The author seems quite selfish and manipulative of others. He chooses to live this way because it allows him to avoid social interactions with others. Unlike true poverty he could easily utilize both his relational capital (call parents, get cash) and educational capital (had the ability to get a professional job and turned it down) these are simply not options for people who are actually poor. He clearly wants more from life, as long as someone gives it to him on his own terms.
There seems to be a lot of baggage from his childhood and subtle resentment to his parents. I'm concerned for his mental health. If this is truly just his personal choice though, I really question the relationship he has with his children and his justifications for how he provides the bare minimum for them when her could certainly do more. For someone so focused on frugality and minimalism his discussion about his children was focused completely on materialism, gift giving and the fact that a little under half of his monthly income came from government programs targeted at children. I kept expecting to read something about how he connects with them in emotionally meaningful ways or helps them grow and thrive. That love and care just didn't seem there.
Ultimately I worry about the kids, specifically their emotional and developmental needs. Their dad is so focused on himself and how he wants to live. That sounds like a very tough home to grow up in, even if the author was spectacularly rich.
I would hazard that these are closer to your projections - he does mention having more time to spend socialising with his kids. You were expecting him to allay your fears about what a lack of financial resources might do. The article isn't a celebration of things he does with his kids, but an exploration of having less material wealth, hence the focus, no?
I know several families like this, generally hippies with an educated middle-class background, but without the desire to sacrifice themselves for money and it's trappings (and benefits). Their kids are intelligent and interesting people, and as far as I can see, have been given life as an open canvas, not as a paint-by-numbers exercise, which so many others experience.
> Unlike true poverty he could easily utilize both his relational capital (call parents, get cash) and educational capital (had the ability to get a professional job and turned it down) these are simply not options for people who are actually poor.
This is true, but the author doesn't pretend otherwise, or hide this fact.
That you accuse him of being selfish I think says more about you than him. I went to a Waldorf school once upon a time, so I knew a lot of kids who grew up in a similar-ish way - lots of siblings, little money, low tech and with unconventional and somewhat iconoclastic parents who had rejected the middle-class lifestyle (which they, like OP, could easily have had access to through relational capital). None of those kids that I know of have done especially poorly. Most of them have turned out very different from their parents, from becoming social media celebrities to getting involved with MLM-like schemes. But I don't think any of them are bitter about their upbringing, or alienated from their "selfish" parents.
Although I'm not the original commentator, I think selfish is a fair characterization. When you have kids you should want to give them the best opportunities possible. If they end up wanting to make the choices the author made, that is fine, but at least they would have the option of living differently too.
I'm not saying that it's impossible they will have those opportunities, but it's less likely than if they had access to the best schools - which the article states they don't. Maybe the author tries to make up for this in other ways, but IMO it's unlikely to afford the same opportunities. Plus, as GP mentions, there's no mention in this article of any of that.
> None of those kids that I know of have done especially poorly. Most of them have turned out very different from their parents, from becoming social media celebrities to getting involved with MLM-like schemes.
Getting involved in MLM sounds like doing poorly to me. At least it is morally questionable. Maybe they're doing well financially.
As I said in the other comment, I think this guy knows his own situation (which is probably very different from yours) well. He's giving his kids an upbringing that is good in its own way, that gives them experiences and opportunities not many others have. It's very questionable if "prestigious schools before the age of 18" is as optimal as you think in Sweden. It's good to have strengths not many other have.
My "social media star" friend is a school nurse who connects extremely well - and constructively - to the youth generation she serves through her job. I would think that her uncommon background (including a lot more younger siblings than is common in this country, and all with an individualistic streak) prepared her somewhat for that job. I'm sure that if she had instead been given what you and the person I replied to see as an "optimal" background, she would be less prepared for it.
As for the MLM guy, to be fair, I don't know if he's still into that, he just pitched some questionable cell phone provider once when we were in engineering school together. I do know he's better off than me materially today. I mentioned him to illustrate that the apple can fall further from the tree, too.
The whole article is absurd; he has 1500 dollars of monthly income without having to pay rent. He will spend maybe 200 in groceries a month. His government provides him free health care and free education to his children. He has public transportation and bike infrastructure literally everywhere. I'd say this article makes me sick in the stomach but unfortunately I have gotten used to this.
I don't understand, then: why did you say that the article was absurd, and that it would make you feel sick, if not for the fact that "unfortunately I have gotten used to this"?
I think what angers many people in the comments is the fact that OP is not poverty-stricken, he's a downshifter. Nothing wrong with that, just no reason to conflate the two. Downshifting is a completely different situation and lifestyle.
