge out of the necessity of conducting trade. So, sure, you can try to pretend the construct doesn't exist, but you're just closing your eyes to the problem because you don't happen to like it.
- RodericDay 12y ago
  Do you have a source for that? The origins of money?
jayfuerstenberg 12y ago
I wouldn't want to be a dumpster diver anymore than the next person but I applaud this person for actually having a view outside of rampant consumerism and following through on it.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Meh, Ted Kaczynski went farther.
ucaetano 12y ago
"he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah" - Which are wilderness regions because the entire population moved to cities. "scavenges roadkill" - Which exists because people built roads and people drive there. "pulls food from dumpsters" - Which exists because people built the dumpsters and throw food into it. "sometimes fed by friends and strangers" - No comments. The headline should be: "The Man Who Quit Money But Depends On It".
- drivers99 12y ago
  I actually read [the first third of] the book "The Man Who Quit Money." He only accepts what is freely given as long as there are no strings attached. For example, he doesn't take from soup kitchens because the workers there are required to do it as part of their jobs. I'm not sure what part of that you think he's ignoring. He's not trying to live as if the rest of the world doesn't exist, but to prevent others from controlling him via money and vice versa.
  - ucaetano 12y ago
    So he didn't quit money, he quit being controlled by money. But still relies on people who make money to survive.
- CPLX 12y ago
  > Which are wilderness regions because the entire population moved to cities. I was with you on the other parts but this doesn't really make sense. You can blame modernity for many things but creating more wilderness doesn't seem like one of them.
  - ucaetano 12y ago
    What do you think would happen if the entire population left the cities and moved to the countryside?
aetherson 12y ago
Mr. Suelo is certainly free to pursue his own happiness in whatever way he wishes to. But his personal decisions do not provide a compelling template for changes to any significant fraction of the population. We can't all -- we can't even 1% of us -- live in caves and eat roadkill. Heck, my wife and I can't do that if we want to have our daughter and not face, say, greater than 10% risk that my wife will die in the process. And the rest of what he's saying seems to be, "Just treat each other like you would family; do things for no reward and take what you need." That's not a novel approach. It doesn't scale up well. The major experiments with trying to scale it up resulted in the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people in the 20th Century.
vaadu 12y ago
How do people in these situations deal with the government? Obamacare has mandates and one commenter mentioned a minimal existence with a motor vehicle, which means license, insurance, inspection and registration requirements. All requiring money which means some source of income. In some places living completely off grid is illegal - you are required to be connected and pay for utilities.
- jarin 12y ago
  If you make less than $9,500/year you're exempt from the Obamacare penalty.
cholmon 12y ago
"When I left home for college, I studied other religions and found that all the world's major religions teach giving up possessions and doing not for the sake of reward. If all the separated witnesses are saying the same thing, it must be true." That's kind of...simplistic.
- carapace 12y ago
  The important truths are all very very simple. "He who works for the fruits of his labor is a miser." ~Krishna, in The Gita

34 points by bemmu 12y ago

grecy 12y ago

Interesting read. I'm reminded of Chris McCandless [1] of Into The Wild fame. I was so inspired by Chris' story I quit my job, sold all my stuff and spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I made a trip to the now infamous bus in Alaska [2] during my trip. While Chris and myself have never gone moneyless like the article, I find myself tending towards that every day. I now hunt all my own meat and fish, grow as much of my own vegetables as I can, work on my own car and bike, etc. etc. I try hard to not pay for anything I can do for myself. I'm also once again disillusioned with work and consumption, so in a couple of months I'm heading out to drive around Africa for a couple of years, then all going well I'll drive Europe->SE Asia. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless [2] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus

urda 12y ago
> I was so inspired by Chris' story I hope only up to and not including the part of starving to death after eating the wrong thing. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
bglazer 12y ago
Perhaps this is overly prying, but do you have a family?
- grecy 12y ago
  No wife or children, no. That being said, I met tons of people on the road traveling with their family for extended periods of time - tons of tons of people are driving around the world with kids. I had a pizza on the streets of Cartegena, Colombia with one French family and one of the kids said "We hate homeschooling..... we love worldschooling!" Friends of mine paused their trip for a few months while they had a baby in Santiago, Chile, then kept driving :)
  - bglazer 12y ago
    Interesting! I've always wondered how people managed to have families while traveling the world. I very much prefer to travel alone, because being stuck miles from home with an unhappy partner is a special kind of hell. It can also be quite lonely to be alone on the road though. Good luck in your travels!

