Pipe Dreams

[markdahman]

Dont u guys feels like ur stuck on a piece of land that u can never escape. Your tied down by either money the law or love. Somethings allways stopping u? Well it sure feels like that for me! I wish to live in a land where i build my own house out of wood i cut down myself. Eat from food ive grown myself. Somewhere with no such thing as money. somehwere where thers no laws to say what u can and cant do. I wanna move somehwere like a un-inhabited area of africa where no one will bother me. Anyone feel the same as me? Or does anyone know where i could go to live this dream>?

[Creeping Death]

Me too, man. Unfortunately we live in an oppressive society controlled by an opressive goverment. I don't give a fuck, but i dont want to go to jail either.

Let me know when you figure out a solution to our problems

[markdahman]

Lol i was thinking of moving to somewhere where i could live like good ol times!! Own a farm and stuff in like some tropical island that i own and no one els can get 2 that is not governed!

[writeright]

Haha exactly. Especially the money part. Half of the time you even need money to be creative.

[MrJim]

I feel ya buddy. I've thought about that too. The big logistical problem, from what I've read about people seeking to start their own nations is that you either need to buy that island off of a country, therefore it is technically bound by the laws of the nation whose real estate board you bought it through. That means that if you tried to declareindependence from a country they can in theory send in the Army to "restore order" if they get wind of something going on there that they don't approve of.


In order to actually form your own colony there is only one place to do it - International waters.Tie a bunch of barges together and anchor,Voila, you are independant.In britian there was a group (still going on I believe) that took over a deserted island just outside the international waters and declared it independant. British government has still given them a real hard time about it, though. Anywhere warm and international also has some people that would have you running back to a government ruled place - Pirates will take everything and kill you if they sense there is monetary gain. No rules means no prosecution.


Being Canadian has its advantages though. Off the coast of Nova Scotia islands can be bought for as little as a hundred thousand dollars. These are so remote that noone would bother you out there. Go further north and the price keeps declining.


BC - Islands off of BC's coast start at under a million dollars, but keep in mind that the climate is much better. Many, Many Hippies have their own communes just off the coast and they tend (aside from the need to pay property taxes to BC) to be pretty much independant. They grow buckets of weed and people work on communal farms.


A couple of hours north out of vancouver and Vast acreages get quite cheap. Go a couple hours north of PG and you can own a vast expanse of land without anyone around for a song. Way up there the property taxes are so cheap that, if you are sustaining yourself electrically and suppling your own food you would need to pull in a whopping 80 dollars a month to pay your taxes supposing that the land is all paid for.


People have had successes other ways though. Research the history of Christiana in Copenhagen and see what they had gone through.


A neat and very expense independant place people are trying to form now is FreedomShip.


Just thought I'd add my 2 cents.


Peace,


Jimbo

[MrJim]

Hey I was just thinking...Anyone else know of peaceful and possiblylawless places? Know the real estate costs there? Space and fertile land os all you need.

[Solidly-here]

Hand-build your house ... live without heat and air conditioning (and running water, a refrigerator, toilet paper, ...)


Ever since I was a kid, I wished I could have been born a hundred years ago. It is a romantic life. I spent endless hours dreaming of how I could live (from pumping water to trips to the outhouse). These were hours well-spent. Thinking about a better (quieter) life is healthy.


In your case, you will grow your own food. If the weather goes bad, your menu goes from sparse to starvation. If the weather is good, then at harvest time you will have a variety of foods (and live the rest of the year eating what you can preserve for the next 11 months).


The best thing about living in society is that all of the things I need to live (and goodies which are not neccessary) are freely available. All I have to do is go to the store.


If you plan to live without money, then you're on your own. Even if you could travel a few days to a General Store, you couldn't buy anything there (but, maybe they could accept some barter goods).


I appreciate your dreams. They help me keep dreaming my dreams. There is one thing that is true in this world: The grass is always greener somewhere ELSE.

[MrJim]

I don't think that anyone was talking about living completely without money, as I had said property taxes would need to be paid - The key in self-sustainment is to minimize external influences on your environment. If you grow enough of whatever you are growing to sell surplus at a farmers market (or whereever you sell what it is you grow) and you only need a hundred bucks a month to get by you can always find a way to get it. Weather can be bad, weather can be good but I think that part if the allure is that you are tied to the natural environment so closely. I mean if you are good with money in the first place an investment in the right place of as little as 10 - 15 thousand can bring in 1000 to 1500 dollars a year. All expenses are paid that way. If you have people working your environment with you, production skyrockets.


