Last Sunday while getting on the freeway I spotted a clean looking young man with a cardboard sign "Going Home Atlanta, GA". I couldn't help but imagine what led him to that point in his life. Did he have some tragic past? Was he incapable of holding down a job or getting a car? Did he chose this life or was he trapped by it?
These thoughts were revisited by the article "Is it possible to live a life without money?" in The Guardian (UK based periodical). The author describes how she decided to become, for lack of a better word, a hobo. She squats in empty houses, eats food from garbage, and "skips" clothes, furniture, bicycles and anything she needs. She found that she didn't need money to survive.
"In my first two months as a squatter and a scavenger I spent 54p – less than a penny a day. Ten pence had gone on a sheet of photocopying and the other 44p had bought me a KitKat at my lowest ebb in the first week. It was extraordinary how quickly it had become routine to get through a day without cash." (although later she does find ways to make money off of others waste).
She survives on the fringe not because money is useless but because people are wasteful. We throw out perfectly good furniture, food, and clothes. We throw these things out because we have lost the talent or initiative to reuse. With the hard economic times many people are rediscovering repurposing. Such things as the youtube videos "Depression Cooking", where Clara teaches you how to cook like its the 1930s, are gaining in popularity. Just check out this article from the NYT on canning.
Overall the whole article is very interesting, if a bit preachy at times. I especially disliked how "free and easy" she seemed to find her life of leeching. Granted she is only using that which others choose not to use but I still feel like it is a bit of a cheat. This feeling was only re-enforced by the articles post script:
"Extracted from Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society by Katharine Hibbert, published by Ebury Press on 14 January at £11.99."
Because it feels a bit hypocritical for someone to extol the virtues of living without money, in a bid to make money.
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