Extreme Personal Finance: Daniel Suelo, The Man Without Money
Published on - July 23rd, 2009 (by J.D. Roth) Previously in my semi-regular Extreme Personal Finance series, I’ve highlighted:
- A couple who paid off their $220,000 mortgage in three years
- People who live on $12,000 a year
- Don Schrader, the man who lives on $10 a day
- Rina Kelley, the reporter who lived for one month as a freegan
Yesterday, my friend Castle sent me the story of a man who makes these other folks look like spendthrifts.
The man without money
Writing for Details magazine, Christopher Ketcham profiles Daniel Suelo, the man who lives without money. From the article:
Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit. His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He’s either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo.
Suelo lives in a small cave. Much like those in the freegan movement, he generally consumes wasted food from restaurants, grocery stores, etc. Suelo supplements his diet by foraging for plants, mushrooms — and fresh roadkill.
How did Suelo come to adopt this lifestyle? Ketcham’s article describes the two years he spent in Peace Corps, posted to a remote Ecuadorean village:
The tribe had been getting richer for a decade, and during the two years he was there he watched as the villagers began to adopt the economics of modernity. They sold the food from their fields — quinoa, potatoes, corn, lentils — for cash, which they used to purchase things they didn’t need, as Suelo describes it.
They bought soda and white flour and refined sugar and noodles and big bags of MSG to flavor the starchy meals. They bought TVs. The more they spent, says Suelo, the more their health declined. He could measure the deterioration on his charts. “It looked,” he says, “like money was impoverishing them.”
This experience (and many others) led Suelo to Buddhism and asceticism. It led him to give up money.
Cave-blogger
There’s a lot more to Seulo’s life than can be summarized in Ketcham’s short profile for Details magazine. Fortunately, you can learn more about a life without money from Suelo himself. Suelo uses the Moab Public Library to maintain a blog called Zero Currency, which he updates about once a month. His post last Tuesday included a brief response to the Details article. Suelo writes:
…My life is not really the life of an ascetic. Chris [the author of the magazine article] told me “this life seems hard”. I told him yes, but I also said that my life is easier than it ever was when I had money, and that it’s easier than most anybody’s life I know.
Really, though, Suelo’s blog is less remarkable than his primary website, which is called Living Without Money. It’s here that he answers all of the questions people have about his lifestyle. (Check out the list of frequently asked questions in the left sidebar, or read through his enormous one-page FAQ.)
Reading Suelo’s writing is like peeking into the mind of a genius — or a madman.
Back to the basics
When she sent me Ketcham’s article yesterday, Castle wrote:
A good friend once said she didn’t think I value money enough and I’ve thought about that a lot. I have always been uncomfortable with the concept of money and consumerism seems foreign me. I know, I know, I am poisoned by it, too. I’ve always felt a strong urge to go back to basics and I mean REALLY basic. This guy in this article has done what I’ve only vaguely dreamed of. Please read it and tell me what you think of his choices.
As long-time readers know, I too feel a pull “back to the basics”. I’m very much a part of our consumer culture, but I pine for an idealized vision of simple living. (I’m under no illusions that it’s as easy and care-free as I’d like it to be.)
But Suelo takes it to an extreme. I couldn’t live that way. I don’t want to live that way. I’m all in favor of simplicity, but I believe there’s a balance to be achieved. I don’t mind living in the world of money; I just want to build a life where money and consumerism aren’t my primary focus.
What’s more, I don’t believe this is a lifestyle that can be adopted en masse. (And Suelo’s response to this particular point is unsatisfying.) If everybody chose to life without money, nobody could live without money. But the truth is, 99.99% of the population has no desire to live this way. And because of this, people like Suelo (and others I’ve profiled in my Extreme Personal Finance series) can do what they do. I wouldn’t call them freeloaders (as some have done); instead, I’d argue they’re exploiting holes in our consumerist culture.
To that end, I think what they’re doing is great. Their lifestyle isn’t for me, and their vision of an ideal world isn’t for me, but reality of what they’re doing in this world is fascinating, and much more interesting to me than, say, the life of Donald Trump.
For further discussions of Suelo’s choices, check out:
- Reddit: Modern-day caveman lives on zero dollars a day
- Huffington Post: The man who survives without money
- Guardian UK: Free spirit or freeloader?
Finally, Google Video has a low-resolution 15-minute film about Suelo called Moneyless in Moab.
Could you live a life without money? Does the idea appeal to you in any way? Do you find stories like Suelo’s inspiring? Repugnant? Or something in between?
