Nearly one year ago I seeded an article about Mark Boyle, a former business man who had experimented with living without money for a year and enjoyed it so much he had vowed to continue that way permanently. And indeed it seems that he is still living in rural England in the little trailer he obtained from Freecycle.org, where he continues to grow some of his own food, to forage in the wild for things like berries, nuts and mushrooms, and to manage to get processed foods by scavenging through restaurant and supermarket waste. According to last year's article, Boyle planned to publish a book he had written about his experiences:
"Ironically, they say I’m going to make quite a bit of money from it.”
“But what am I going to do with it? Should I give it away? And will I have to open a bank account? It’s stressing me out!”
The book, Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, has just been published in the USA. Not only has he figured out how he can use the money to maintain his "freegan" lifestyle, he plans on using it to help others who want to do the same:
...Boyle...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.
[...]
[BOYLE:] "All the proceeds of the book are going into a trust to buy land for the first community and hopefully subsequent communities as well. In a kind of similar way, back in the day, slaves would buy their way out of slavery so the kids could be free. We're buying pockets of land out of the money economy and then using that land for workshops and courses for free for people who will come along and experience moneyless living and learn all the skills of moneyless living.
[...]
"We get about 100 emails a week from people wanting to stay. I'm starting with a core group of those people whom I know and whom I've built up a relationship with for the last few years. So it's about 14 who are bringing the project forward. We're going to build capacity for 20 people and roughly 8 of those people are going to be permanent, and probably another 8 will be kind of transient. We're trying to build in an entry level for people who want to experience it. So if people aren't ready to make the whole step, they can come for a weekend or come for a month, or come for two months."
Of course Boyle is not the first person to try to put "freeconomic" theories into practive. Fourteen years ago Heidemarie Schwermer of Germany began a somewhat similar experiment, which turned into a lifestyle she still maintains as she approaches 70 years of age. In 2001 Schwermer published, Das Sterntalerexperiment - mein Leben ohne Geld (The Sterntaler Experiment-My Life Without Money), which inspired documentary film-maker Line Halvorsen to make an English-language 'cinema verite' film about her lifestyle. The movie, which is supposed to be released this year, is called Living Without Money.
Schwermer relies mostly on trading and bartering to support herself, while the most well known American "freegan" Daniel Suelo tries to forgo bartering and survive by scavenging, foraging, fishing, and hunting. Suelo, who stopped using money in the autumn of 2000 and lives in a cave near Moab, Utah, uses a public libray to maintain a blog, Moneyless World - Free World - Priceless World.
Boyle and Schwermer also have websites: The FreeEconomyCommunity and www.HeidemarieSchwermer.com (in German).
Boyle also started a YouTube Channel: The Freeconomy Community Channel. Not available on this channel, but available elsewhere on YouTube is this video report on Boyle by the Guardian.co.uk.
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- POLL QUESTION: Could you live without money?
