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You're not talking about going without electricity or indoor plumbing. You're talking about being poor. Of course there's a great deal of overlap, but don't mistake the two.

I haven't done it myself, but I have a good friend who spent a couple winters in a cabin in rural Vermont. It's not that bad. You buy enough firewood to last, and get water from the well. It gets cold at night, but you've got a roof and a fire and a sleeping bag, you're not going to die. You can walk and hitchhike to the hospital in the nearest town, if you get sick. Really, the biggest issue is loneliness.

Sure, you give up a lot of comforts which I wouldn't want to, but people lived that way in good spirits for thousands of years. Empirical evidence suggests we have more or less the same capacity for unhappiness regardless of circumstance.




The biggest issue is you spend a great deal of time just doing the things that automation can do in a fraction of the time. If you have a family, "laundry day" is literally a whole day and it is brutal, backbreaking labor. That is already 1/7 of your live devoted to something that is a solved problem.




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