Mother Jones: Can You Live Without Money For a Year?

By choice, Mark Boyle basically doesn't have a cent—or, more accurately, a pence—to his name. Boyle lives in rural England in a trailer he spotted on Freecycle.org. He feeds himself by growing everything from barley to potatoes, foraging wild edibles like berries and nettles, and occasionally dumpster-diving for luxuries like margarine and bread. He cooks with a wood stove fashioned from large restaurant olive cans; brushes his teeth with his own mixture of cuttlefish bones and fennel seed; and makes paper and ink from mushrooms. He barters labor for rent, Internet service, and whatever else he can't find, grow, or make.

This experiment in currency-free living started in 2008 after Boyle, an Irishman who worked in the organic food industry, saw Gandhi and was inspired by the Indian nationalist's legendary asceticism. Boyle's experience became the basis for his book, Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, which has just been released in the states. By the end of his year without dough, he'd decided that the life he'd gained by shedding currency was worth continuing. When I recently spoke with Boyle, he was making plans to buy land with the royalties from the book—his only cash transaction in the last two years—to start a moneyless community. He talked about the insights that drove him to make his new lifestyle more permanent.

Mother Jones: It seems pretty ironic that you were a student of economics and now you're moneyless.

Mark Boyle: You're right, it's a bit ironic. But I think it's wrong to think of economics as money. The actual word itself actually revolves around meeting one's needs. Money is one way of meeting our needs, but it's only one way. I think I couldn't do what I do today without studying economics, because you need to understand the system first—how it currently works—in order to change it.

MJ: Do you ever feel like you should be more engaged in the political process in order to promote sustainability?

MB: I feel like what I'm doing is a political process, to be honest. I think every single thing we do is political. Even if you go to the shops and buy a packet of biscuits, then you're buying into the system, willingly or not. I think we're conditioned into thinking political systems as being either communism or capitalism. I think there are a lot more options available. We just haven't explored them. My statement is really a message to the environmental movement more than anything else. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/media/2010/10/mark-boyle-moneyless-man-interview

but do not address the real issue of poverty or homelessness or hunger on the streets. it's just a stunt.

see, the difference between anyone who decides to 'try a social experiment' like this and someone who REALLY has NOTHING...is that at any time the 'visitor' can walk out of it and go get himself a nice meal and a shower and an apartment and a book deal or interview because he has lived on the 'other side'

i *wish* that every fatcat had to go even a month(preferably much longer) without knowing where his next meal was coming from, how he would keep from getting arrested for sleeping in public or how he would cope with getting sick with no safety net...

but the whole 'control' of the experiment, and the knowing you could walk away from it is what makes it un-workable.

poverty is NOT optional
it is not a fun place to *visit* and then go back to your real life and say you 'know how the poor live'
poverty is gut wrenching, humiliating, depressing, desperate, lonely, and often dangerous


it's nice that this kid can live on recycled stuff and such, but really he is not helping those who suffer by pretending he is some kind of modern day ascetic....i am not impressed.
show me Bernake, Maddoff, Geithner and the rest of them living in tent city, and maybe then i'll feel better, just a little.

...... His focus seems to be more on sustainable, non-monetary living.

It's such bullshit when people say "I lived without money, and you can too!" and they have their book deal waiting for them as they walk out of the wilderness...

supposedly a very warm fuzzy and environmentally active article...but all it does is piss me off this morning :mad:

yet she didn't have to start out flat busted like the poor do. She had a house she owned so no rent that limited what welfare paid for utilities, she had a stock of canned goods in a pantry, so she was able to use food stamps as a supplement unlike the poor who have nothing stocked in their pantry. And after she did her little experiment she just went back to normal living, unlike the poor who do get off welfare and have hardships for years after getting of welfare, remember first thing poor do after finding work is buy a decent car so they can get to work. I hate these type of shit living poor isn't bad projects.

This was the first article i read this morning, and it is triggering more than the topic of the article itself, for sure...

I have been on & off welfare for about half my adult life... and it takes YEARS to feel like you are even 'getting a leg up'...much less feeling like you can breathe easy again. the wear of YEARS of survival living and no way out have an effect on you...your personality, your dreams, your concepts of what makes something 'a splurge' vs. 'a big survival expense'...
i've never had a new car, and all the cars i HAVE had are because my parents didn't want me to be in a rattletrap and wanted me & my kids safe. but I am lucky by even those standards. My upbringing was typical middle class...we didn;t go on vacations, but my mom never had to worry if her checks would bounce. There was always savings to tap for braces or other big ticket items in LIFE.
My parents have lived through the depression as children, maybe that's why they were so 'secure' in their life, maybe they were just lucky to live in the decades where you COULD aquire and save and live easily ...

My life has not been like that, and it's not something I can just step on a bus and walk back into the 'real world' of plenty...and have an interview and a bookdeal waiting there for me...

Maybe I *should* write my book, maybe it will get me outta this! lol...

Not only was it an experiment by someone who could walk away at any time, WHERE they chose to do the experiment made a big difference too. Not every place has a situation where you can barter for rent and trade labor for goods. The mentality of some people, who say they do things so you should be able to do it too, without taking into consideration that different areas have different rules, really gripes my ass too.

and does land one in jail on theft charges. Dumpster diving is a health risk because your eating food that is past the sell date, meaning that it is either spoiled or on the verge of spoiling and garbage picking was out lawed because some people tore peoples trash bags open and left a mess which meant the garbage men left it for the home owner to pick up and because they had to use new trash bags it cost the home owners extra money. As well as they pay for trash pick up and don't get service that they paid for when their trash isn't picked up because someone screwed up their trash.

would pay the property taxes; yes

I'm making a larger point.

A lot of folks ask: "How do you do it?"

So one guy is trying it. In his way, he is experimenting with a theoretical model and seeing how it works in reality. Nothing wrong with that. Unless people start saying, "See how easy it is! Everyone should try it!"

But if you have children who need medicine or you are elderly or disabled and can't "do chores" for rent, etc., you cannot live money-free without paying a price in other ways.

If communities as a whole practiced sustainability combined with providing monetary safety nets for the weakest (rather than only offering monetary safety nets for the obscenely wealthy,) imagine how much brighter - and less trashed - the future would look.

and move very very fast!

Gosh. The neighborhood he settles in will be so pleased to play host to a roving band of self-righteous dumpster-diving Phd-waving day laborers with cuttlefish breath.