This article is about Choices, Consumerism, Frugality, Interviews
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This is an interesting conversation. I think some of the things it reveals are very telling about our assumptions and way of life. For instance, some people would rather see things go to a landfill than for a hungry man to eat it. Perhaps libraries should close their doors to people who don’t have jobs? Should people with higher paying jobs be entitled to use the library more, or take more books out?
And as for him not making a contribution to society… He makes us look at the world a little differently. How is that not a contribution? I find it funny that people think it’s more important that he pay taxes than to serve as a dissenting voice in our society.
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“What do birds and fish and lions and mushrooms and bees do? How do they do it?”
This is from his website on the response to why can’t everyone adopt his lifestyle. I thought his whole response was insane, but this line particularly annoyed me. Yes, everyone could stop using money. Then we would all have to fend for ourselves, just as the animals and plants he listed do. I, myself, would never want to live in a society where I would have to hurt or kill another human in competition for resources, because that is what animals and plants do.
By using money as a medium, humans can specialize in different niches of society and the end result is a farther advanced society with medicine and art and all sorts of things that would not be possible if we all had to make or do everything for ourselves.
I’m glad that there are people who forage through dumpsters to make more efficient use of waste, but why chastise society when it is society that affords him the luxury of being able to forage through dumpsters instead of battling a wolf for the last deer carcass in the woods?
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@Four Pillars: I would have to disagree that a more primitive life “sucked.” I think that is based on how one defines happiness. I am far happier spending time in the garden than I am dealing with information overload on celebrity gossip on the radio or “enhancement” spam in my inbox. One could also argue that decreased life spans were in many cases a result of industrialization and urbanization of societies, and not an agrarian lifestyle. (I don’t see the Mennonites dieing any faster than the rest of us) And frankly, I have a DNR because I’d rather die with my boots on than waste away from disease that occurs after trying to prolong my life artificially.
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I have no problem with the fact that one person chooses to live this way. He is free to do so and there is nothing wrong with it.
What I do have a problem with is when people advocate that all people should live this way. In my opinion this would be an absolute economic disaster. He says that if everyone lived in this way, people would not waste food and there would be more than enough food for everyone on earth. But this is not true whatsoever. The only reason we are able to create all this food is because mass farming is more efficient than subsistence farming. Should everyone decide to live like this, we would encounter mass starvation. It would kill what he sees as ‘evil consumerism’ but it would also kill people. It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face as they say.
If everyone lived like this it would destroy society (the people that advocate this would be quite happy with that). I agree with another comment here that we would eventually start to form communities again, we would have leaders again, wars again, rebirth of industry… and eventually we’d end up in a world not much different than today.
This guy really is a madman I believe, and what he is advocating does not sound much different than anarcho-primitivism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism). This in my opinion is a dangerous thing. So it’s fine he lives this way, but anyone that advocates for a world that works like this in my opinion should not be taken seriously.
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Competing for finite resources is what the whole of life does, so Daniel Suelo lives off the scraps and welfare provided by that competition. He does not have any competitors.
If our society followed this man’s practices, he (and many others) would quickly perish. He would have to defend his cave from intruders and the easy sources of food would vanish. That would be a lifestyle to blog about, except there wouldn’t be a library or internet.
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I agree with above commenters — it seems like he’s living off “our” money.
If he was truly without cash, he’d be in the woods, covered in leaves, hunting only animals and foraging for berries.
But he’s in libraries and eating leftover food from restaurants that people paid for.
At any rate, my basic response was: Too far for me.
I’m cutting down on expenses ($700/mo so far), but I couldn’t and don’t need to live without money in such an extreme.
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@Tony – Modern farming is only efficient in terms of the people employed, that is, labor hours. If you look at the required amounts of fertilizer, gas to operate the machines, both cheap, and topsoil loss, currently free, modern farming is terribly inefficient compared to biointensive gardening. If everybody did the latter, people would not starve. They would just have less time to watch TV—it takes a few hours a day to feed yourself and there’s enough land in the world to do so (yet).
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I also want to point out that these people living on so little, don’t have children.
If you want kids, or a family (like I do).. you kind of need to adopt a different lifestyle.
By not earning money, I am not sure I can see the practicality of having children and making them live the same lifestyle from birth
What if they want to do different things? Head into society and do a job, earn money, live in a home?
You’re crippling them from the start, because going to school takes money — textbooks, field trips, regular food for nutrition, maybe learning how to play and instrument or dance.