vinceguidry 12y ago

This reads a lot less like a scathing critique of modernity as it does yet another affluent Westerner looking for self-actualization by excoriating everything that made him rich and idle. He thinks he's not rich and idle any more just because he gave away his life savings? Whether he wants to believe it or not, he's the beneficiary of modern largesse. He doesn't take government handouts or whatever, but the only reason he can have the sorts of thoughts he's having about nature and religion is because he was a Western-style education and enough free time to develop a philosophy. He can dumpster dive, he can spend time on the Internet and at the library figuring out how to live off grid. It's easy to take for granted the careful, focused effort of millions of people over thousands of years to give him all of this. The knowledge he finds in the library isn't cheap, even though he's not paying for it. Because I guarantee you, off-grid living wouldn't be nearly as much fun without it. I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer, earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world.

user24 12y ago
Great explanation of priviledge.
urda 12y ago
> I don't mind if you want to go off-grid. I had ideas myself about doing that. I read about van-dwelling, building my own small house on a trailer, earthships. If that's what you feel you need to do, by all means go play in the dirt, get it out of your system. Just don't pretend it's morally superior just because you've failed to fully appreciate everything that brought you to that point to where you could renounce the modern world. This is such a great statement. These articles when they come around make finance, business, and work seem like such an "evil" thing, and should be beneath people. But god forbid you tell them how dumpster diving and just being a vagabond can also be a burden to everyone else in society.
- 12y ago

duncancarroll 12y ago

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

RodericDay 12y ago
Do you have a source for that? The origins of money?

jayfuerstenberg 12y ago

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

icebraining 12y ago
Meh, Ted Kaczynski went farther.

ucaetano 12y ago

"he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah" - Which are wilderness regions because the entire population moved to cities. "scavenges roadkill" - Which exists because people built roads and people drive there. "pulls food from dumpsters" - Which exists because people built the dumpsters and throw food into it. "sometimes fed by friends and strangers" - No comments. The headline should be: "The Man Who Quit Money But Depends On It".

drivers99 12y ago
I actually read [the first third of] the book "The Man Who Quit Money." He only accepts what is freely given as long as there are no strings attached. For example, he doesn't take from soup kitchens because the workers there are required to do it as part of their jobs. I'm not sure what part of that you think he's ignoring. He's not trying to live as if the rest of the world doesn't exist, but to prevent others from controlling him via money and vice versa.
- ucaetano 12y ago
  So he didn't quit money, he quit being controlled by money. But still relies on people who make money to survive.
CPLX 12y ago
> Which are wilderness regions because the entire population moved to cities. I was with you on the other parts but this doesn't really make sense. You can blame modernity for many things but creating more wilderness doesn't seem like one of them.
- ucaetano 12y ago
  What do you think would happen if the entire population left the cities and moved to the countryside?

aetherson 12y ago

Mr. Suelo is certainly free to pursue his own happiness in whatever way he wishes to. But his personal decisions do not provide a compelling template for changes to any significant fraction of the population. We can't all -- we can't even 1% of us -- live in caves and eat roadkill. Heck, my wife and I can't do that if we want to have our daughter and not face, say, greater than 10% risk that my wife will die in the process. And the rest of what he's saying seems to be, "Just treat each other like you would family; do things for no reward and take what you need." That's not a novel approach. It doesn't scale up well. The major experiments with trying to scale it up resulted in the deaths of tens or hundreds of millions of people in the 20th Century.

vaadu 12y ago

How do people in these situations deal with the government? Obamacare has mandates and one commenter mentioned a minimal existence with a motor vehicle, which means license, insurance, inspection and registration requirements. All requiring money which means some source of income. In some places living completely off grid is illegal - you are required to be connected and pay for utilities.

jarin 12y ago
If you make less than $9,500/year you're exempt from the Obamacare penalty.

cholmon 12y ago

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

carapace 12y ago
The important truths are all very very simple. "He who works for the fruits of his labor is a miser." ~Krishna, in The Gita