Since I came from a very poorish developing country, i can't understand some Europians contempt for wealth. I still lived in the poor country but i am making much more money than the OP and I am proud of it. They have this attitude of 'oh, i don't care about money' prabably they think their government is gonna be always be able to support them and their economy will always be good. Things change. These people will likely regret when they put their family in a fragile position.
Or maybe, like you, they understand their own position quite well.
As I wrote in the reply above, I know many now adult children of similar parents. They're doing fine.
I also know some whose parents had more of an attitude like you, that this could all be gone soon and you need to resolutely pursue money and status to be safe when that happens. Usually kids of immigrants. They seem to have much more strained relationships to their parents - and not that much better outcomes on average.
Where you are, maybe your advice is sound. But odds are that OP understands their own situation better than you who aren't in it; and that in Sweden you would be barking up the wrong tree, guarding against the wrong threats.
If you live out in the woods, grow much of your own food and don't do many things that require money, I would argue you are quite well equipped to handle the most likely societal catastrophes.
What would be even better is knowing a few useful trades.
And if the government or economy fails, children are more or less the traditional sort of "insurance" against penury in old age.
Just because he doesn't brag about connecting emotionally with his children you assume he's not a loving father?
I think that's an unwarranted fear considering he's got more time for his kids than most parents.
His upbringing/mental health is probably not without flaw, but seriously whos is? We've got such narrow minded ideas about what a healthy life looks like nowadays. I blame advertisement.
It's interesting that, indirectly, you managed to take away from the article two very basic things about Swedes: (1) Yes, they will do anything to avoid human contact; dialog and human connection are two extremely emotionally expensive things for them. And (2) yes, love and care mean totally different things here than most other people from other countries are used to.
As a south american who lives in Sweden since a few years, this article is offensive and preposterous, exactly the kind of disconnected, absurd surreal nonsense that I have come to expect from the Swedes around me. The fact that this person honestly thinks the word "poor" applies to him is baffling. He chose to live a simple life, and even after trying very hard to screw everything up, he still can not manage to do so. Because that's how Sweden works: you can't be super rich, but you can also not be really poor.
So he doesn't eat meat regularly because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. Yes, some types of meat are very expensive here, but other more common types are as cheap as Broccoli or Cheese. The true reason is the one he let slip: he doesn't know how to cook it. And more importantly: he doesn't care, because he has access to a lot of other good stuff that he can just put in a frying pan for 5 minutes and eat it (Swedes have an extremely low level of requirement for food; they will eat raw vegetables or crappy kebab-based fast food everyday if it saves them a few minutes). A really poor person does not have access to any food without busting their ass off 12 hours a day in some horrible, exploitative job that nobody else wants to do.
Oh, he doesn't drive because it's expensive? Bull%&#$. He has an m-f-ing electric bike. Tell a poor person from Colombia or Venezuela that a poor person in Sweden has an electric bike. They will laugh on your face, then ask you to please take them with you to Sweden. It's preposterous. The true? They don't need a car. I have been here for 6 years, with two kids, and I only bought my first car last month. All cities have bike lanes everywhere, which are safe because the cars actually respect them, and the public transportation is amazing. How far do you think a person can go in São Paulo or Bogotá in a bike before they are run over by a car? Oh, yeah, and also because in those cities you have live 50km away from your actual office if you want to pay less than 80% of your salary in rent.
This guy has the guts to say 1500 dollars a month is "ridiculously low for such a large family". I cannot keep reading. That's enough.
Lol, take a deep breath. The article is nonsense. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they have maybe 200,000 in the bank to live off the gains. Welfare state aside, that places them far above the 99th percentile in the world.
Labeling themselves as poor is an ignorant and immature bid for attention. It’s like a trust fund kid seriously talking about how they made it through their travels with “just a backpack”. It could literally be a joke.
I would love to tell them to grow up. Sitting on 200,000 is rich even in Sweden. Sounds like they’re just lazy as shit.
Downshifting is nothing an upshifting immigrant like yourself should be expected to understand. Keep on keeping on dude, show them lazy basterds how it's done!
I strongly disagree with the premise. This isn't proper poverty, this is a borderline agrarian lifestyle utilizing various allowances as well as support structures intended for the poor. The author has a personal safety net, as well as a social one supporting them, and took advantage of lax property enforcement to build a house on state land. If you have means and options like they do, you aren't dirt poor. This isn't poverty, this is conscientious objection. Many small farmers live this way. At any point they could stop and have a normal life if they chose. That's not poverty, merely poverty tourism.
As such I don't think documenting this lifestyle serves as useful as advice for other poor people.
This isn't a commentary on the ethics or merits of their life either. Good for them.
Completely agree, the author is describing frugality, not the experience of being dirt poor.