(And even if the school took them for free, it’s being paid for in taxes by the government that we all share a responsibility in upholding & paying for.. so it’s not really being “free” is it?)
These hypothetical kids would end up being mentally crippled in society, not being able to even START to become educated (I don’t really believe in home schooling because no parent can know EVERYTHING about EVERY subject in the world)…
Even if they went to the library and studied every book in the library, they need the basics. And it’d be a sick experiment to see if a child from birth could adapt to that lifestyle — trying to live in a world that is structured.. without any sort of structure.
These people who have chosen this way of life, have had the benefit of being educated and cared for in a conventional way from birth, and they could make those choices as they got older.
But their kids (if they had any) wouldn’t have such a choice to do so.
It’s not wrong. It’s just not practical when you think about having kids.
With that being said, I definitely enjoyed the article, and the comments are great!
I really do believe that you can take a different view on life – being a conscious spender and not spend excessively, but to also not live in such an extreme as detailed above.
I could (and am) living VERY comfortably on $10k a year, including health care, and only if I had someone to pay the other $10k (his half). And no kids. It’s possible.
Our race would go backwards in technology and developments if we all adopted that lifestyle, which could be a good or bad thing…
….except that my view is that in this day and age, we’ve already set a standard for technology, and to go back to hunting animals and foraging for berries in a world that has already limited and destroyed so many natural resources, would be a potential disaster as with the sheer human population, we couldn’t ALL live off the land with how little there is.
Or maybe we could?
I think the best way to head back into the good ol’ days would be to turn into a farmer, live simply in the mountains, grow chickens and cows, veggies.. and just live to work for the food to eat.
But that’s assuming you don’t want your kids to go to school and do anything BUT become simple farmers too.
Hard call.
Good food for thought.
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David: He also worked for five years in a women’s shelter, but said he didn’t feel comfortable getting paid to help people. So he went to live in a Buddhist temple in Thailand. It sounds more like he had a personal spiritual crisis than anything else.
a.b.: Primitive times did suck for the ladies. Just sayin’.
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Interesting-this guy doesn’t pay for anything, including taxes. However, someone’s tax money is going toward his library usage for his blog. Doesn’t sound like he’s contributing at all.
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I wish people would get off their high horses and realize that there are other ways to make a difference in the world than just paying taxes.
In my opinion, he’s following in the footsteps of many great artists, writers and thinkers who opened people’s eyes simply through their actions. He’s not making money from it either.
As for him not contributing… I’m willing to bet that two years in the Peace Corps and his other work helping less fortunate people is more than anything those of us here can boast.
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@ Fabulously Broke: Kids today don’t have any choice on whether or not to grow up in this version of a world, with school, work, and a mortgage, so I dont see how you can rag on hypothetical parents who would choose to raise their kids in a life like this.
For the part about population, and “could everyone live like this”, with just hunting and gathering, no, not everyone could. The earth is vastly overpopulated, the carrying capacity is much lower than the current population. There would have to be a drastic population reduction (but that’s coming anyway, because our civilization is unsustainable, and will collapse eventually, then we’ll all be forced to live this way)
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I believe in everything in moderation. This kind of extreme frugal living is no better or worse than the extreme indulgence we see in Hollywood (and elsewhere where people spend in excess of what’s necessary)! I personally find nothing admirable about Suelo’s lifestyle.
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@Emmy,
I don’t know; at least they could drink beer (mead) when pregnant.
Certainly birth related mortalities were higher, but I was thinking more in terms of overall society.
@all
Humanity has always been discontent with their lot enough to seek “improvement,” but I find it funny that grandparents always look on future generations with sadness that they don’t appreciate simpler things. I would just argue that one can’t claim an entire timespan “sucked” just because of a lack of industrialization.
I agree with ERE that Suelo is extending the lifecycle of goods, and with JD that he’s exploiting societal loopholes. I think that many peoples’ responses seem angry, like he’s getting away with something, “why did he get out of the rat race?” so to speak.
I think people like Suelo are important because they remind us how dependent we are on the cycles of consumer goods, that even this one man who wants to live free of money can’t live without other people’s consumption.
Personally, I believe in becoming more self-sufficient where possible. I’m taking a soapmaking class next week. I like knowing if the soap manufacturers of the world disintegrate tomorrow, I won’t stink.
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@FB – You’re probably right that if he had kids, they would have a hard time returning to middle class life because of the lack of institutionalization.
