I probably know more about growing food than you do, I grew up walking behind a mule, LITERALLY, no joke, Okay?
Get over this idea that if you buy a dollars worth of seed and grow enough food for weeks you are eating for weeks on a dollar. You are eating for weeks on a dollar and a lot of labor, just because you are not paid in cash for that labor does not mean that it has no value.
If someone offered me the run of an abandoned junkyard and I managed to piece together a running automobile after weeks of hard work would you say I got a free car? If the answer is yes then you just have no idea what I am trying to say to you.
Every time someone like you has told me how to live on nothing it turns out that they mean do without all but the most basic things and ignore completely the concept of imputed income.
I know all about those pioneers, they didn’t live on nothing, they lived on hard work, the kind of hard work that very few people now can even conceive of. I CAN conceive of it because I did that kind of hard work for most of my first eighteen years and what I got for it was food, clothing, shelter, a high school education and a very few non necessities and probably a total of a hundred dollars to spend as I saw fit in the whole eighteen years. Did I live eighteen years on a hundred dollars? I don’t think so.
If some people heard of a man who was offered a bunk in a six by eight foot storage building and food to eat in exchange for working on a farm every day with no cash income offered they would claim he had discovered how to live on zero income.
The original statement said nothing about “imputed”.
You’re arguing about something other than what I posted.
Ok, so we're on par. My family grew half our own food; I don't consider it "imputed income". We DID buy a dollar's worth of seed and grew enough food for weeks, ergo we were eating for weeks on a dollar. We cut & split wood for heat for free (if felling trees ourselves) or cheap (if having whole logs dumped). We even made our own maple syrup. We could have raised _all_ our own food, meat included, but chose to draw the line where we did. Being industrious, laboring to enjoy the fruits thereof without involving someone else's currency, is laudable - and my very point in such discussions as this.
If someone can own or rent property, and cultivate it for adequate sustenance, with otherwise little or no actual income, then they fit the original scale I referred to. Free run of a junkyard to build, with effort, a "free" car? sounds like a $0 win to me! Yes, I understand what you mean, and reject the notion: creative effort and opportunities taken DOES let one live on few dollars per day. There are towns that will GIVE you land, if only you build a humble home thereon - sounds like free real estate to me, so long as your creativity can produce a house for cheap (yes, that's doable too; I've been offered free houses for the taking, in whole or pieces). $1 at the Dollar Store garners a whole lotta seeds; plant them well.
I understand, but reject, your use of "imputed income" here, and that includes barter. I'm not saying that one's work has no value. I'm saying that with very little currency (or trade plainly in lieu thereof) one can indeed get by, providing for one's own basic sustenance. It's the core notion of independence.
What this little exchange does point out is the fuzziness of the notion of "income". As we head for Galt's Gulch, exploring this fog is a worthy endeavor. Living on nothing does not preclude hard work.