> Each month the very generous Swedish government gives us no less than 600 dollars in child allowance. We also have some other incomes from book sales and irregular jobs. And we do have savings, larger than we like to admit, which in good years give capital income and in less good years give a cushion to take from. All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure
Author does not get it whatsoever. Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings. You have no or barely any money coming in from the government, not $600 a month just in child benefits. You don't have passive income in book sales or investments. If anything is broken, you cannot afford to fix it, including things like your utilities and appliances. You are one wrong decision from ending up homeless, which in turn is one wrong decision away from death. Subsequently, every decision you make is run through a lens of extreme anxiety. Your entire life is a fight for survival and you have no-one to turn to. That is dirt poor.
"Still you'll never get it right
Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the walls
You can call your Dad and he'll stop it all, yeah."
This author has multiple safety nets. Until they're stripped away, he has no idea what dirt poor looks like.
> All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure
Yeah, I doubt that takes into account external things like school lunches and neighbors giving things to the “poor” children. With “poor” meaning unfortunate and not poverty stricken.
Every time I hear of a school closing for whatever reason they always state that the food program will remain open because truly poor people rely on it out of absolute necessity. Nobody wants their kids to go hungry and that goes double for the collective “we”.
Now that I think about it my sister’s husband grew up dirt poor, and not because his grandparents(?) chose that lifestyle, and spent his entire youth working as hard as he could to not be poor. Like commuting 3 hours every day to attend a “good” university and never looking back. Dude absolutely hates poverty.
That's great to hear, I think that's extremely important. Here in Belgium, a large percentage (20-ish if I'm not mistaken) of the children lunch very poorly at school because their parents can't afford it, don't care or for some other reason. Providing kids with at least 1 healthy, nutritious meal on a week day is at least a step in the right direction and I will be happy if my tax euros would be spent on that.
> Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings
Exactly.
I hate to say it, because I've often heard it coming from very financially privileged people as an accusation towards poor people, but in essence being poor is a state of mind, meaning it's not necessarily the lack of money and financial means that gets to you (even though that's not ideal, of course), it is the constant thought of not having money and financial means that eats at your soul.
I know because me and my parents stumbled upon a period of quite severe lack of financial resources about 20-25 years ago, in my adolescence years, and even though I've personally and thankfully managed to get out of it (thanks to free uni education) the feeling is still there, I suspect it will always be there till the day I'll be no more.
And, yes, whenever someone writes poverty tourism pieces like this one Common People is the first song I think about. Often times I come back listening to it on YT and watching the video just because.
> Your entire life is a fight for survival and you have no-one to turn to. That is dirt poor.
You are correct, and it's basically impossible for a Swedish citizen to be dirt poor - we have enough safety nets to prevent it.
Still, we have our share of people living in the streets; mostly due to poorly thought through mental illness reforms and drugs. And I bet at least some illegal immigrants have it pretty rough as well.
Yes. The piece from Resident Contrarian hit hard because it was about being trapped in poverty.
Choosing to live with low consumption is laudable. I grew up in a thrifty household, though nowhere near so thrifty as the author's, and using less was much better for all of us. However, spending very little money but having a safety net and the opportunity to leave is the opposite of being trapped.
It's like a controlled retreat versus a rout. When you're choosing to be poor you have time and slack to make the choice. You might choose to live in a nice but remote house in the forest, which you may actually own outright (the article has no mention of rent or mortgage), and collect wood and grow your own food. When you're forced out of your shitty apartment because you lost your job or your landlord kicked you out on some flimsy pretext, as has happened to a few of my friends, then you've got two options: either find someone to give you a bit of breathing room by loaning you money/space on the couch/etc., or get an even shittier apartment for a worse price.
Right. I got a feeling that the OP is OK with their situation because they feel rather safe in their life conditions, there's an undertone "well if I _really really_ have to, I can take that job, or call my middle class parents, or the government will step in". None of these things are default for most poor people. When you're trapped in the cycle of poverty, you have one chance to get it "right" and you don't get a "phone a friend" option.
This aspect of poverty just mangles your mental state really. Suppose, if you're lucky, you manage to live an OK, accident-free, healthy life while poor, but the anxiety about "what ifs" is going to haunt you all the way.
Folks which have been poor and managed to escape it, are not driven by consumerism (not as the main driver at least), but by a sense of security.
Perhaps this article can be actually instructive for a poor person then? Say you used to be trapped in poverty, but making it a choice reduces your psychological overhead and helps long term.
You're right about everything you said, minus the "poverty tourism", I think that's a little excessively condescending.
Poverty is the wrong word for this. Someone else in this thread said it better than I can come up with: poverty is lack of options. If this lifestyle is a choice it isn't poverty. I agree with that. No matter how simple you choose to make your life, if you've got options you're doing good.
i think the "poverty" definition is suspect. i recall 20k annual being declared the poverty line, and i would be able to live way beyond my needs if i had that much revenue.
unfortunately we train most kids to be dependent on government conventions, and dont provide the tools, and opportunity, to live independently of this regime.
this is a dependency trap.
considering your comment, i identify as tech-agrarian.