Do consider that this guy is quite educated by our definition, that is, degrees. On top of that he seems to know EVERYTHING needed in his world. He knows how to get shelter, food, heat, … Conversely, our so-called educated workers know very little about the world they live in other than how to do a particular office job and how to shop. If he had kids, they’d be on field trips every day. They’d probably be singing and dancing like other “primitives” instead of watching CSI and Hannah Montana like our sophisticated kids do.
In terms of home schooling, those who come closest are probably full time cruising sailors. They seem to report that their children are more mature and responsible for their age compared to institutionalized middle class kids (a 12 year old on solo-watch compared to a suburban 12 year old who needs a babysitter). Also they seem to come to college with an enthusiasm for learning you very rarely see in K12 students.
One of the reasons I do not want to have kids is specifically because I do not want them to suffer through the K12 system which cripples anyone with creativity and a modicum of independence and intelligence. How many K12 graduates can draw or paint? How many like to read? How many can entertain themselves without TV and Wii’s? How many trust their parents? Not many.
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Here’s another case: one of my hiking buddies is living in a van to save money while he goes to grad school, and works as a park ranger in the summertime. He keeps a blog as well, and goes into practical and financial detail- start at the January entries:
http://spartanstudent.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
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Hope you’ll allow me a bit of self-promotion here. Just this morning I wrote about living off the grid with kids http://frugaldad.com/2009/07/24/living-off-the-grid-with-kids/. As you’ll see in the video, it is possible, but not without side effects.
@Early Retirement: Why not have kids and home-school them? This would allow you to instill many of the same values you hold dear, while avoiding the K12 system – which certainly has its faults.
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@Frugal Dad – Because I also have other reasons
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With all due respect to those who support a non-monetary lifestyle, I think it misses the point.
Money is just a medium of exchange, a way of conveniently valuing unequal goods and services; I don’t see how giving it up would improve your lifestyle, but I can think of a lot of reasons why swearing it off would make matters worse.
Money isn’t the root of all evil itself, in fact the Biblical source of the saying is actually, For the LOVE of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Big difference! I can have money, and use money, but I don’t have to either love it or hate it, but just enjoy it for the utility it provides.
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After reading this post, I went to Daniel’s web site and read the FAQ page. It was almost strange to read ideas and thoughts that resonated so much with my own Until now I have been unable to articulate as well as he has. Although I don’t think I would take to living in a cave, our ultimate goal is to be able to live without having to participate in our cosumerist way of life that has seemed to take over and overshadow what is really important. Reading about him through others and his own words has given me renewed courage to continue to make major changes in my life.
I didn’t have the time to read through every single post here, but it seems the majority of responses are questioning the authenticity of Daniel’s way of life and asking why he doesn’t live without ANY man-made possessions at all (library use, clothes, etc). I think that the essence of what he is doing is being lost in translation here, which is usually the case with those who think off the beaten path. I agree with Mary’s post… he has done more for others than most tax-paying Americans will EVER do, including myself.
I don’t think he is trying to push his way of life on others, but showing that it can be done and what living like this has done for him. It is inspiring for me personally, and I am thankful that you have brought us this story, which strangely enough I came across from another source today as well. I only hope that I will have half of Daniel’s courage to give up the materialistic reality that is so much a part of us.
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@Anastasia:
“He’s doiong more for others than most tax-paying Americans will EVER do…”
Really? You really think so?
I don’t see anything remarkable whatsoever about purposely choosing to live in a manner where you are reduced to scrounging through garbage to feed yourself. I find that offensive. It’s bad enough there are homeless people who have to resort to that to survive, and we should help them restore dignity to their lives. This man is willfully renouncing the dignity to not eat refuse.
The guy is a parasite, and he’s deluding himself into thinking what he’s doing is ok.
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@Gina
When I said he’s done more than most, I was referring to his time served in the Peace Corps and working for free at a women’s shelter.
What I find offensive is the amount of waste this country creates (not just food, but everything else). I find it hard to believe that putting to use something that someone else is throwing away could be offensive to anyone. Compared to how the rest of the world lives, our refuse is a six course meal and a luxury… And although for me personally dumpster diving would be an extreme way of life, his choice to do it is certainly not offending me. Accepting what little help other people freely give to survive is hardly parasitic.
These reactions to Daniel are fascinating!
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Interesting guy. I think Mark (comment #46) said exactly what I way going to say. There is certainly something to learn and apply to our own lives here. Do I want to live in a cave? Certainly not….but I will and have been working to lower my impact on this world and spread that message to people I interact with.
