Living Car Free - Living money-free

There must be something out there that could fill in this blank:

"Bikes are to cars as ______ is to money."

Just wish I could figure it out. I'm of the opinion that our economy in America is controlled by people who mean to enslave us by debt, and I'm trying to figure out an alternative.

I feel the same way, and I plan to go live like a hunter-gatherer (with a little bit of sustitence farming) without any reliance on the modern economy.

I'm of the opinion that our economy in America is controlled by people who mean to enslave us by debt.

And health-care will be the kicker. Health plans will be how they control our day to day living.

And health-care will be the kicker. Health plans will be how they control our day to day living.

Oh god, I never even considered that.

Real ID/RFID, robbery via taxes and interest and inflation, civil liberties removed by the Patriot Act, no privacy thanks to technology, government-sanctioned crime, and now the medical-industry is going to screw us. Shoot.

You don't have to be enslaved by debt if you don't want to be. That's your choice.

While individual people (in America) may or may not suffer from personal debt, we ALL suffer from our national debt. The value of our money is only governed by how much is in circulation, and since the amount in circulation always rises over time, each American Dollar is naturally worth less in the hands of the citizens than it was at the time of printing. This is a debt that can only be paid with more of the same printed money. This inflation, combined with interest and our (unconstitutional) income tax, guarantees the gradual enslavement of Americans. I don't know how it is for you, but I hope you in Canada can learn from our mistakes.

Er... that's easy. Don't be 'enslaved by debt', use it to your advantage. Build up good credit and don't blow all of the cash that you don't even have on worthless garbage like a lot of people do. The luxury car will not make you successful. The big house on a big overgrown lot will not make you successful. The 56" widescreen will not make you successful, happy, or anything else. Neither will the high end video game machine, the pleather couch, or the name brand jeans in the latest fashion that will look tacky and out of date in a week.
Putting together a nice investment portfolio with the money you save by not blowing everything on all the things I mentioned above and more? That might make you be successful.. Being able to retire early knowing that you've got enough invested to be able to live the rest of your life off of the interest alone with some left over? That makes me feel kinda happy. Being able to do what I want when I want would, anyways.

I always get a bit annoyed at the school of thought that goes something like "Damn Nintendo, Wal-Mart, and McDonalds! Damn them and their evil mind control lasers forcing people to buy their stuff!" Nobody is 'enslaving' anyone. Who's fault is it exactly that people keep crowding in line pushing to be the first to put shackles on themself?

A few days ago I heard an economist state that the world wide debt is more than the world wide money supply. So, if by magic every person, company, and country wanted to pay their debt tomorrow, it wouldn't be possible due to there not being enough money in existence.


"Bikes are to cars as work is to money."

Bikes are smaller and slower than cars but they can do what cars do.

Ten hours of work can be turned into money. The money can flow much faster and accomplish the end goal of work.

Bikes can replace cars in many cases. Work can replace money too if you just work to make food or trade work for items you want.

Money just represents work (unless you are the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System which prints $100 bills for 4 cents apiece in South Korea and charges the USA $100 plus interest for each one).

FOR FUN

You and a friend could get a $100 bill and give it to each other 1000 times. Each of you could honestly say that you had a $100,000.00 income. Just don't tell the tax people.

"Bikes are to cars as ______ is to money."

You could try to fill in the blank with "self-sufficiency" or "barter". A better answer is probably to be found in the story i just heard on the radio about a guy's vision of a "harvest economy" or something, where villages used to have huge amounts of work to accomplish during the harvest season and everybody just pitched in and got it done.

A guy who was a rich businessman in ireland decided he was going to give the rich-person life up and walk to where Gandhi lived, with nothing but a change of clothes or two...asking for everything he needed as kindness from strangers... as well as offering to share his skills (carpentry and plumbing or something) with anyone he could be helpful to.

The problem with barter is that you can run in to problems if you have, say, knit clothes and you need yarn and food, but the people who have yarn and food don't need any knit clothes right now.