This is an interesting article, though I sense a complex mixture of regret, rationalization, and hurt pride that makes me wonder whether the author shouldn't just have taken the software developer job in Stockholm.
It doesn't read like the author was making deliberate life choices. That part of it resonates well with me since I also didn't really set a clear goal for myself and instead took one university job after another, and now I'm 51 and relatively poor, too. Contrary to the author, who seems to be yet undecided, I believe that was a mistake and I'm seeking to correct it.
What I'm missing in this article and in many of the comments is the #1 reason for working: Being able to afford a decent life style. That is the main reason why most people work. They do it for money, so they don't have to worry about issues like rent & bills and can buy nice things and afford holidays. It's neither for vocation nor because it gives them status and class, they really just want the money. Being poor is bad because everything in our society revolves around money.
As German musician Rio Reiser wrote: Money doesn't make you happy, it just calms your nerves.
I enjoyed the article but felt the author is over-egging his frugality past the point of actual meanness. I find that money generally arrives at the level one mentally expects it to, and while he makes a point of saying he's not consuming, he still is, albeit at a low level, by picking through everyone's scraps, which can be as time consuming as putting a bit more thought into earning more for things like buying gifts for his children better than recycled cast-offs or obliging grandparents to deal with it. It's admirable, but he's still chosen to have three children more than the two that would have been the replacement level for him and his partner, hence everyone else on the planet and in Sweden is paying for them and subsidising him and his self-centred choices, because it doesn't seem like he's going to be paying any taxes to fund his life choices, so society will be picking up the tab. I don't really disrespect him for it, because a nice simple life is great to have, but he is performing the financial and environmental calculus without really holding much of a mirror up to himself.
I was not impressed by his level of frugalness, and indeed he seems to understate the role of the community he rejects in his family's success, and likewise refuses to give back to that community meaningfully for the favor.
That is the whole point of work and taxes, and I think some people fail to see the connection between work and everything that is around them. Not that I think we should all be wage slaves, but some humility when living off the work of others would seem fair.
The author refers to others being driven by class and status.
There are however also people who work because they want to contribute to society and provide purpose to others and themselves.
I was instilled by my parents with a principle that I should give back more than I take from society.
I am not judging the author, and I believe he and his wife love their kids, which is what matters most.
But as others have pointed out, his path in life is only possible in Europe or similar societies. Most other societies are in desperate need of more “providers” and those that “pull the cart”.
You take nothing from society, you take from the environment, with several abstraction layers, some slaves, some robots, some wage-slaves, some pure abstractions like companies.
Society is not involved in this. Actual society only exists with everyones spare time and only connects to others in there spare time.
Nobody chose to be part of this machine, they all march at gunpoint of each other. If they had a choice, they would abandon the whole thing, be the cog, that with a last pling vannished into some dark corner.
To project emotions on this machinery is miss guided. The cattle farm feeding robot, does not appreciate the subjective warmth emotions those it feeds project on it. To bring morals into the whole affair as a engineer, is a lack of judgment.
By the end of the article he says that, if he took the job, he'd work 40 hours a day and get nothing out of it that he does not already have. Fine; it's Sweden, I believe it (even though many people will say that this is exactly what is bringing Sweden down, but that's another subject). What baffles me is how a person can actually believe that this is an universal truth, some kind of take away message. Imagine being so alienated that you believe anyone anywhere can simply stop working and go live safely in the woods with 5 kids without starving to death.
The thing is, 'providers' are paid much less nowadays compared to the past. Like for how long should one work to afford a house? If society is making people's life worse by requiring to work more for less, why should people care to go extra?
I don't know, man. I guess, in the end, it's about fulfilling your purpose. For some, it is family. For others, it is to build. For yet others, it is to serve.
Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help.
But what's the alternative? I must fulfill to myself what I want to be. That's why everything.
> Overall, it's quite galling to see half of every dollar go to California and the US and see it spent on ineffectual and greedy people far less capable than me and with far less suffering than who I'd prefer to help.
So as well paid software engineers our overall tax rates as single filers in California reach about 40% at $400k but would only reach 50% at around $5M annual income.
That public services are so expensive to provide in California reflects the fact that housing costs are so expensive. Housing costs are where they are because of a mix of very high average wages and the ingrained nimbyism of existing home owners sitting on multi-million dollar homes.
At the end of the day median public sector workers like teachers need to earn enough to pay median housing costs. In the Bay Area we don't pay teachers anything like that. That makes me wonder whether I should move away when I have school age kids even if I am making absurd tech salaries here.
