Posted on 07/02/2013 8:15:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As we edge closer to a cashless society, some consumers are quietly challenging the idea of money in the first place––by giving it up completely.
Daniel Suelo, 50, traded his nine-to-five for dumpster diving and a cozy cave in Utah's canyonlands back in 2000.
But even before Suelo, there was Germany native Heidemarie Schwermer. In her early 50s, Schwermer decided to see what it'd be like to leave her cushy job as a psychotherapist and live money-free, a journey that's been documented in the film "Living Without Money."
Sixteen years later, she hasn't looked back. Schwermer, now pushing 70, recently took a pause during her stay in Hamelin, Germany to chat with Business Insider about why she decided to leave everything behind.
WWII refugees, Schwermer's family fled from Prussia to Germany in the 1940s. Her father had owned a successful coffee roastery and kept a nanny and full-time gardener on his payroll. "We were well-off but ended up as riff-raff," she says. "Then we became rich again and (we) had to defend it. I've always had to justify myself, whether we were rich or poor."
Throughout her life, she became fascinated with finding ways to live without money. A former teacher and psychotherapist, Schwermer formed Germany's first exchange circle, "Give And Take Central" in 1994. The group helped locals exchange simple services like babysitting or house cleaning for tangible goods. "I noticed that I needed money less and less," she told Business Insider. "And so I thought, I can try to live one year without money."
Schwermer attempted to live without money at least four times, she says, but it wasn't until a friend asked her to house sit for three months that she finally took the plunge. "I said, 'The time is right. Now I'll do it.'
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
A couch living drifter friend with no money, is nothing new...
I have a friend like that. It is interesting to talk with them and get insight into their thinking.
Even though there are many of their problems that a job could solve. They never seem to arrive at that conclusion.
Old hippies never die. They just scrounge away.
Old hippies are just clever at evading sales and income taxes by using bartering...
They forget it isn’t money that is the evil, but the government’s hand in money that makes it evil, much like how Businesses that are too big to fail are in bed with the government are evil, but businesses are not evil as an idea....
Any woman can live without money if she wants to!!!
Wrong.
She’s living without PAYING for anything. She doesn’t handle the money. Productive people work for it and give her free things.
She’s a freeloader and a parasite.
The enablers are a$$holes.
Our wealthy societies can handle quite a few people living this way. If everybody tried it, society would collapse within days.
More power to her. But she shouldn’t think her life tells us anything generally applicable.
thanks to health care law- she would not be able to do so in the US
And yeah- shel ives for ‘free’ because other’s pick up her tab-
It used to be legal in this ocutnry to go ‘off grid’ and live compeltely free- eatign off the land, makign your own clothes out of what you kill, never paying anything again- no taxes, no liscence, no bills- nothing- movign from one statel and to another ‘camping’ as you go- - howeverm thanks to a traitorous supreme court, we are no logner free gto do so- infact not paying for health care makes us criminals now apparently- neve3r beofre have Americans been FORCED to buy soemthing- if a person wanted to, they coudl go off grid completely- IF they wanted to drive, they are REQUIRED to purchase several things, but they are not obligate4d to drive if the choose not to etc-
Like love! All we need is love!
An idiot, utopian liberal.
Yeah. She should try getting some clean water to drink, or finding a place on the ground to take a dump where other people haven’t already because there are no toilets because all the water plant processing workers decided not to work out of “love” for their fellow man.
Well, yes. One assumes everything will be handed by the Higher Intelligence at that point, rendering Thomas Sowell’s books obsolete.
This only works for a very few people. The more that do it, the more people that see there is value in what they abandon and throw away, the more it all starts to have ‘value’ and becomes a vendable commodity.
If she had any teeth, I’d like to punch a few out.
I stopped reading right there. That is not living a life "without money." And perhaps everyone can live that way singly, but if everyone does try to live that way at the same time then everyone starves. She can live that way so long as a substantial portion of everyone else does not also attempt it.
/lobotomized, incoherent Marxist rant
Pretty good rant. I always crack myself up and start to sputter before I make it very far.
BTTT
Good post!
“Money” is simply a medium of exchange. A tool to simplify the exchange/strorage of labor and materials. To abolish “money” would mean everything has to be exchanged in real time – impossible in a complex industrial world.
Yes, the powers that control money typically abuse it but that day may come to an end with transparent cryptocurrency. BitCoin is under attack because it threatens the global banking cartel’s currencies.
She moochs short term housing on a weekly basis. She scrumages through left overs for food. She depends on charity for clothes. It sounds like a pathetic lifestyle to me.
The bacteria/viruses need to be “correct” only once.
I disagree. I’m not a dumpster diver, but for 30 years I have frequented a store that basically sells out of date,or overstocked food, or food in damaged packaging for a fraction of the usual list price. They sell dented cans for almost nothing (but won’t sell bulging ones). My more fastidious friends cringe when I refer to it as “used food”. I spend less on food, and have never had a noticeable health problem from the food. I doubt that all that food was bacteria and virus free, but nothing in this environment is. That’s why we have immune systems. Even dumpster food is probably generally cleaner than what our pre-sanitation, pre-refrigeration ancestors survived on.
Buying used or remaindered stuff is, of course, a parasitical strategy. If everyone tried to do it, there would be no one to buy the new stuff that feeds the pipeline.
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