Actually, you shot yourself in the foot. To whom is the national debt owed? Ourselves. If you got a student loan, you own a piece of the national debt. The people who bought war bonds in WWII were buying national debt. Paying off the national debt means buying back all of the bits of the nation that American people and other parts of the US government bought. Paying it off actually mostly involves shuffling it around a bunch. Who is the National Debt owed to? Other parts of The Nation. Okay, so what's the problem? Economists freak out over it. Economists have a lot of strange notions though. Economists are the people you go to if you want to find out how many people can be slaughtered in order to speed commuting times by a few seconds and want a serious answer. Economists are the ones who think that it costs billions of dollars because every car isn't able to drive at the speed limit all the time. On the bright side, they also are the ones who state that parking lots cost more than the U.S. military budget.

Actually, you shot yourself in the foot. To whom is the national debt owed? Ourselves.

You're only partially right.

Regarding the Federal Reserve, they print money that costs them 4 cents per bill no matter its denomination. They lend it to the USA at face value and get interest payments on its face value. So we all are paying interest on all of the face values of all the bills they give us instead of paying interest on the 4 cents per bill actual cost.

Who owns the national debt? Well, right now China does along with many foreign countries who buy treasury bills to give the U.S. government its money. The USA owes China about one trillion dollars plus interest.

For decades banks that are members of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System have been borrowing money from the Federal Reserve (the people who print the money) at one rate and using that money to buy US Treasury Bills that pay a higher rate of return than they are paying the Federal Reserve. They are essentially trading one piece of paper for another and earning billions of dollars in interest at the tax payers expense. All of us are subsidizing bank profits.

You and I can't do that. I can't go to the bank and get a loan for $100,000,000.00 at 4 percent interest and buy $100,000,000.00 worth of Treasury Bills that pay me 6 percent interest. This is the type of banking corruption that has been in existence since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was created.

All of that banking debt is created by the Federal Reserve, congress, and all of the presidents continual overspending. That debt is now owed by the citizens of the USA. All political parties have willingly participated in this.

It's this type of corruption that makes people hate paying taxes because we know our money is being wasted.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

A guy who was a rich businessman in ireland decided he was going to give the rich-person life up and walk to where Gandhi lived, with nothing but a change of clothes or two...asking for everything he needed as kindness from strangers... as well as offering to share his skills (carpentry and plumbing or something) with anyone he could be helpful to.

That sounds a little like the story of Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. He was a self-made millionaire by 29 but he was left feeling miserable. He and his wife sold everything and moved to a religious community in Georgia.

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

You do realize Polonius is a sententious old windbag, don't you?

Who owns the national debt?
Answer right here:
http://www.treasuries.com/images/history-graph.gif

and how much is there?
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/history.gif

whooo.

i like money. i use it to buy bike stuff. what's wrong with money?

And health-care will be the kicker. Health plans will be how they control our day to day living.

I'm living on a very small amount (under taxable level) and doing ok. I am a f/t student. I have enough of what I need, no debts. The only problem I have not been able to solve is getting health insurance. I guess I'm not the only one facing this issue. :rolleyes:

Suggestions on health insurance: don't be brainwashed into believing it's a necessity. Insurance of any type is literally a bet against yourself. Health insurance companies are profitable because they take in more in premiums than they pay out in health care ;)

If you're reasonable healthy, and do not have ready access to cheap insurance through work/school etc, seriously consider pay-as-you-go for health care. Cash talks! Paying cash for care will generally get you a much lower rate for care than if they had to go through the hassle of dealing with insurance. Routine health care like checkups, taking care of the flu, even minor emergencies, are seldom over a couple hundred bucks.

Personal experience: I do have health insurance but it's a so-called "HSA" plan where my work gives me a debit card with $1500 on it to be used specifically for health care. The doctor's office just swipes it like a regular debit card - no other hassle involved. The women in the office love it :) I recently paid $65 for a filling, and $125 when i lopped off part of a thumb (in a disc brake, doh) and required stitching up & a shot.

Keep a bit of change in a health account for the occasional sick day. You can even set it up to be a pre-tax health-specific account via an HSA.

For major disasters, like a broken leg or that $100k open heart surgery, super-hi deductable insurance is available cheaply from any number of places for a few hundred dollars a year.