I guess what I am trying to say is that if there is a will to do something, the ways will present themselves. There are so many options out there and people tend to opt for the familiar and worn path rather than untested ones. You don't hear about people as a whole who are successful at this lifestyle because they don't want to be heard from.


There are alot of logistical problems in this way of life, but they are not insurrmountable. Hell, think of all the logistical problems is sustaining a city with a million people.

[phenethylamine]

I suggest www.crimethinc.com and every piece of literature they have to offer (its all free) should be read by anyone who thinks they 'might' be stuck. Especially the fighting for our lives brochure thing, that is meditative mind through anarchy.

[yuval]

in much of laos they still don't use money. from luang prabang take a 4-hour bus to nong kiaw, then a one hour boat north to <forgot the name>, then you can trek an hour to bana kan - money was only introduced there a couple of years ago, or you can take a 4-hour trek across the mountain ridge to a place that still doesn't use money, just barter.


laos people are weird, but amiable if you know the habbits. lots of opium and booze.


however that place can be shit cold. i'd go tropical - sayshell islands sell for a million bucks a piece. until about a decade ago, if two people there had a fight there, the punishment would be for them to spend a week on a deserted island together - a very peaceful place.


peace


y

[Diphenhydramine]

I believe the way to go is international waters, where there are no
rules. I promised some of my friends that if I ever came into an
immense amount of money, I would buy an old aircraft carrier, and turn
it into a floating island. We would only stay in international
waters, and use the entire flight deck as a garden to grow food and
drugs. We would use the existing laboratories to manufacture
drugs. We would therefor sell surplus drugs to pay for fuel
(although technically we could just drift, and therefor only need fuel
for a radio, radar, lights, power, etc). People could take boats
to visit us to buy drugs, or even helicopters. I'm sure there
would be enough of a demand. If anyone is interested, I'll make
sure to post an invitation on drugs-forum if I ever make this dream
come true.

[MrJim]

SOunds like fun, man. The only problem is the purchase of an aircraft carrier - They tend not to let those go into civilian hands - I say since it is based on the hypothesis that there is money flowing - to custom builda ship so it doesn't have that "militant" air.

[scythebunny]

Iknow what u mean! Moneyis the one thing that really controlls everything basically. without it little is possible nowadays, which is pretty sad. especially for many who have so many dreams and have the ambition towant to do them but are held back financially.


AlthoughI must say ive had the best of both worlds. Living in Africa where openland is so vast and costs next nothing to have ur own piece of it. many of my friends and family have their own land and can pretty much do what they want with it providing they pay their little piece towards tax no one really bothers them. I've also had theprivilage of having a Father who flew a helicopters for a living so i got to visitsome of the most beautiful places and meet many rural people who live off the land exactly the way u seem to dream about living.I also know many people who spend there whole lives out in the bush and most of them are the nices most calm and inspired people ive ever met.a lot of them make their money by sharing their land with anyone who wants to visit it. like lodge owners who build beautiful cabins and thatch rooms for visitors who pay to live a little bit of this dream.


Im sure it would be peanuts to buy land here as our currency is worth so little in comparison to most places over seas, and the climate is perfect never too cold. hehe its the middle of winter and im walking around in gym pants and a t-shirt...hmmmm not very flattering.

[Hyperreal]

I disagree. You can do anything you want, if you apply yourself to it. Money is easy to get, because it's everywhere. It's far easier to get money than to get mescaline, fo instance. We often come up with reasons for not doing what we want, but really we're just making excuses to ourselves, lying to ourselves about the real reason, which is nearly always internal - fear, laziness, habit etc.

[MrJim]

For sure Hyperreal,


The biggest problem that we have as people is that it is so much easier to say why something can't be done than how it gets done. No is just so much easier than how + action.

[billbong]

I feel like partly like that as well, i won't start rambling about ppl in power controlling everyones thoughts views, ect. i am sure quite a few ppl have dun this however i am not sure how successfully, i think the nearest ideal, is a some tribe,

[Diphenhydramine]

I've always wanted to live in a self-supporting commune (aka the "hippy
commune"). Does anyone know of any good ones, perhaps
links? Preferably in America I guess.

