Daniel Suelo Says He Lives Without Money; Probably Just Poor

Daniel Suelo, 48, has reportedly lived the past 9 nine years without money. While we’ve been working a 9-5, selling our body and/or slanging rocks, Suelo says on his blog, that he doesn’t possess or use money or partake in “conscious barter,” and he won’t even accept “food stamps or other government dole” either. Instead, he lives in a cave in Moab, Utah and relies on dumpster diving, foraging and the occasional hunt to survive. For Suelo, money is “one of those intriguing things that becomes real because you believe it is real.” And he lives like a part caveman, part hobo because he “simply got tired of being unreal.”

While you ponder the sensicality of money not being real as you struggle to pay your mounting debts and feed your family, consider where and how Suelo came to this notion. While in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, Suelo described to Details seeing the culture begin to incorporate the “economics of modernity” as their wealth from farming grew. Upon making money, the locals began buying “things they didn’t need” like soda, MSG, noodles and TVs. Suelo contends that this increased focus on possession and luxury caused the people’s health to decline and that it looked like “money was impoverishing them.”

Suelo continued his journey from Ecuador to Thailand and India where he learned how to live well poorly from some of the poorest people in the world. Then, he says he was “enchanted” by the idea of being a vagabond in America. Now, he says he is living with “zero money, abundantly.” He says he’s living just like “ants and deer and slugs and sparrows and bacteria and atoms and galaxies.” Except not. Daniel Suelo is a human, living like a human. He just happens to do it by checking out from society and living off its waste.

Looking at his blog that he writes at the Moab library, Daniel hitches rides places, he hangs out with people, and relies on the graces of others with money to keep him afloat. It’s not as if Daniel Suelo is an epic mooch. He definitely endures a great deal of hardship while fending for himself along the way. But to say that Suelo lives without money is entirely wrong. He doesn’t make money, but money is a very real force in his life because the byproducts of our money grubbing culture provide him with the food and clothing he needs to get by.

Daniel Suelo acts like to live with money is unnatural. It’s not how the slugs and sparrows do it. Right, but currency, in some form or fashion, is common among each of the species of apes of which humans are one. Our favorite example, of course, is the bonobo, a close relative to chimpanzees and humans that use sex as a social currency. In an especially enjoyable method of “conscious bartering,” bonobos jack each other off to get things done. They use money even if it’s not called money and they do it because they live in a society where they have to interact and transact and make value judgments on what they can use and/or provide to others. Animals, Daniel Suelo included, rely on currency to make their lives go, even if it’s not by going to the ATM and handing the cash over to the crack dealer, banker or pharmacy. The point is simply that Daniel Suelo isn’t the galaxy-like money-free revolutionary he thinks he is. He’s just a really poor guy with an admirable sense of individuality and a unique method of getting paid with no bills to pay back.