Also keep in mind that if you are involved in a wreck or something, it's not like the hospital will turn you away before providing emergency care. They'll fix you up regardless.

Cheers

I'm living on a very small amount (under taxable level) and doing ok. I am a f/t student. I have enough of what I need, no debts. The only problem I have not been able to solve is getting health insurance. I guess I'm not the only one facing this issue. :rolleyes:

As a full-time student, you may be able to get some sort of subsidized group plan through your school; not all schools have that, but some do.

If your income is that low, you may qualify for Medicaid.

Suggestions on health insurance: don't be brainwashed into believing it's a necessity. Insurance of any type is literally a bet against yourself. Health insurance companies are profitable because they take in more in premiums than they pay out in health care ;)

If you're reasonable healthy, and do not have ready access to cheap insurance through work/school etc, seriously consider pay-as-you-go for health care. Cash talks!
You better hope you stay healthy and are never admitted to a hospital for anything. Your cash will be saying Bye-Bye to you. As well as all your future cash if you are able to earn any. You may find yourself living very simply because you won't own anything of value after you lose your bet on staying healthy forever. I assume you have no dependents, or are you gambling on their continued good health too?

You better hope you stay healthy and are never admitted to a hospital for anything. Your cash will be saying Bye-Bye to you. As well as all your future cash if you are able to earn any. You may find yourself living very simply because you won't own anything of value after you lose your bet on staying healthy forever. I assume you have no dependents, or are you gambling on their continued good health too?

I'd feel marginally better if I had health ins., but at this time I can either pay rent and go without health ins., or pay health ins. and live in a box under the 5th Street bridge. Lemme see: rent, electric, basic phone, food, no cable, free dial-up, paid-for car. I ride bike or walk mostly, but do need to drive places for geology work. Not too much I can cut out of my budget to accomodate another couple hundred a month right now.

I had catastrophic health coverage a few years ago. It started out with reasonable monthly rates. Then by a year and a half later the rates had doubled and the deductible had quadrupled to keep the rates as low as possible. Unfortunately, my income had not done the same, so I had to let it go.

I just applied for a student GIS internship with the BLM. If that works out maybe I can get in there permanant someday and have a few bennies.

poverty

poverty

Not being able to afford health insurance due to poverty is one thing; to risk becoming impoverished by recklessly gambling on staying healthy and not paying for insurance with available money is another.

poverty

"Bikes are to cars as poverty is to money"??

I hardly think so. I'd say "Bikes are to cars as financial freedom is to money". It's not really about financial freedom as much as it is about freedom in general. It's a state of mind that enables that freedom rather than finances.

Henry David Thoreau makes the same point in Walden, throughout the entire book, really, but this passage is a good example.

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.... I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

Actually, you shot yourself in the foot. To whom is the national debt owed? Ourselves. If you got a student loan, you own a piece of the national debt. The people who bought war bonds in WWII were buying national debt. Paying off the national debt means buying back all of the bits of the nation that American people and other parts of the US government bought. Paying it off actually mostly involves shuffling it around a bunch. Who is the National Debt owed to? Other parts of The Nation. Okay, so what's the problem? Economists freak out over it. Economists have a lot of strange notions though. Economists are the people you go to if you want to find out how many people can be slaughtered in order to speed commuting times by a few seconds and want a serious answer. Economists are the ones who think that it costs billions of dollars because every car isn't able to drive at the speed limit all the time. On the bright side, they also are the ones who state that parking lots cost more than the U.S. military budget.

WRONG.

The Federal Reserve owns ALL of the National Debt, and worse, the Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE CORPORATION THAT HAS NEVER BEEN AUDITED SINCE 1913. Look it up. That's why the constitution states, that only Congress, controlled by the people, has the right to make and coin money, because the people control congress. The name Federal Reserve is to mislead the people into thinking it's a government entity!

Not to mention the Federal Reserve is beholden to foreign, and private interests, but that's another story. If your really want to learn more about this, watch Aaron Russo's film, "From Freedom to Fascism". It explains it really well.

