I think a good middle ground is to buy a cheap piece of land outside of the city, and putting a small/cheap structure on it. RV/Camper, converted shed (Tiny houses are nice, but $$$).
Live off grid and the only cost you'd pay is property taxes.
A person is running from an angry bear when they stumble off a cliff and get snagged by a strawberry bush, which is in full bloom. Looking up, they see the bear watching them patiently. Looking down, they see a sheer cliff and a fatal drop with no handholds. Certain death above, certain death below, and the person won't survive long without water. What should they do?
Answer: eat the strawberries.
The benefit of van life for me it was the fact that if you're not rich, you spend all your time simply surviving in this current economy and can never truly thrive and follow your dreams, whether that's meeting people, or chasing a hobby project, or working a lower paying job to make the world a better place. Your job is to just survive.
For example:
30%+ of our income goes to taxes
20%-30%+ to rent + utilities
15% to student loans(if you have any).
10%+ (or way more if you're sick) to healthcare
5% to a car payment + insurance + gas
After all of that you only get 20%ish of your paycheck?
Then you have retirement to worry about because you can't rely on social security anymore.
Slavery still exists it's just expanded to include every race.
Van life at least frees you from that extra 20% plus it frees you from signing a 2 year lease obligation just to have a place to live. And in a job market that is chaotic you may have to move sooner than that so van life gives you the freedom to choose your life a lot better and is actually a lot more financially responsible.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/medieval-peasants-vacation-m...
We live in a time of immense wealth, but not leisure.
The average medieval peasant was illiterate, slept on straw, had to work if they were sick and God forbid they broke a bone they would likely have the bone set incorrectly handicapping them to varying degrees for the rest of their life.
The average American has air conditioning, electric or gas heat, a smartphone, watches television several hours a week and rarely has to worry about food poisoning or getting intestinal parasites.
Give up the air conditioning, the car, the 3000$ laptop every 2-3 years, the 1200$ smartphone every 18-24 months, the Netflix/Hulu/Disney+/Spotify subscriptions, never purchase a single item that is (or contains a component that was) imported, the exotic vacations 0.5-4x a year, the 4-9$ cup of coffee 1-3x a day and that food delivery service you use 1-7x a week, running water and all electricity at your residence and you too could work considerably less.
"what do you do for a washing machine"
"what do you do for internet"
"what do you do for heating"
"what do you do for air conditioning"
"what is your toilet setup"
"what do you cook on"
"what sort of PV system do you have"
The article also talks about how peasants took frequent rests, but this is because they were doing extremely physically demanding work, not because they had a chill schedule.
Edit: A great example is that in Mexico and the American Southwest one of a woman's traditional tasks was grinding corn by hand, which could take up to 5 hours for her families supply. Other areas of the world that ate grains and didn't have access to mills would have had to spend a similar amount of time.
Cleaning, paying taxes, commuting, exercise (because most workers don't get it at work anymore), buying and cooking food, taking care of house and car, laundry, etc.
I huge amount of time is spent on those things and that wasn't included in the 40 hours.
How much work is the right amount of work? 40 hours? 80 hours? Are people working 2 jobs but still not making ends meet not 'pulling their own weight'?
How does supply and demand figure into this? Are people who get automated out of a job no longer pulling their own weight?
Does the fact that someone exploits their employees and only pays them 10% of the value that they generate while keeping the 90% meant that business owner is just 'pulling their own weight'?
According to your missing definition of 'pulling your own weight' slavery back in the 1800 could be viewed as just people 'pulling their own weight'.
Are people in towns where no jobs are available even though they want to work...just not 'pulling their own weight'?
Your simplifications are not well thought out and frankly stupid.
this attitude is exactly WHY it's so hard to meet people or build communities.
There's only so long that you can try and so much that you can do before you give up in despair. At some point, you have to acknowledge that you cannot be part of a community without the participation of other people.
One solution to this is to find a deep and meaningful hobby in your area. I have found Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (a grappling martial art) to be one such "real" community. IDK, I still think van life is a legitimate way to live, but without digging into community issues and essentially abandoning all communities there never will be any communities people can adopt.
Here is what works about BJJ and the community it builds:
1.) Doing a physically hard thing together
2.) Broad appeal, very technical if you want it to be
3.) See the same people every week for years
4.) Goal is to improve each others skills in BJJ, but it is a very difficult martial art that builds a mindset of overcoming struggle
5.) My academy we give back to our broader community through charity events, etc.
6.) Community is a mindset. I have found you have to really push and pull the younger generations out of their shell and show them how to socialize to some extent.
--
Of course those qualities above aren't the only qualities that build a community but there are common themes. Working together to pull each other up with a perceivable sense of forward progress is a big element. I am not such a pessimist about communities and the current generation, but I definitely see how digital media and social media have stunted real communities in favor of shallower ones.
But as religion continues it's slow death, it's not been clear what replaces this important role of building community in our society. Hobby groups/clubs is at least one of the answers. My own hobby of mountaineering and climbing is very similar to yours of BJJ. Religion is basically just a glorified shared interest club that you're born into.
Something I haven't seen talked much about is how we financially support these types of groups. A lot of clubs either rely exclusively on volunteer effort and therefore are very fragile or high membership fees (like BJJ studios) that are out of reach for most people.
