I'm aware that it sounds like poverty. I'm just saying it's going to depend on the details. To people who live ordinary western lifestyles, everything outside of that sounds weird.
- ramen =/= cheap pot noodle type things. Ramen restaurants in Japan attest to this. It'll depend on context what that actually means in this case.
- 12k/year =/= no money, numbers like that make no sense outside of context. It depends on how much of it is disposable. You live in a hut with no rent, you grow food, you've no kids, no mortgage, no car, etc, these all matter.
- no healthcare =/= bad health. How many of the growing numbers of people dying from heart-related diseases in their 50s and 60s had healthcare? Didn't do much for them, in the end.
- collapsing floor =/= bad hygiene or something else actually potentially dangerous, as I said above, the nuisance this causes or doesn't cause depends on lots of actual real factors, it's not some absolute thing. It just sounds wild to people not used to it
> 12k/year =/= no money [...] live in a hut with no rent, you grow food, you've no kids, no mortgage, no car, etc, these all matter.
I agree that 12k goes a long way when you're a subsistence farmer, living alone in a collapsing hut in the middle of nowhere, with no health insurance.
Nonetheless, that's sounding a lot like poverty to me.
> a subsistence farmer, living alone in a collapsing hut in the middle of nowhere, with no health insurance.
"no health insurance" is the only thing in your list there that isn't hyperbole or a twisting of what was said. But anyway, again, no-one is arguing about whether 12,000/year "officially" is or is not below the poverty line, except you, with yourself.
Did you read the part about him having savings in bitcoin that wouldn't sustain him forever, but nonetheless for many, many years? If the bitcoin was worth 500,000, for example, would you then say "oh, that's a totally acceptable way to live now!", or would you still be belittling their life choices, insinuating there was something bad or wrong with it?
> Yeah, it is mostly just money stopping me at this point. I probably should bite the bullet and move anyway. But I'm a miser at heart and I hate thinking of how many months of writing runway I'd have to give up for each month in San Francisco.
> If someone wanted to give me, I don’t know, $50–100K/year to move to SF and continue writing full-time like I do now, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
It sounds a little like you are arguing without any reference to the actual evidence here.
But living on ramen + $12k/year + no healthcare + collapsing floor? That's sounding a lot like poverty to me.