I relate to this quite a lot actually. Not the taking of charity type thing, I choose a somewhat similar lifestyle but I acknowledge that it is a choice, so I don't take freebies.
Particularly
> I would be working 40 hours a week and would get exactly nothing out of it, financially speaking.
I relate to that a lot. And all the stuff after it. I don't consider it poverty, just a simpler way of living. I cut my monthly expenses down by 80% by downsizing my life, and I actually got more space, freedom, independence, less neighbors, parking, silly rules and miscelanious bullshit.
I just don't understand people that choose to live and work in cities. It always felt like spinning my wheels, and the whole "diversity of food options" struck me as a little snotty. You like diversity because it enables you to pay brown people to cook for you? I just cook for myself. Mostly when people explain to me why they choose the rat race (as I see it) it strikes me as excuses to continue because they don't know how to do anything else, or theyre hung up on status in the eyes of people who don't give a shit about them, or they have a sunk cost fallacy relationship with their student loans or something like that.
I'll take a shack and a propane tank in the sticks to a nice apartment a 5 minute walk from whole foods any day. I'm lucky to have found a partner who is somewhat similar, and we intend to raise our children this way as well. Clean home, but a simple home. Clean clothes and healthy food, but simple. Life is about discovery, adventure, and creation, not consumption. I hope they're happy as adults about their childhoods, I think they will be.
People move to cities because of the people. They want to meet people who get them, to work on stuff together, and to find people wildly different to them.
I grew up in an isolated farming town and now live in London. Don't get me wrong, I _probably_ won't live here for the rest of my life, but I'm never moving back to my hometown. Not because it's uniquely bad, but because there was _so much_ stuff I wanted to do as a kid that I couldn't.
Like join a martial arts club. Or be a regular at a comic book store. To go to gigs, learn an unusual instrument, visit a zoo, and yes, try sushi.
The internet helped. Amazon helped quite a bit. But we're social animals, and having _your_ people around helps so much. And it's hard to do that when you live in the sticks.
Agree, cities are just plain more interesting for many.
I also believe that life should be about discovery and creating but I'm not exactly sure what can be discovered in a shack in a middle of nowhere unless you're very outdoorsy to begin with.
I grew up in a town that didn't have a movie theater (or any theater for that matter) or any type of music venue. Interesting books? Not available - low tech area, Internet was not a big thing yet, one bookstore in town, underfunded library filled with Soviet leftovers and some classics. I wanted to learn a language my grandparents spoke and I couldn't do it properly - no classes or speakers in the area. Hell, we didn't have a modern well-stocked grocery store for the majority of my childhood. When the first local pizzeria opened, people, myself included, were raving. I had only seen pizza on TV prior to that. I'm not going to even mention the social aspect and the loneliness.
These days I am an avid cinephile, I adore listening to live music, picked up two music instruments myself, go raves occasionally, have access to any book imaginable. Meet people, meet friends, start romantic relationships and maybe a family, pick new projects, new interests, etc.
Having varied food too is also cool. Sure, it's not the biggest thing it life but it adds so much flavor (pun intended). I've tried spinach for the first time when I was 23 when I moved to a city in a spinach-obsessed country. I had wanted to try it for years and finally got a chance. Loved it! Cook with it all the time now, spinach is great. :D I don't ever want to go back to a place where the opportunity for new experiences is scarce.
> You like diversity because it enables you to pay brown people to cook for you?
This comes across as a shallow understanding of food, culture and the makeup of cities. Cities are often very multi-cultural, all over the world, and not just for food. All races can enjoy that diversity and a somewhat fairer playing field (depending on exactly where you live).
Not to insult, but this sounds like cope and rationalization to me. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I come from a very, very diverse background and have a very diverse family, including my own personal one. There are 5 ethnicities in my immediate family. I've lived in a couple of very diverse cities most of my life. I've had all the food. It's nice, it's good. But when I hear people say they want to stay in a city due to "diversity" and usually mentioning Chinese take out and sushi, all I hear is a daft white person not realizing they're saying they like cities because the poor immigrants perform services that make their lives better.
The link you are imagining between enjoying varied food and hierarchical racism is an insane leap to make so generally. You must see that. It seems that you think cities only exist to serve white people but as is the point, cities are often diverse, which is why they can support restaurants that serve different cuisines.
This isn't a very productive discussion, we could both be imagining entirely different cities and situations. I live in Australia, so I can't speak for American cities. The diversity in cuisine here comes from our now decades of immigration policies, people tend to immigrate for study or work, both of those things concentrate in cities, voila you have massive mixed communities serving mixed cuisines to that now multi-generational mixed community.
> all I hear is a daft white person not realizing they're saying they like cities because the poor immigrants perform services that make their lives better.
