[kragen]

In the article, it says, "He moved to Moab and worked at a women's shelter for five years. He wanted to help people, but getting paid for it seemed dishonest—how real was help that demanded recompense?"

Looking at his blog, it sounds like he still does that kind of thing, doesn't it? He wouldn't have to work many shifts to compensate for the resources he draws from the rest of society. Also, he writes things that other people enjoy reading, which has traditionally been considered productive work, and he's presumably performing some kind of minimal service just by diminishing the waste stream.

So I don't think it's quite true that he's contributing nothing to society.

You write, "Articles about guys like this make me kind of angry." Well, that's not surprising. His value system is clearly very different from yours, and anger is a normal human reaction when you're confronted with someone behaving according to a different value system. It takes a lot of maturity to get past that point.