This explains it really really well. What is the national debt? Here's who we owe it to. My god, sometimes, I wonder, why people don't know this. It is so important, and yet people don't know. Or care to know.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30-WtZTH06o

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS2ZiDjZsF0

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeX4mc1JUmk

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ZIXkWcoUI

Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqOzXzAvlKE

... If your really want to learn more about this, watch Aaron Russo's film, "From Freedom to Fascism". It explains it really well.

Word. Fine piece of journalism. And free and legal online, last I checked.

There must be something out there that could fill in this blank:

"Bikes are to cars as ______ is to money."

Just wish I could figure it out. I'm of the opinion that our economy in America is controlled by people who mean to enslave us by debt, and I'm trying to figure out an alternative.

If you're active in your community, and your community is aware, and conscious, you really ought to consider a community currency, like the Ithaca dollar. Here's a link.

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/7813/ccs-ithi.htm
http://www.ithacahours.org/

During the Great Depression, which was deflationary, ie. less credit and money was available, community currencies flourished. There really isn't anything that replaces money, it's just a neutral thing that serves as a medium for exchange of goods, labor, and services. Unless we go back to using cows for trading. But my back yard couldn't take up that much. :p

I'm of the opinion that our economy in America is controlled by people who mean to enslave us by debt, and I'm trying to figure out an alternative.

Leave America.

You better hope you stay healthy and are never admitted to a hospital for anything. Your cash will be saying Bye-Bye to you. As well as all your future cash if you are able to earn any. You may find yourself living very simply because you won't own anything of value after you lose your bet on staying healthy forever. I assume you have no dependents, or are you gambling on their continued good health too?

I assume insurance companies don't make money? Take the money you would have used for insurance and put it in investments (good ones - not flacky ones). Then, after a while, you won't need insurance because you can pay for it. And, the wonderful thing is, you pay for anything you want - not what the insurance wants to give you.

I could easily buy health insurance down here - but choose not to. I just pay as I go. One of the advantages to being a cyclist who eats well is good health. No, a lot more than that - great health. This means, the odds are hugely in my favor regarding this method.

Yes, there is a risk involved in having a medical condition before you save up your reserves - but it might be good to look at what a deductable will cost anyway. A lot of people find out the hard way on very expensive treatments that their insurance only goes so far - it isn't unlimited. Also, there is a risk, but all of life is a risk. One thing to realize is that health insurance is not going to keep you from dying - you will eventually no matter what. All it does is make it so that perhaps, just perhaps, you might not die early. Often, a large percentage of health care is spent so that you last a few months longer, and often, in pain.

My choice is to invest money and then know that I can buy the level I wish. There is a lot of brainwashing going on with insurance. Look at the purchases on electronics and extended warranties - when the sales people try to push it on me I always ask, "So you are telling me this is such a piece of junk it won't last beyond the regular warranty?" :D

I assume insurance companies don't make money? Take the money you would have used for insurance and put it in investments (good ones - not flacky ones). Then, after a while, you won't need insurance because you can pay for it. And, the wonderful thing is, you pay for anything you want - not what the insurance wants to give you.


My choice is to invest money and then know that I can buy the level I wish. There is a lot of brainwashing going on with insurance. Look at the purchases on electronics and extended warranties - when the sales people try to push it on me I always ask, "So you are telling me this is such a piece of junk it won't last beyond the regular warranty?" :D

Your investments better be damn good! Priced many overnight stays in a U.S Hospital lately? Surgery? RX's for chronic conditions that don't have generic formulations? I doubt it, or you wouldn't written the above. Again you better hope you and all your dependents stay healthy or you will find out just how foolish your "wonderful thing" is.

Your analogy to extended warranties is silly. The financial risk to the owner of the electronic equipment is limited to the cost of replacement of the equipment. Period. The financial risk is bottomless for your risky grab bag of wishful thinking and assumptions about staying healthy and paying for any and all future illness and injuries with your cornucopia of good investments.

Your investments better be damn good! Priced many overnight stays in a U.S Hospital lately? Surgery? RX's for chronic conditions that don't have generic formulations? I doubt it, or you wouldn't written the above. Again you better hope you and all your dependents stay healthy or you will find out just how foolish your "wonderful thing" is.

