I'm pretty sure it would still function. If nothing else they aren't a drag on societal resources anymore. If society is so useful, it should only be better off when people leave for the greener pastures or Siberian tundra.
My main issue is not with societal contract. It's with the notion that we're somehow "free" when we're most certainly not free. Stop paying the state and men with guns will show up on your door step and take your shit. That doesn't sound like freedom to me.
> I'm pretty sure it would still function. If nothing else they aren't a drag on societal resources anymore. If society is so useful, it should only be better off when people leave for the greener pastures or Siberian tundra.
A lot of these people would come crawling back to the civilization begging for help if their life depended on it. Which it probably will as they get older and sick. On a large scale, millions of people who contributed nothing to the society, but then demand expensive medical help would not work well.
Most would not last very long I agree. But I don't think that those that find the hermit existence more to their liking (and can sustain such an existence for an extended period of time) would "come crawling back" or anything like that. Once my kid is out of the house, I don't really care about not kicking the bucket a little sooner if by doing so I could live out my last decade or two in peace and without having to deal with the daily stream of bovine manure that "civilization" entails.
Quick death in old age is one of the better scenarios. Worse things are: chronic pain, slowly losing ability to function (be it neurological or just joints giving up etc.) and also witnessing the same things in your spouse. Traditional cultures deal with it to a degree by children taking care of sick/senile parents, but here it won’t be the case.
Re:Unemployed Fishing
by Waterluvian on Saturday July 13, 2019 @04:10AM
(#20427061)
Fair. And as was suggested, there's parts of the world where if you don't want all those government and societal benefits, you can totally just fuck off into a forest somewhere. I'm pretty sure you can do that up here in Canada but there's lots of ways that can kill you. It is a pretty romantic concept, I'll admit.
I'm thinking about: what would happen if droves of people fled into the forest to live. Could society function without them? How many?