The Man Who Doesn't Use Money

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DANIEL SUELO LIVES IN A CAVE. UNLIKE THE average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.

His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present."

On a warm day in early spring, I clamber along a set of red-rock cliffs to the mouth of his cave, where I find a note signed with a smiley face: CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE). From the outside, the place looks like a hollowed teardrop, about the size of an Amtrak bathroom, with enough space for a few pots that hang from the ceiling, a stove under a stone eave, big buckets full of beans and rice, a bed of blankets in the dirt, and not much else. Suelo's been here for three years, and it smells like it.

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Make sure you read the 3 pages. Interesting stuff.
Could you live like this?

Nice post.. I have be thinking about this kind of thing for a few years now , but where I live we have snow 4 months of the year give or take.
Still could be done but staying warm and dry would be the biggest problem.

Originally posted by Reevster
Nice post.. I have be thinking about this kind of thing for a few years now , but where I live we have snow 4 months of the year give or take.
Still could be done but staying warm and dry would be the biggest problem.

Take a look at the Mike Oehler method of making underground
housing and you would be nice warm and dry year round.

Super cheap to make, his book is called Underground Homes
from $50 an up.

The temp remains around 60 degrees or a little warmer if you
bring in some sunlight with a sola tube or have a fire.

For cheap electric use a few wind belts, charge controller,
boat battery and inverter.

Use a few sheets of the bullet proof lexan if you want a durable
window if you can afford it.

Other ppl build one wall out of glass bottles and adobe to bring in light too.

the difference between this guy and a run of the mill hobo is choice.
i probably could live like that but i wouldn't want to.

reply to post by Ex_MislTech


Funny that you mention that book, I picked upa copy at a garage sale years ago. It's come in handy.

A couple other good ones:
How To Build Your Own Underground Home - Ray Scott-1979
Earth Sheltered Homes: Plans and Designs -University of Minnesota - 1981

So does he trade labor for beans and rice? And where does he take a dump every morning? Does he do whore's baths in the library bathroom sink? What happens when he needs a dentist or doctor?

reply to post by jjkenobi


what did our ancestors do before all these things?

make due

Originally posted by jjkenobi
So does he trade labor for beans and rice? And where does he take a dump every morning? Does he do whore's baths in the library bathroom sink? What happens when he needs a dentist or doctor?

If you read all three pages of it, he bathes in a stream below the waterfall.

The beans and rice he most likely has it given to him from what
it sounds like.

For a dump he squats per the writer, and I hope he is doing the
slit trenches thing like ppl are told to do, odds are he is doing that.

I'd make a camper's toilet setup with a proper seat, and do it
as a composting toilet, easy enough.

If he needs a dentist or doctor he goes to town, and it appears ppl
give him all kinds of things.

My question is, who owns that land ??

i once traveled the east coast for one whole summer doing nothing but odd jobs and traveling from city to city on a bicycle. It was the most free I have ever felt. I slept on the beach or any place I could find really. Food was readily available as was work. No house payment, no car payment, no insurance, nothing to really hamper a free life. I did what I wanted when I wanted. With the exception of a few minor law enforcement run ins it was great.

respectfully

reluctantpawn

Alls well and good until whoever it is that claims to "own" the cave he's in comes knocking. The reason I havent dropped everything and moved into the woodlands is because a myriad of laws would have me tossed in jail for felling the kings logs for shelter or killing the kings deer for food.

The more publicity this caveman gets the sooner the stated owner of the cave (local, state or federal) will send in their shock troops to arrest and or kill him.

If the land is owned privately and the owner is okay with the situation then that's all well and good but in that situation somebody is owning the land and paying the bills so it just makes the guy a mooch rather than independent.

Originally posted by warrenb
reply to post by jjkenobi

 

what did our ancestors do before all these things?

make due

There's a reason the life expectancy in the middle ages was like 30 years old. It's hard to "make due" with rotting teeth, poor eyesight, and/or cancer.