Your comments and thought process is racist as fuck.
Do BIPOC not enjoy “ethnic food”? Do you not have any BIPOC friends? These “daft white person” you converse with what’s their educational background look like?
Lol I'm racist. For calling out upper middle class white people who treat immigrants as some resource to enjoy at their leisure. You sound defensive.
Immigrants usually don't leave their homelands to move to a foreign country to eat the food. Usually they do it to improve their financial lives. They probably enjoy it, but if you ask them "why did you move to Atlanta from Mogadishu" the restaurants probably won't be at the top of the list like it is for snotty white people.
Nobody calls themselves BIPOC. That's another thing snotty white people do. Yes I have friends from different backgrounds, also family. Probably more than you do TBH.
The people I converse with that say this stuff, usually it's people with backgrounds probably like the average on this site. Probably quite like you if I had to guess.
> We save even more on heating. For heating we use wood that we get from the surrounding forests more or less for free (just insert physical labor).
Someone subsidizes your living, then, by giving you the wood. I mean I hope they are giving you the wood, because otherwise that would be theft. Where I live, most forest is national, and you can't even gather fallen branches. You can buy the wood or a permit to gather a certain amount of fallen wood.
Swedish allemänsratten give people quite extensive rights to exploit forests, even on private property. You are correct that cutting trees and collecting firewood are explicitly excluded from this in theory, but in practice, since the OP lives in a very rural, forested area and is presumably collecting wood from fallen trees instead of actively cutting them down, nobody will give a shit. Even if they did, it would be some kind of environmental violation, not "theft".
And that's stupid as stupid can be, and it's not theft. Around these parts of the world (Eastern Europe) that used to be customary practice for hundreds of years, maybe even more, meaning people taking the falling branches for heating purposes over the winter.
Of course, as modernisation set on around these parts of the continent (thanks, Brussels) then all that became highly illegal, so that highly-equipped policemen were set up to patrol the foresty areas and confiscate the equipment used for said "theft" from what are mostly very poor people, which in many cases involved them confiscating a very weak horse and a barely functioning wooden cart. But hey, modernisation!
This whole subject makes me very angry because it is so reactionary, as you've got poor people supporting the brunt of the law while the wood multinationals (or whatever their PR name is) are profiting from it because they can afford to cut exponentially more wood in a "legal" manner. And yes, we do own a small piece of forest in my family (my brother does, in fact), so I should be all-in for the camp of "damn poors are stealing our branches from the forrest we own!". I am not.
One of the very few positive aspects of all this is that these type of police-imposed reactionary actions coming from the very top have created a new sense of community in my brother's village. Nowadays almost the whole village is again on the lookout for patrolling police vans, as the villagers communicate with the people who are in the forest to take wood as to the policemen's whereabouts and instruct them when it's safe to pass.
And then city-based laptop class people complain how come the "populists" are winning more and more votes.
If lots of people start grabbing anything which was traditionally up for grabs, pretty soon we will end up with cleaned-out forests (not good) and people chopping down trees. Also, this is not the only thing that governments lay claim on. You can't dig for coal, extract oil, or do any other mining operations, even if it's your land. It's part of living in a governed society — some thing become shared property.
Not to say I'm against someone picking up a few branches, just pointing out that this isn't as clear-cut as it might seem.
> If lots of people start grabbing anything which was traditionally up for grabs, pretty soon we will end up with cleaned-out forests (not good) and people chopping down trees
That's not how it happened in the past (with exceptions, of course). Because of the sense of community you couldn't have cut all the forrest all for yourself and call it a day, you wouldn't have been allowed to do that, damn the State, your neighbours and the other community members would have gotten to you first. That's why and how that used to be the custom for centuries before.
> You can't dig for coal, extract oil, or do any other mining operations
Industralized societies can do that, but at the (old) community level usually you could not.
> It's part of living in a governed society — some thing become shared property.
I agree, in a way, it's the famous Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft, my comment was trying to explain what happens to the people who get lost along the way during that transition (which is still ongoing in some communities in my country, even though by this point the transition is close to complete). For example if you used to get through the winter by collecting fallen wood from the nearby forest (because the Gemeinschaft was allowing it) you cannot do that anymore (because the Gesellschaft is now forbidding it), you'll most probably have to rely on direct financial help from a State authority (in most of the cases local), move out or die out freezing.
And about shared property, we didn't always need a government to impose that, and I'm not saying that from a libertarian/anarchist point of view or anything like that. Past communities and customary rules were pretty good at imposing some sense of collective ownership (I wouldn't call it "property"). Of course, that is almost gone for good, too.
There are lots of places, including many national forests, where you can cut your own firewood for free.
