The material costs are not consumer goods like clothing and food.

It is the infrastructure, moving mountains to move water, paving land to move food, laying wires for electricity and communication, train lines to move fertilizer, refineries, ports, universities to study medicines, etc.

$100 per month is not going to cover any of this, but I am pretty sure you are going to want the benefits.

My comment was from the viewpoint of an individual today. That’s what it says. It doesn’t say anything about society as a whole.

So, no, an individual is not paying for train lines and ports from their personal budget. Perhaps there are some people who spend 90%+ of their income on food, shelter, and electricity, but I’m fairly certain that the majority of costs are “unnecessary” consumer goods.

Taxes, home, healthcare, food, vehicle (or transportation), education, retirement savings. A portion of this might be discretionary, and it is very subjective, but I doubt you are getting anywhere near $100 per month in “necessary” consumer goods in the US.

Healthcare alone will blow through that, and not sure where you will draw the line on necessary and unnecessary for that.

People at some point in their lives might be spending a majority of their money on unnecessary items, but eventually, it will catch up to them (and potentially be made up by government subsidies).

Then make it a thousand dollars a month. $12,000 a year is still way below anything most people consider a normal modern income.

Again; you’re missing the bigger point entirely and fixating on specific numbers that I threw out as a quick example.

Sure, and you are willing to forego the services of any healthcare professional? Because most people consider being able to go to the emergency room as “normal”.

My point was to dispute this overly simplistic assertion:

>but with the nature of marketing and social pressure, almost no one is willing to make that kind of sacrifice today.

Again, I thought it was obvious that I was talking about consumer goods, as the sentence before that one was about consumer goods. Why would marketing have anything to do with healthcare?

You’re trying very hard to completely miss the broader point and are instead nitpicking something that I didn’t even claim. This is entirely a waste of time.

It’s also why discussion culture has gotten so terrible on the internet, because instead of making obvious assumptions about my intent, people insist on critiquing little irrelevant pieces of it.

I don’t think this is nitpicking I actually disagree with you. I think it’s an empirical question how much money could be saved by disavowing only the frivolous consumer items that you’re talking about. My hunch is, it’s less than you think.

poor people go to the emergency room and just never pay the bill. it barely even matters on your credit these days.

>"Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."

I would like you for one day to stop, and each thing you use, break down the supply chain that is necessary to produce each step and part of that product, and then break those products that make each step of that process and so on until all you have is raw materials. It's highly likely you'll give up even before doing that on a very very simple item. But the inner connection between the crap you do need, and the crap you don't need isn't going to look like what you think.

Then I'd like you to do some research on tribes that lived outside of modern technologies. How many of those 'individuals' think of themselves like they are their own little gods, versus how many of them deeply understand they have on the members of their tribe to keep them alive?

Did they purposefully misinterpret or was the original comment poorly thought out dismissal of modern life that ignores, very real things like medicine and clean water?

No, I’m pretty certain it’s just nitpicking and uncharitable interpretations that quibble over irrelevant details and miss the bigger point being made.

I think it’s more complicated than that though. Whether a nitpick or not in that comment, the money to sustain modern levels of infrastructure to support, clean, water, sewage, healthcare, et cetera are probably only possible because of the consumer economy more broadly.

> No, I’m pretty certain it’s just nitpicking and uncharitable interpretations that quibble over irrelevant details and miss the bigger point being made.

Welcome to the Hacker News comment section.

I've lost track of how many times I've posted three paragraphs of thoughts and ideas and maybe some nuance, only to have someone leave a drive-by reply of "Ahh, but in paragraph 2, sentence 8, you said 'all' when in reality it's 'most'. Gotcha! Your entire comment is flawed!" I do this too though once in a while, so I guess nobody's perfect.