> If you opt out of the system, for the most part the system is not interested in you.

Opting out of the system, in this case, by living in a forest in Singapore, is not an option for most people.

People who are engaged in the system (by e.g. buying things, having jobs, raising a family) are touched by government policy every day.

It is an option, just not the preference for most people. The guy had an alright life, married a woman from a nearby island in a different country, had a daughter and still tend to his garden. In a way, that’s how humans have lived for most of their existence except the last 100 years or so.

> In a way, that’s how humans have lived for most of their existence except the last 100 years or so.

Sure. They would also die whenever there was a famine, some disease ran rampant, Mongols or crusaders pillaged everything, some recent council decreed they were all heretics, etc.

That's how most humans died except the last 100 years or so

Or this guy...

https://metro.co.uk/2024/07/08/worlds-loneliest-man-lives-70...

Or the Lykov family.