Your analogy to extended warranties is silly. The financial risk to the owner of the electronic equipment is limited to the cost of replacement of the equipment. Period. The financial risk is bottomless for your risky grab bag of wishful thinking and assumptions about staying healthy and paying for any and all future illness and injuries with your cornucopia of good investments.

As grist for the discussion mill:

Cost of an overnight hospital stay and testing during my suspected heart attack in December 2005: 10,000.00. My out of pocket expenses: $100.00

Cost of two months of physical therapy for my scoliosis in January and February 2007: 12,000.00
Out of pocket expenses: $0.00

As grist for the discussion mill:

Cost of an overnight hospital stay and testing during my suspected heart attack in December 2005: 10,000.00. My out of pocket expenses: $100.00

Cost of two months of physical therapy for my scoliosis in January and February 2007: 12,000.00
Out of pocket expenses: $0.00

I wonder how much of those costs are for actual services rendered vs padding to pay for the people that don't have insurance and never pay their bills? And how much the insurance company actually does pay. I noticed on one of our bills that the doctor bills for $350 for a specfic procedure, co-pay is $20 and the insurance company gives the doctor $225 that leaves a gap of $105 that the doctor apparently writes off?

Aaron:)

I assume insurance companies don't make money? Take the money you would have used for insurance and put it in investments (good ones - not flacky ones). Then, after a while, you won't need insurance because you can pay for it. And, the wonderful thing is, you pay for anything you want - not what the insurance wants to give you.

The trouble we've got here in the US is that a vast number of patients have had insurance for a long time, and with this customer base insurance providers have been able to negotiate lower rates for services provided to insured patients. Uninsured patients pay more.

With employer provided health insurance being the norm, the population without health insurance skews towards unemployed or very low income; in other words, a greater percentage of uncollectible accounts, those losses being offset through the population of patients without insurance who are able to pay. (insurance providers won't touch that cost without a fight!) In other words, patients without insurance don't just pay more for health care, they pay a premium on top of that!

And it doesn't stop there; privately owned and operated health care facilities can usually refuse such "risky" patients, and if they don't, they normally require a sizable prepayment. That option varies, since most hospitals are unable to quote services before providing them, as they've relied heavily on negotiations with insurance prior to and following treatment, and have tailored the receivables department towards billing insurance rather than individuals, so many providers just don't know what to charge up front or aren't set up to handle an account against individuals. If they do offer the option, they prefer to cut you a check down the road for your excessive prepayment than risk a collection cycle against unverified income. That's why a lot of people here can't get treatments insurance won't provide through private health care providers, sometimes even if they are able to pay for it out of pocket. An individual choosing to forego insurance entirely would not have different results.

That's the pickle we're in. Insurance has allowed us to finance mindboggling inefficiency in the health care system, which has reached the point where insurance providers are now cutting back on benefits to free up money to pay for the administration costs. And while they negotiate lower rates, and guarantee availability of health care, opting out means hoping you have a health care provider who'll even let you in the door, and even then you often wind up paying more just for basic health care than you would have for insurance plus the same health care.

Leave America.

I'm not a quitter. I want to help fix the problem; what do you do?

I noticed on one of our bills that the doctor bills for $350 for a specfic procedure, co-pay is $20 and the insurance company gives the doctor $225 that leaves a gap of $105 that the doctor apparently writes off?

Aaron:)

Yep. Technically, that amount is your liability. You pay the bill in the event your insurance does not provide payment. Your health care provider should go after you for the unpaid amount if they go after anyone, but the insurance provider wouldn't like that because it'll make them look bad in a competitive market. And insurance providers also have the option of bumping a health care provider who won't "play ball" down the approved provider list a notch or two. So the insurance provider just extorts the maximum amount that statistically won't head to collection against the patient, and both sides factor this estimated loss into negotiated treatment cost. Government plays along by overlooking the blatant financial fraud. The IRS plays along by turning a blind eye towards the financing of complicitly planned losses. Patients play along because otherwise you'd be stuck paying for the whole mess plus whatever your insurance provider negotiated down, if you could find a health care provider who is willing to accommodate uninsured patients.

Just curious ... what does living money free have to do with living car free? Shouldn't this discussion be in the political forum.