On the one hand good for him not becoming a debt whore to the bankers,a cog in the financial machine if you will.But living in a cave.
I know alot of people think we should all return to nature and ditch modern technology to be in harmony with the earth and all that sort of nonsense.But i like my technology and modern lifestyle...its sad i have to be in the machine to acquire that though,and the lifestyle is at the expense of others whether it be the raping and pillaging of African countries and their resources,or child labour or the environmental damage.So i say good on him for ditching the money and if he is happy thats great, but i think modern technology is great and not the big bad evil as alot of people think.

[edit on 22-7-2009 by Solomons]

reply to post by jjkenobi


during the middle-ages it had more to do with bad nutrition and sanitation than anything else. Tribal people have been doing just fine for thousands of years without it. Look at the aborigines of Australia as a prime example.

Good thread Warren.

I think the most important part of this thread (to me) is the reminder to simplify. Not many of us would choose to live as he does; possibly very few even could. That is no reason to reject the lifestyle completely -- we can and should attempt to simplify our lives and become as self-subsistant as we can.

Don't have any land for growing vegetables? Perhaps growing in pots is part of your solution. Some homegrown food is better than none.

Don't think the S is ever going to HTF? Stocking up on food that you rotate is still a good idea. Worst case is, you save money, as food prices rarely, if ever, go down. A no-brainer!

I fear that many people have not formed strategies for survival if they loose power. Yes, people have to keep cool, yes, others have to keep warm and sheltered. In hot areas, a possible solution is to stock up on a few rolls of fiberglass screening, and and homemade framework to make an outdoor sleeping place. In cold areas, an alternate shelter, ability to make fire, augmented with cheap space blankets. The key, I believe, is to anticipate what might happen, and create a plan, a strategy for you and your family BEFORE it is needed. It doesn't have to break the bank, and it's not all or nothing. Acquire goods and tools that can help you regardless of what happens.

We can't share it if we don't have it.

Great article s+f.

We could all do it but it would take some more effort than others. I personally think this guy is more successful than most people in the world.

I also think that this...

Suelo doesn't take public assistance or use food stamps, but he does survive in part on our reality, the discarded surfeit of the money system that he denounces—a system, as it happens, that recently looked like it was headed for the cliff.

Makes the situation sound like he needs societies waste to survive. Not so, if modern society wasn't around wrecking this planet this guy would survive even better.

People have been living without money and economy just fine.
What's this to not be able to live on this planet because everything is owned and you need to enter the money system to pay your "rent" ?

www.survival-international.org...

[edit on 22-7-2009 by pai mei]

Originally posted by warrenb
reply to post by jjkenobi

 

what did our ancestors do before all these things?

make due

LOL, Die young and stink

Originally posted by Tank2/8

LOL, Die young and stink

Why humans might have traded this approach for the complexities of agriculture is an interesting and long-debated question, especially because the skeletal evidence clearly indicates that early farmers were more poorly nourished, more disease-ridden and deformed, than their hunter-gatherer contemporaries. Farming did not improve most lives. The evidence that best points to the answer, I think, lies in the difference between early agricultural villages and their pre-agricultural counterparts—the presence not just of grain but of granaries and, more tellingly, of just a few houses significantly larger and more ornate than all the others attached to those granaries. Agriculture was not so much about food as it was about the accumulation of wealth. It benefited some humans, and those people have been in charge ever since.

www.harpers.org...

Check me out!!! Hey Look at me , im the ultimate hippy, i consume resources, crap in a ditch, and refuse to spend money in the small town establishments that allow me theyre wifi access t post blogs on my macbook pro. I cant wait to get home so wannabe hippy chicks will dig me and ask me about my boots.

Bah , Im no better , but im growing carrots, lettuce, cayene pepper, tobacco, and hemp all in my semi-urban apartmet. I became the apt handi man ad work my laid off butt to become prepared. i wish my blog would have the sheeple leaving baskets of cookies at my cave, dont you?

If he owns that cave he must pay property tax or he will lose it.