I didn't really put that together until now, but you're totally right. As a CS student, I've had group projects that involve regular meetings and a large project is developed over the course of a semester. Seeing my team mates constantly helps form bonds, but the wins and triumphs are probably the most influential.
I still remember submitting a project in the library at 2am and cheering that we were finally done. We got together for pizza and video games later that week for a more formal celebration.
On a related note about community it brings to mind Fight Club, Rent, and other "pre-Great Recession" aging very poorly as bitching about your cozy office job which pays the rent handily just came across as a spoiled rich kid to those in the downturn.
> While some residents dispute the existence of the Seattle Freeze, a 2008 peer-reviewed study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that among all 50 states, Washington residents ranked 48th in the personality trait extraversion. In 2014 a similar report by the Seattle CityClub ranked the population 48th out of 50 similarly-sized cities in activities such as "talking with neighbors frequently".
It's taken those years to break through the shells but people repeatedly tell me they like hanging out with me because I listen. I empathize. I'm genuine. I'm authentic.
You have to be real. Be committed to your fellow human beings. There's a dearth of that up here. A lot of judgemental people. Closed minds. Antagonism.
But if you are patient and keep letting people show you who they are and be who they are they'll cine to love you.
We need more people like that up here. They are here. Keep the good ones close and more will collect.
I am so happy I found my place. The weather is gross right now. People are staying inside shivering and will be until May next year. Try the library. Ask people questions.
I hear the same things repeatedly. No one says hi. No one smiles. No one approaches me. Do those things. People long for that.
As much as you want people to do that for you, they want it too. Be kind. reach out. Continue with the responsive ones.
Would you like to get coffee sometime? One on one works well with introverts.
If you've tried this many times and keep failing maybe the problem is with you.
So yes, maybe the problem is me. I hope not, but if it is and if I can't change that, then leaving society still seems like a sensible thing to do.
"If one day, you meet an asshole - then you met an asshole. If one day, you meet a hundred assholes - then you're an asshole."
A bit harsh, perhaps, but still relevant.
It is difficult.
Also, the EarthMate app has a nice mapping interface which shows things like topographic maps and major trails, and it lets you download maps ahead of time in varying levels of detail for offline use.
There were a lot of folks living in vans in dispersed camping, just hanging out and climbing.
I found it very easy to meet folks in that community. Specifically, I've found it easy to just walk up to a camp fire and introduce myself. Lots of folks are looking for partners to climb with.
I love to climb, but there is definitely a side-benefit of being able to meet a bunch of people who have motivations to do similar things, and climbing lends itself well to dirt-bagging.
I can't comment on other subcultures or sports. My experiences with musicians has been similar, though.
So how do you create beautiful interpersonal landscapes which only involve one person?
That's quite expensive to a large percentage of the country. 19% of the country grosses less than that annually [1].
Van life, living in a THOW (tiny house on wheels) etc is very much a luxury in the vast majority of cases (probably why you tend to see a lot of CS/tech types with individual salaries 2-3x the median household income doing it).
> it is impossible to meet people or build communities.
That really just depends on what you choose to do with your free time. If you are at all religious, regularly attending religious services where you live is all but certain to give you the opportunity (unless you go to a 'mega' church).
There are things like Freemasonry, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, CrossFit/barbell clubs/strongman facilities, organized bowling leagues, Toastmasters, LUGs (Lego User Groups - adult lego groups), vintage computer clubs, game stores that have regular tabletop and trading card game playing times, the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism - period accurate medieval reenactment), other living history groups, adult softball/basketball leagues, supper clubs, etc.
[1] https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/#Me...
Fuck your 'downpayment'. That's exactly what people are rejecting - the idea that they should simply become a serf to some previous landowner for multiple decades because they happened to be born later.
A van may have maintenance, but it's not rent-seeking behaviour.
I can’t imagine there are many places in the US where you can purchase a home and car for less than $25k. Total purchase price, not down payment.
I don't own an RV, but I've owned two houses and I'm guessing the RV monthly expenses will be quite a bit lower.
and no kids.
That said, if you do this, please do not be creepy— at least in the swing dance scenes I was involved in in (Toronto, Seattle, New York), the overwhelming majority of people were there to have fun dancing, not to hook up or be hit on.
And it's not expensive. Personally, I spent less than $25k on a DIY RV, and that included solar power and a new motorcycle.
I wouldn't say that I'm happy - it's still harrowingly lonely. But I'm less unhappy than I was when I was working in a big city. There's something calming about nature, and the US is enormously beautiful.
And I think that, ironically, there are a lot of people like me out there. People who feel disgusted with our current culture, who don't judge new acquaintances by their mutual friends list entries, and who are genuinely interested in improving the state of the world and the experiences of the people around us. But we have no way to connect, so we wander off and bide our time in the vain hope that someday we will find a world ready to accept us. Until then, there's really nothing to do but smell the roses.
One thing I didn't see called out is how often you'll be without cell signal, but I've only skimmed the article so far. I'd recommend getting a satellite beacon if you decide to do this, if only so that you can reliably get weather reports and send messages in an emergency.