If you live near the Flathead National Forest in Montana in the US, for example, you can cut firewood for a campsite without a permit. You can also get a free permit that allows you to cut 4 to 12 cords of wood per adult per year.
I don't know anything about firewood laws in Sweden or the rest of Europe. From first glance they look quite a bit more restrictive.
Some version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure happened in a bunch of places, and to a lesser extent or not at all in others. The set of things one can do in woodland vary massively around the world.
It's more of a tragedy of the commons. The article's comment about wood really took me aback, because I'm part of a community that is currently having said tragedy.
We live in the UK, where forests are a lot rarer. We like camping in a forest by the sea, but it's become such a popular camping spot that people have completely stripped it of all fallen wood. This forest grows on particularly nutrient-poor land, so the forest rangers are begging people to leave the wood alone, as the rotting wood both feeds the soil and preserves local insect and plant ecosystems.
Of course, this is what happens when you have a lovely small forest near a big city. The author lives out in the back of beyond where there presumably just aren't enough people that such a situation could happen. I think it's a good illustration that our natural attitudes towards public land might vary a lot depending on the population density and circumstances we live in.
Ironically the fate of UK's many forests lies in the fires of industry prior to the invention of coal. There was no tragedy of the commons there, they were bought and sold for profit which is not unlike what OP suggests would be the "correct" way to do things.
The fact is that if you're not exploiting something on a mass industrial level there's hardly a way you'd destroy anything. And that's not being done by regular people trying to make a small living.
he touches on interesting points and I actually appreciate the honesty, but kind of meandering, a bit pointless, and in parts outright massively contradicts itself:
> Living without spending takes some time and effort, just like a job. But at least it is a job I can perform at the time and place of my own choosing
right above that he sounds like he's lamenting being stranded in his location, unable to travel, come anywhere near metro areas or travel like in his childhood. That's, like, the absolute opposite of "place of my own choosing".
Choosing to be poor seems logically impossible to me.
During the time in my life when I was poor, it was characterized by a lack of choices more than anything else. I don't think poverty is a thing that can be chosen, because being poor is not having choices.
Sure, constant low-level danger was another theme -- nearly dying from preventable diseases, parts of your home falling on you, and vehicle accidents were some things that came up. Scrounging for and repairing stuff and frugality were themes too. All of this was of no importance compared to the lack of choices, which I felt viscerally every moment of every day.
I found the discussion here more interesting than the article/blog post.
Most of you are talking at cross purposes, and there are some major intercultural communication problems here that are masked by everyone reading/writing in English.
If we were all part of a single culture and organic community, where the unwritten rules and mechanics of how things work and don't work are known to all, we could have a meaningful discussion, and perhaps debate the ethical aspects of the author's lifestyle.
But we are not and do not and can not.
I would argue that although the author wrote in English, what he wrote really only makes sense within a Swedish cultural context. I see comment after comment projecting foreign norms, values, and circumstances on the author without any knowledge whatsoever of how things work in Sweden.
I am even seeing classic stuff right out of Geert Hofstede's six dimensional culture model such as individualism vs. collectivism.
I don't expect everyone to understand this comment, but someone definitely will!
Another side of this is that when people are confronted with someone doing things different from what they're used to, their innate ego centrism makes them react if it is about them. It reopens the identity crisis of their teenage years.
I once experienced this on the board of a kindergarten. There was a public debate about whether kindergartens should have computers or not. The kindergarten I had my kids in thought not, for good reasons. When talking to the other parents, with some those reasons clicked immediately. But many were simply not able to digest them. They were stuck thinking about their own situation as parents and the fact that their children were using tablets at home. Big parenting identity crisis, no constructive discussion possible.
Fascinating article and reactions to it. I think it cuts to the Core of the difference between being poor and being desperate. It also provides an Outsiders opinion on materialism and motivation as it relates to society at Large.
It also scratches the surface of what it means to be a parent, and the relative value of materially providing for children versus teaching values and skills.
This was more interesting and nuanced than I was expecting, but, as hinted in the title (dirt-poor _ish_) the author is not really describing poverty (experienced by billions of actual people in the world) but some other condition of stepping aside from the race of contemporary society onto a kind of cozy government supported lifestyle cushion.
It's funny because this seems to be the ideal state of a lot of futurists but in reality most people seem to keep working harder for less for the benefit of a few lottery winners.
It's always good to read this stuff because it helps me set a personal boundary on my spending - which has really changed from a decade ago when I spent $25k a year living in San Francisco and having a ball.
Crazy that they raise 5 children on this. I doubt I could manage that!
Wood is renewable, burning it for heating houses in countryside full of forests is perfectly sustainable.
