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by ad404b8a372f2b9 1528 days ago
How do you function without currency? That is wild.
2 comments

Just wanted to follow up on your comment and link to a few older comments where I expand on how I do this.

The basic premise is that I try to live off of society's excesses without pulling new things out of the supply chain. So I tend to sleep in public spaces, eat food that's left over from others, wear hand-me-down clothes or "shop" in free stores, and so on. When I need to travel, I ask around for someone driving the same way.

For a few areas of my life, I still need new things, such as web hosting, occasional bus ticket, etc. For this, I allow others to interface with the currency system for me, and contribute to them in other ways, such as helping them with whatever they need help with.

As far as the bigger picture, I contribute by constantly looking for and doing things which need help doing, such as: cleaning up trash where it's not cleaned up, lending an ear to someone who needs to talk, teaching what I know to others, and so on.

I really resonate with the Steve Jobs quote that everything (man-made) around us was created by someone who had less knowledge and understanding of the world than we do today (because they did it in the past) and there's every reason to believe that each of us can do better if we put our mind to it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30321009

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043346

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042841

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043104

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042864

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043130

I started at being all-currency, the typical job-apartment-cat type scenario, and I gradually found replacements for each things I needed to function, sometimes with an uncomfortable transition in between.

If you want details, there are some in my comment history.