But I've noticed this sort of thing in this forum before. It's almost as though giving up our cars therefore automatically means that we're all going to live in huts in the woods and eat the food that we can grow.

When I was car free (I'm sort of car light now), I had more money ... and I spent the bulk of that money on 1) paying down my personal debt; and 2) travelling. Living car free for me was the opposite of living money free!

I noticed on one of our bills that the doctor bills for $350 for a specfic procedure, co-pay is $20 and the insurance company gives the doctor $225 that leaves a gap of $105 that the doctor apparently writes off?



Yep. Technically, that amount is your liability. You pay the bill in the event your insurance does not provide payment.

Baloney! At least for those who have Blue Cross/Blue Shield and use a participating provider which is every facility and every physician I have ever encountered in the U.S.

I had a family member spend 14 days in the local hospital without surgery or any intensive care in December. The Hospital Billed over $16,000+ just for the Hospital and care services not even counting the Doctor Bills. Blue Cross paid them just over $12,000. My co-pay for the Hospital was $100 total. Bill is fully paid!

In January a family member had day surgery for a cyst removal from her neck. Bill was over $7000 including Doctors, operating room and anesthesiology, Blue Cross paid them considerably less, my bill about $500 because I have to build up this year's deductible limit

When I was in Germany Blue Cross paid 100% of the all inclusive hospital bill for a 17 day hospital stay for my wife's surgery and my 5 day stay for retinal surgery at the University of Heidelberg.

Just curious ... what does living money free have to do with living car free? Shouldn't this discussion be in the political forum.

But I've noticed this sort of thing in this forum before. It's almost as though giving up our cars therefore automatically means that we're all going to live in huts in the woods and eat the food that we can grow.

When I was car free (I'm sort of car light now), I had more money ... and I spent the bulk of that money on 1) paying down my personal debt; and 2) travelling. Living car free for me was the opposite of living money free!

9/10 of the commentary on this list is about anything but voluntary car free living, and even less is about how bicycling can/could enable such a lifestyle. That is why I just read this list to know what passes for bicycling advocacy among one slice of the ideologues.

I lately pretty much stay out of the social and political diatribes on this list but can't hold back from responding to the most outlandish and wacky personal financial advice under the guise of tips for car free living. This thread is a good example.

Just curious ... what does living money free have to do with living car free? Shouldn't this discussion be in the political forum.

But I've noticed this sort of thing in this forum before. It's almost as though giving up our cars therefore automatically means that we're all going to live in huts in the woods and eat the food that we can grow.


That does seem to be the assumption among a number of posters here.

Just curious ... what does living money free have to do with living car free? Shouldn't this discussion be in the political forum.

But I've noticed this sort of thing in this forum before. It's almost as though giving up our cars therefore automatically means that we're all going to live in huts in the woods and eat the food that we can grow.

When I was car free (I'm sort of car light now), I had more money ... and I spent the bulk of that money on 1) paying down my personal debt; and 2) travelling. Living car free for me was the opposite of living money free!

Sorry, that wasn't what I meant at all when I started the thread. I should have been more clear that I don't equate money with wealth. IE living money free isn't poverty, the way I meant it.

Just curious ... what does living money free have to do with living car free? Shouldn't this discussion be in the political forum.

But I've noticed this sort of thing in this forum before. It's almost as though giving up our cars therefore automatically means that we're all going to live in huts in the woods and eat the food that we can grow.

When I was car free (I'm sort of car light now), I had more money ... and I spent the bulk of that money on 1) paying down my personal debt; and 2) travelling. Living car free for me was the opposite of living money free!

That's a good question! Maybe successfully questioning the social conception of the necessity of driving everywhere just gets people to questioning other necessities as well! I think stepping out of the driving majority in many of our cultures often requires a healthy degree of skepticism, and maybe a given group of car-free people tends to skew towards reasonable skepticism and open minded questions.

It's kind of like when I started roasting my own coffee. People just don't normally do that kind of thing. And it seems to lead homeroasters into similar unusual interests they never would have considered before, like homebrewing or baking bread from scratch. Or just as often, it's those hobbies that led to homeroasting! Maybe these discussions are some of that kind of progression in interest?

