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I think that the idea that someone can be completely independent is truly delusional.

There was this guy who was going to prove that he could live completely independently. One day he walked into a swamp completely naked. No clothes, knives, guns, cooking apparatuses, etc. Nothing.

He survived, and quite well indeed. He made his own clothes and shelter. Was able to fashion tools with which to fish and hunt. The whole survivalist nine yards.

The rub of this story, however, is that before he walked into the swamp naked he spent years reading up on how to survive in swamps, and took numerous trips to the swamp to hone his skills. Also, the swamp he walked into was not teeming with drug dealers, paramilitaries, etc.

So yes he was able to live off the land, but only because hundreds (or more likely millions) of people before him had developed the skills necessary to live off the land, and dozens had written books about it. Also, hundreds (or more like thousands) of people were responsible for this swamp being relatively free of dangerous humans. All he had to worry about were the critters.

So yes he is more independent than most and should get lots of kudos for surviving the swamp, and he most likely has a lower welfare-footprint than most ... as most survivalists do.

But neither he, nor anyone else, can claim to be truly and fully independent.

And who would want to be anyway?

I think that the idea that someone can be completely independent is truly delusional.

If a guy can walk naked into a swamp and survive without any assistance or needing any other human contact, whatsoever, then he is completely independent, and all of your "what-if" scenarios don't mean a thing.

One of the worst of your arguments against that is where you say that he's not independent because a theoretical band of drug dealers could come in and kill him. That has nothing to with whether he is independent now. He might not survive successfully as an independent when these fictional bands of drug dealers come, but up until the moment they attack or kill him, he is still living completely independently. It is possible he might even prevail in such a circumstance, given that he knows how to survive in a swamp with nothing and they probably don't.

An even worse argument than that is that this fellow isn't living independently because he read books on survival written by other people. I don't even understand this type of thinking. In the old days, survival skills would have been passed on from generation to generation. The indians did that for thousands of years, but since our generations have been living with modern conveniences for a while, we have lost most of those skills. This guy just corrected that deficiency. Saying that he isn't independent right now because he wasn't born fully independent with the all knowledge in his head upon popping out of his mother's womb is ridiculous. Once he acquired the knowledge, he became independent-capable, even if he wasn't independent before. Then when he went into the swamp without anyone's help, he became fully independent.

Your thinking is bothersome because, though I know you didn't intend it that way, it smacks of the Obama philosophy, where nobody can feel they ever accomplished anything because someone else did stuff, somewhere, so why bother. If this guy you're talking about suddenly were whisked away to an alternate earth where no humans existed, he could survive. That is the very definition of independence.

All he did was relearn what our ancestors knew and we’ve lost in the last few generations.

You did not prove your point that the idea that someone can be completely independent is completely delusional.

I think that the idea that someone can be completely independent is truly delusional.

Your comment reinforces my belief that most people miss the point of homesteading and modern self sufficiency. It's not about being totally independent of modern society. It's about being able to handle any problem that arises in your life with the tools and skills you have at hand. The difference between modern homesteaders and the population at large is that homesteaders have a bigger tool (skills, experience and stuff) box to go to on a daily basis. What does boggle my mind is why people that aren't homesteaders react so vehemently (the Forbes author, not you) against the lifestyle.

I think that the idea that someone can be completely independent is truly delusional.

Of course. But you can certainly always be MORE independent, that's the point. And it's an oversimplification to suggest these people do not contribute anything to society as a whole.