Meet the Man Who Lives Without Money

This is a typical response to the spiritually-dead Western lifestyle, where even the desire to resist commodification is commodified. But this person admitted he missed beer with his friends. Ur of Sumeria, often credited with being the birthplace of beer, and one of the earliest “accepted” cradles of civilization, possibly grew from beer.

Money is ridiculous. I think things don’t exist in a vacuum. It is difficult to imagine an orange without the tree that grew it, without the ocean water carried high into the atmosphere and dumped down upon the village of the migrant worker who picked it, to the star dust from whence everything came. Money abstracts the notion of a value-exchange upon aggregates of mass and energy.

I hate money. I think money was a bad idea. The concept of time was required by ancient banks in order to table results of economic transactions, to record the inflow of debt, and to know when to collect and wrest from the lives of the already needy a few more clams. Money fuels money, so a lack thereof leads to a downward spiral where needs intersect with law. When the bread is on the shelf and no one has the money to buy it, then revolt will follow. Disparity, in all of it’s self-aggrandizing glory (why wouldn’t capitalism clap itself on the back when any problem with capitalism can be solved by…capitalism) is what money does. This is what money is. It’s bullshit.

So, if you can get over the loss of beer, you don’t need money. Or, you could learn to make your own beer. I hope Mark Boyle learns to craft beer and uses the money to turn urban wastelands back into green spaces. Until then, I find his choice to live without money a very sober and delightful choice.