Not caring about social status is only smart, as long as your choices don't hurt others. It should be up to individual to decide what makes them happy within these limits. Instead of hippies I would be worried of consumerist sheep who think buying products/services makes them happy, and who destroy the planet in the process. Amazon, shopping malls full of people spending money just for fun, those are the real evil of our world. I would much rather live in a hut without electricity than be your average city-dwelling consumerist.
The problem with wood is that if we all burnt it, there would be nowhere near enough, and our cities would be full of smoke and heavily polluted.
Every household would need a lot land just to support tree regrowth. You have to be planting a lot of trees every year and letting them grow for a long time too.
I don't agree with simple-thoughts on hippies, but I understand why we don't all burn wood for energy.
You get 80 tons of wood from an acre of land after 20 years of growth, or 4 tons a year. A household probably uses about 2 to 4 tons a year, less if they're in a warmer climate. That's half an acre to an acre per house.
There are potential problems here: water table and soil depletion, pollution in built-up areas including acid rain, overuse of wood in crowded areas destroying habitats for animals, and probably more. Nevertheless, all these problems only apply in certain circumstances, and rural use of firewood for heating is likely not as big a problem as you think it is. Obviously in the city things are different, but neither the author nor letrowekwel were talking about cities.
> The problem with wood is that if we all burnt it, there would be nowhere near enough, and our cities would be full of smoke and heavily polluted.
Isn’t this true of almost every resource, especially in modern societies? Think automobiles, potable water, air conditioners, heaters, food packaging, solvents, cleaners, pets, consumer waste, buildable land, lumber, drywall, pesticides, etc.
> Not caring about social status is only smart, as long as your choices don't hurt others
This is a very interesting topic, which I find counterintuitive.
In my view, they actually care about status a lot: they seek their own place at the exact opposite place on the spectrum, as a matter of principle. The author indeed stresses multiple times that both he and his partner are rebels.
I get the very strong impression that when one is in that position, they can get a lot of return of investment with little effort, but they're intentionally choosing not to (for example, they talk about refusing stable jobs, but on the other hand, taking a variety of odd jobs).
There are more balanced positions where with more money, parents can give considerably more freedom of choice and experience at least to their children, without falling into a consumeristic lifestyle.
> (for example, they talk about refusing stable jobs, but on the other hand, taking a variety of odd jobs)
Perhaps they prefer different, diverse jobs rather than a single job doing the same thing day after day. Their admitted aversion to authority would also result in more odd jobs due to likely conflict with bosses.
> There are more balanced positions where with more money, parents can give considerably more freedom of choice and experience at least to their children, without falling into a consumeristic lifestyle.
True, but avoiding consumerism is rarely the case in most modern capitalist societies. There are so many forces working against this ideal like peer pressure, advertising, government regulations, community codes, etc. The author consciously chose to live in a remote area where fewer of these forces are at play.
Overall I find the author’s actions to be reasonable and well thought out for their situation. My only quibble might be accepting the money from the government for his children given that there are possibly other families that need it more; the author seems intelligent, healthy, capable, and has some savings. But who am I to judge?
Not caring about what you think is a sign of mental illness?
Theres a social status among many subcultures that eschew mainstream social structure. Bikers have their status signals. Hippies have theirs. Theres probably a subculture of people out there who view this man with envy, as having a sort of monk like, unattainable discipline. Thats status, just not the kind you'd go for.
Leeching off the kindness of others is about where I'd agree with you, beyond that, leaving wider society to its fate and going on your own is a perfectly respectable decision.
Caring about social status turns relationships into transactions ("I'll marry her because she can get me this", "I'll make friends with Tom because even though he's a fascist he can introduce me to my future employer").
Believing and working for something that is higher than yourself shouldn't be treated as a foreign mindset, but something everyone should strive towards.
Yes, society may not reward you directly for your efforts, and yes you will be acutely aware of people who are sailing by in life under much less effort by serving solely their own interests, but these people do not breed communities or trust. These people get rich enough to buy into a community of trust that was built by people like you in the first place.
TLDR: Bankers like Art, and spend large sums of money on the work of artists who never did it for the money.
There seems to be a lot of baggage from his childhood and subtle resentment to his parents. I'm concerned for his mental health. If this is truly just his personal choice though, I really question the relationship he has with his children and his justifications for how he provides the bare minimum for them when her could certainly do more. For someone so focused on frugality and minimalism his discussion about his children was focused completely on materialism, gift giving and the fact that a little under half of his monthly income came from government programs targeted at children. I kept expecting to read something about how he connects with them in emotionally meaningful ways or helps them grow and thrive. That love and care just didn't seem there.
Ultimately I worry about the kids, specifically their emotional and developmental needs. Their dad is so focused on himself and how he wants to live. That sounds like a very tough home to grow up in, even if the author was spectacularly rich.