[MrJim]

Originally Posted by Diphenhydramine

I've always wanted to live in a self-supporting commune (aka the "hippy commune"). Does anyone know of any good ones, perhaps links? Preferably in America I guess.

The thing is there are "hippy communes" alive and well. They are typically where the climate in milder and they pretty much always don't have websites. Anonimity has always been the key with these people. I think I mentioned it above but there are several islands which host them just off of southern BC. I am quite sure Oregon and washington must have them too. There is no "virtual" exploring to find them though. Footwork and local conversation is pretty much the way.


Peace and happy travels,


Jimbo

[Creeping Death]

I think about the future alot. I wonder every day where my life will go. My worst nightmare would be to be stuck in this cycle of fear and consumption that modern societies are built upon. To work like a sucker for your whole life and in return get a bank account and a car. To me these things have no value at all. It makes me miserable to just think about.

So i always get the same thought. "What else is there?".

Wouldnt it be nice to have a house and a little field somewhere secluded? Where you can grow all the drugs and food you want without ever having to think about money. Why not?

What if everyone saved a bunch of cash (maybe 5000$) and went to america with some friends, with nothing but clothes and food (the climate in most of the country is nice). Then found a nice spot in a forest to build a house from the wood thats there. And plant all of your food and weed around the place (camoflauge nets of course).

By the time you're finished building the house and planting the fields, you will have exactly ran out of money. And then you can live there without cares.

So why wouldn't that work (apart from the fuzz)? It's time for everybody to make their pipedreams come true.

[Nature Boy]

Do remember that agriculture can be back-breaking work but if you're up for the challenge by all means go. Land in America is a tad expensive though. A small private island would probably be better.

[Diphenhydramine]

There's already a bunch of threads in this section addressing exactly what you're talking about dude.



But yeah, self-sufficiency would be great. Try starting out
small...do you have any forest/woods near you? If so, explore
them, build a leanto, camp out in it, hike the area. Just doing
something like that a few times a week will make you feel better.



I'm working on a small shack out in the woods, built only using rope, a
hatchet, and nearby materials. I hope to add a chimney in the
near future using slate from a nearby stonewall. It's fun to go
out there by yourself once in a while, all alone in the "silence" of
the woods, meditate, smoke, whatever.



Directly addressing your question, yeah, in the 60's there were a huge
amount of kids doing exactly that, making communites (communes) out in
the woods or deserts in the west of America. A lot of them fell
through though, you really gotta know what you're doing. Mother
nature is still one harsh bitch. Maybe you should research "hippy
communes", sounds like there's still a bunch in Canada. I'd love
to join one, but it would be a LOT of work just to track one down.

[Chaote]

Well lets say you started out small then more free spirits would come and come until you were 10x bigger and you had your own little society whats stopping greed and hatred and currency and all that you want to escape from seeping in? Im not saying it is impossible you would have to start people from scratch basically, "brainwash" them so they would forget about money and useless material possesion that they are so acustomed to, and you would have to worry about addiction because if your always high its hard to do some hard work (though not impossible) like Liam said agriculture is hard.

I think that you need some of what you arer talking about and some of what we have, people who make houses and clothes and peple with other useful skills but no Tv makers or gunsmiths, we need to reasses our priorities not turn are back on all that we have made.

[Creeping Death]

There are lots of nice non technological inventions to help make agiculture easier. If i read lots of books on the subject, im sure it would make things alot easier.

It's impossible in sweden though. Its too cold to grow most of the things you'd want at a commune. I like camping, so spending alot of time in the woods is something im accustomed to.

[cactus]

Getting the land is the hard part. You need at least ten acres to plant veggies,fruit and graze livestock. But without some form of trade,i.e wollen goods, food product, art, it makes it really hard. Theres always something you cant grow in the environment you live in, and other things which take some time to produce fruits.


I always thought of going out bush, and i will when i have the financial backing to get the 200+ acres i want in the lush forest. Maybe starting a smallessential oil company for a little income on the side.

[Sklander]

Climb your way to the top. With enough ambition, luck and common sense you can "make it".


Diphenhydramine had a great suggestion. Put your thoughts into actions. See what you can do. Keep challenging yourself.