Mark Boyle has been living without money for about a year and a half and has a blog I stumbled across in the Guardian. He’s also part of the ‘freeconomy community’ which aims to ‘reconnect people in their local communities through the simple act of sharing’ - sharing time, skills, tools and spaces to encourage and empower others. By reconnecting with our local environment, he suggests, we can escape the dangerous detachedness we currently have from what we consume, and gain a new appreciation for what we have and the people around us.

I’m not sure about the practicalities for everyone in living without money, but he certainly makes it sound a lot of fun, and the idea of the ‘freeconomy’ and of getting people connected back into local communities could be a key way of tackling some of the massive global issues we face today.

Mostly, he suggests that this kind of alternative lifestyle is a way to enjoy life more:

‘If life doesn’t inspire me to get up and do a little Irish jig every morning before breakfast, what the hell is the point of it?’