If you want to actually live outside of society, perhaps the only way to do that is on a simple sailboat like Moxie did for a while:
https://archive.org/details/holdFastADocumentaryByMoxieMarli...
But even that only works temporarily because eventually something breaks or runs out, and you will be re-confronted by reality (some society somewhere) once ashore. For example your hypothetical phone unlock is what happened to Moxie. From Wikipedia:
"While entering the U.S. on a flight from the Dominican Republic in 2010, Marlinspike was detained by federal agents for nearly five hours, all his electronic devices were confiscated, and at first agents claimed he would only get them back if he provided his passwords so they could decrypt the data. Marlinspike refused to do this, and the devices were eventually returned, though he noted that he could no longer trust them, saying, "They could have modified the hardware or installed new keyboard firmware."
The social contract is the only contract in the world that you can be legally bound to the terms of without ever having agreed to it. In this way, the government acts very much like any other organized crime group: "follow the rules we create or else".
Sure you can -- just head off to https://www.thecollector.com/bir-tawil-unclaimed-land/ and enjoy your isolation!
I didn’t say you can live outside of society peacefully in such a way that everyone will just leave you alone but a life of crime is a choice available to everyone.
People for whom the system offers no advantages are far more likely to make that choice.
My original point is that the current state of the law is not some grand moral absolute, it’s just how things happen to have worked out based on a bunch of decisions made by a bunch of people.
You can choose how to react to that up to and including breaking the law. The degree to which you do that can determine your consequences.
Also sometimes the bear eats you and you’re just unlucky.
Try "impossible". No person reading HN is prepared to forgo all of what civilization provides. There are probably a very few people on the planet, who are already living in an extremely isolated tribal setting, who could go it alone, but if they're reading HN I hope they'll speak up now, I'd love to hear their opinion on this.
The clear implication of your original statement was that it is possible to not owe society anything by not taking anything from others. To do that requires a level of self-sufficiency that only a very small fraction of people possess.
“For many, society doesn't provide any advantages and so they choose non-compliance and all the consequences that come with it.”
So what I mean is you can choose to live outside of society, meaning not complying with laws. That is lawlessness, it’s a life of crime.
Living as a sovereign citizen outside of any legal structure in such a way that you neither depend on any legal structure nor do you infringe upon any legal structure is very difficult, and available only to a very small number of people.
But anyone can choose lawlessness at any time.