# The Moneyless Manifesto



## Orzhr0n (Dec 5, 2014)

_That we need money to live like it or not is a self-evident truism. Right? Not anymore._ 
Drawing on almost three years of experience as The Moneyless Man, ex-businessman Mark Boyle not only demystifies money and the system that binds us to it, he also explains how liberating, easy and enjoyable it is to live with less of it. In this book, Mark takes us on an exploration that goes deeper into the thinking that pushed him to make the decision to go moneyless, and the philosophy he developed along the way. Bursting with radical new perspectives on some of the vital, yet often unquestioned, pillars of economic theory and what it really means to be 'sustainable' as well as creative and practical solutions for how we can live more with less Boyle offers us one of the world s most thought-provoking voices on economic and ecological ideas. 
Mark's original, witty style will help simplify and diversify your personal economy, freeing you from the invisible ties that limit you, and making you more resilient to financial shocks. The Moneyless Manifesto will enable you to start your journey into a new world.

Read the book for free here.


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## skillpore (Dec 22, 2014)

Daniel Suelo :


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## Deleted member 2626 (Nov 3, 2017)

Bump this thread. Started really reading mark Boyle . He is good. Like to the extreme done with society, it's awesome. Daniel suelos story is great too. I usually never have much and am off grid most of the year but have been dappling in moneyless thought. I mean simply take this, you want a beer, money, it becomes easier to say no to excess and realize real needs. I'm trying to wean coffee, booze, though I've come across it free the last two weeks haha,. May be a bump here will get the moneyless thought rolling again. I'm thinking on once back to the east coast on my land not spending or making a cent for the summer maybe. Use what few dollars I'll have left to set up and stock up a little more to transition into it for now. . Input?


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## Drengor (Nov 3, 2017)

Money's a useful tool to describe the value of something, and facilitate efficient interpersonal efforts. There's plenty good in creating specifically what you need for yourself and those close to you, but participating in a system whose goal is efficiency with other people isn't inherently bad. It's the corrupt among the system that cause the harm.

Spending money on things like drugs and booze is certainly easy, easier than brewing beer yourself or growing a whole plant, but that's more about impulse control. If you're keen on getting a good grasp on impulse control removing money seems like the hardest, most brute-force technique that will 100% work but at a great cost to time and effort in life. You're better off educating yourself and making conscious efforts to put your money to better use, instead of conscious efforts to not get any use out of money at all.

As for the other half of money, the earning of it, one has to watch where ones money comes from. There's nothing wrong with growing a tree and felling it and building a chair and selling it for money, but when you put yourself in an employment, a part of a system, you have to be careful your pay isn't part of an unethicaly high, bargained margin of profit of your employer. You make chairs for a big company and they pay you well, but if they get their wood from forests in less fortunate places and pay their farmers and lumberers shit wages, and this practice is the only thing that nets you your higher wage? You're reaping the pay of work of someone less fortunate than you.

Its tough, and not all that practical to figure out the exact details of entire chains of production, especially if you're just a small part of the chain. It also gets tougher when you live in the west, where costs of living are higher to match the earning potential of such practices. It's also something you should only really think about for yourself, and not chastise others for, unless you also intend to do the legwork of rectifying all the discrepancies you want to point out.

It gets trickier too if you're the one with employees, with whole chains of production beneath you. Easier if you start the chain of production yourself and hire everyone, all you have to do is pay everyone a fair wage and not cheat anyone out of their labour. More difficult if you come into possetion of a corrupted system, and are tasked with correcting it. Stopping a corrupted system cold turkey isn't very realistic; you just end up making everyone under you unemployed and worse off, including the cheated of your system, the ones you're trying to help. Small purposeful steps towards untangling the mess become key.

What it comes down to i guess is a feeling that you've earned what you buy with your money. Could you have made or acquired most of the things you have by yourself, or reasonably inherited them from the previous generation? Is what's left over a reasonable amount due to the efficiency of a money system? If you're left with a giant pile of money at the end that you just don't think you've earned, maybe give it to charity


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## roguetrader (Nov 3, 2017)

I read The Moneyless Man and learned not a single new tip for living on the cheap or free, it's all pretty obvious stuff that us paupers been doing for years... some of his reasoning was pretty crazy too, like collecting scrap wooden crates in the centre of Bristol then biking them home to burn in his woodburner, which was in a caravan out in the countryside with firewood everywhere already !

Also if I remember correctly he did have some money to spend to get himself established and a bit he spent during the project so he wasn't totally Moneyless - I honestly think these projects are pretty meaningless when conducted in the short term, maybe I'll have more respect for him if he writes the sequel in 30 years


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## Deleted member 2626 (Nov 3, 2017)

Good points. That's sort of where I am at now. But if giving up money, besides my own land ownership, rid me of want I want rid of its good in my eyes. I still have money now and have begun hardly drinking alcohol and usually hit up food banks and I own no vehicles etc etc. moneyless living is about full disconnection from the system. Taking and receiving nothing that causes any destruction of natural resources. Besides foraging obviously or hunting etc. but if you were to make the chair, which was a great point, why not just use it yourself or say find people to trade it towards needs food or water? That's what is wanted from moneyless living. Barter system,ish. Met a lady out here in Florence Oregon and we walked with our dogs back toward my dads place and she tells me in some town close she sort of established a barter system with a few locals as in a joint for coffee etc. kind of neat.


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## Drengor (Nov 3, 2017)

Theres lots of romantic ideas about how we all lived happily ever after with some sort of rudimentary barter system before we invented money, but ask any historian and you'll learn money (in the form of shiny rocks or sea shells) was invented right around the time we had any sort of surplus to bother trading. Barter systems just never happened large scale anywhere. Single, one-off trades? All the time. You got what I need and vice versa, no need to exchange money. But whether or not we exchange money you still end up exchanging the same value of each item, and you measure that in terms of money.

If your goal is to get off "the system" the food bank really isn't in the right direction. Consider growing a garden.

Natural resources are only there for us to use. Instead of refusing to use them you just have to actively use them responsibly and sustainably.


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## Deleted member 2626 (Nov 3, 2017)

I see a food bank as sort of community too though. Here where I'll be for winter you can volunteer at the very bank that feeds you. Is that so bad? And a lot of it is discounted soon to be tossed food or damaged from the grocery stores, and I declined a few things due to not being able to use it or possibly wouldn't. I don't mean society as like no people contact etc but as what it has predominately, not every soul, become. The very negatives of it are what drain and the negatives at their core come from the dollar. It's force and oppression on those crushed by it and the excess it presents to most human beings. And I'm not on the system sir, I've had food stamps a few times but the ethics of that as well could fill this thread I'm sure.


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## Drengor (Nov 3, 2017)

It's all good man, I'm not trying to say there's something wrong with using the food bank, it's what it's there for. Just don't go in there with the mentality that you could have worked for your own food but chose not to because "money is dirty". Like I said, it's not money that's corrupting the world, it's corrupt people. They just use money to accomplish it.

Volumteering at the food bank is great. Keep up the good fight.


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