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i think there is something wrong with him. i once read somewhere that we are a product of our upbringing and that is why i won’t judge him. he saw the negative effects of misuse of money and with that he completely lost his mind and decided to live in a cave and eat rubbish and dead animals. Thats him. i on the other hand have seen the benefits of having a lot of money and that is why i want to be sinfully rich
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“I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give” – Diogenes of Sinope
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@ab
Most people living in developed countries in the late 20th to early 21st century would, in fact, consider that the primitive life sucked.
Working in your garden and being able to come into your centrally heated home (built to building code standards by someone other than you), using hot water (that you didn’t have to pump by hand from a well and heat on a woodstove), being able to take a shower (instead of a once weekly bath heated bucket by bucket on the stove), cooking the food you picked from your garden on your electric or gas range, storing leftovers in your refrigerator, having indoor plumbing, etc. does not come close to the experience pioneer families had when settling this country.
In fact, there was a reality show on the History Channel a few years ago about two couples that were sent to some rural area in Ontario or Manitoba and had to carve out a homestead there for a year. I’m not sure if it’s available to view online or is on video or DVD, but it would be worth watching.
It was hard, dirty, exhausting, lonely and many other things. It was also ultimately rewarding for the people who did it, but they would be the first to tell you what a rough time it was. It was a tremendous learning experience for them but it was anything but simple.
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Not impressive at all! It’s just a matter of time before he gets ill from consuming decomposed & processed dumpster leftovers. Being penniless, who will pay for his ER visit or hospitalization? Just FYI, Taxpayers fund MedicAid!
Geezz, why can’t this dude grow his own garden & hunt for game animals which is a much healthier option? Plus, give back by volunteering & maintain some social skills. Just my two cents.
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@shevy
You made assumptions, and didn’t read what I wrote. I never said it was simpler, I never said it was easier. I said the degree to which something “sucks” has more to do with how the individual defines happiness, and less to do with the actual scenario. I was arguing that it is just as possible to be happy with a primitive lifestyle as it is with today’s so called luxuries. You yourself said the people who homesteaded (which I watched btw) found it rewarding.
For the record, I consider things like central heat & air to be a luxury, one that I don’t have. I’ve also lived without running hot water before, and went for a period of time where most, if not all, of our cooking was done in a pioneer fashion. As a family we learned to make due with true needs, and are lucky enough to have the skills to build our own homestead if we needed. It’s easy to sit on a computer far away and make judgments with no knowledge of what it is to truly walk in someone’s shoes, whether it’s Mr. Suelo’s or mine.
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Hey, you saw this article too. I commented how this idiot could certainly use a sun oven to cook his food, and stop needing to collect wood and start fires every day. I find it funny that this guy uses a blog, and the free services of modern life, while “shunning” today’s monetary system. I guarantee that if they closed the library that he uses “free”, he’d have greater appreciation for it. If his neighbor’s orchid was starved of water (regulated, purified, etc. by modern technology), we’d see how solid his survival skills really were. The difference between this stooge and actual indigenous people is that the later have a complete system of beliefs, traditions and roles that are required to support a GROUP of people, vice some quirky old bastard that smells like burnt tires.
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I firmly believe that I could live without money. It would be difficult, but I could do it. Obviously it can be done. However, I would never want to.
I believe that beautiful things like art, philosophy, science and modern medicine could not have developed without money. As has been mentioned money came out of specialization of skills. You can’t advance in a field unless you are given the opportunity to specialize. You can’t write poetry or a novel or discover a planet or atom if all your energy and time are consumed with supporting your daily existence, which is what would have to happen if we all went back to living off the land directly.
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I was more inspired by Hugh Sawyer who lived in a woods to raise money for the Woodland Trustin Oxfordshire while keeping a prestigious full time job at Sothebys. He lived in the open air with few posessions and in every other way lived a ‘normal’ life, paying taxes and hanging out with friends. He never comes over as being preachy or rightous and seems like a nice guy. He’s now living in the snowy forests of the Swiss Alps to raise money for Rainforest Concern. His blog can be found here: http://ditchmonkey.blogspot.com/
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Daniel Suelo’s no money lifestyle is truly thought provoking. There are the humane considerations. Is this man troubled? How will he subsist? Is he in danger?
Then there are economic considerations. Could it be that Daniel is the most honest among us? After all, the US and world monetary systems are charades. Money is not backed by anything except debt. It is created out of thin air by a banking system that relies on continual debt.
If folks realized how dishonest, insidious and fragile our money and credit systems actually are, they would be left with a shuddering conclusion. Daniel Suelo has got it right while the rest of us have it all wrong.
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