Just curious ... what does living money free have to do with living car free? Shouldn't this discussion be in the political forum.

I agree. There is a Sticky that says what the acceptable posts should be, yet there have been many off topic threads here for a very long time. At least I can say that I have never started any threads that are not about cycling in these forums. I'm not interested in going to the political forums and haven't yet done so. I have responded to some non-cycling posts though.

It seems that just about anything one would need to know about bicycling is already in these forums. It just takes some searching to find the correct information. It is still fun to visit this site and see all of the opinions of the riders. Some forums have more civil people than others. This one suits me the best because it has information and commentary related to living car free which in some ways includes environmentalism.

Well, sorry again for starting an "off-topic" thread. I must say though, I'm surprised that almost all of us link car-free life with the environment, but many of us won't make the leap to talking about the economy.

Well, sorry again for starting an "off-topic" thread. I must say though, I'm surprised that almost all of us link car-free life with the environment, but many of us won't make the leap to talking about the economy.


My link between a car free life and the economy is that when I am car free, I've got more money to spend!

My link between a car free life and the economy is that when I am car free, I've got more money to spend!

Many people use a bike for commuting or various local utility trips have discovered the same relationship. The same people may not give a fig about living car free. The assumption is often found on this list that all bike commuters are closet car free people and that counting bike commuters, or bus riders, or anybody not in a car at the moment of observation, gives an indication of the number of people who live, or would like to live, car free.

Er... that's easy. Don't be 'enslaved by debt', use it to your advantage. Build up good credit and don't blow all of the cash that you don't even have on worthless garbage like a lot of people do. The luxury car will not make you successful. The big house on a big overgrown lot will not make you successful. The 56" widescreen will not make you successful, happy, or anything else. Neither will the high end video game machine, the pleather couch, or the name brand jeans in the latest fashion that will look tacky and out of date in a week.
Putting together a nice investment portfolio with the money you save by not blowing everything on all the things I mentioned above and more? That might make you be successful.. Being able to retire early knowing that you've got enough invested to be able to live the rest of your life off of the interest alone with some left over? That makes me feel kinda happy. Being able to do what I want when I want would, anyways.

I always get a bit annoyed at the school of thought that goes something like "Damn Nintendo, Wal-Mart, and McDonalds! Damn them and their evil mind control lasers forcing people to buy their stuff!" Nobody is 'enslaving' anyone. Who's fault is it exactly that people keep crowding in line pushing to be the first to put shackles on themself?

Amen, brother! Amen!

"Bikes are to cars as poverty is to money"??

I hardly think so. I'd say "Bikes are to cars as financial freedom is to money".


Yes agreed that is another way of looking at it. But I was thinking about other coutnries than just the developed western countries when conjuring up 'poverty'. The people in China, for example, would much rather drive cars than ride bikes they had the money to do so.

9/10 of the commentary on this list is about anything but voluntary car free living, and even less is about how bicycling can/could enable such a lifestyle. That is why I just read this list to know what passes for bicycling advocacy among one slice of the ideologues.

I lately pretty much stay out of the social and political diatribes on this list but can't hold back from responding to the most outlandish and wacky personal financial advice under the guise of tips for car free living. This thread is a good example.I believe you hae more posts on this thread than anybody else. So, IOW, "It's OK for me to go off topic because I have special widom to impart. But when other people go off topic I will rave against it."

The OP was somewhat (although not much) related to carfree living. Others--especially you--blew it way off course.

i like money. i use it to buy bike stuff. what's wrong with money? What's wrong with money is that I never have enough of it. :D

Seriously, economies went through this already. If you don't want to be hunters-gatherers, or a primitive clan system (in which you have a rigidly defined role you're supposed to fulfill - so much for individual freedom), you need money. Most societies until very recently have managed very fine without cars (or bikes for that matter). None, however, apart from a few isolated (and usually pretty primitive ones) managed without money. This forum scares me sometimes. You don't need to be a political wacko to live without a car... but I bet you that's not the impression this forum creates.

As Machka pointed out, living car-free typically means more money in your pocket, not less. That's one of the major reasons I do it.