Quitting Money or Glorified Homelessness?

Twelve years ago, Daniel Suelo swore off money and went to live in a cave in Utah's Canyonlands. Now .

Sundeen and Suelo are coming to present the book, The Man Who Quit Money, at the on May 9 at 7:30 p.m. We had the chance to speak with Sundeen this week about Suelo and the lifestyle he has chosen. See highlights of that conversation below.

Capitola-Soquel Patch: How did you learn about Daniel's story?

Mark Sundeen, author of The Man Who Quit Money: Well I had heard about him giving up money and I thought he must be crazy. After the crash of the economy in 2008, I started to give it more thought. He was in a couple of magazines and newspaper stories and he was saying that money is an illusion. I found that fascinating because I had bought a house at the peak of the market and I had started an IRA account at the peak level and suddenly they were both worth a lot less than they had been and I wondered what that money actually meant. 

Patch: When you were writing the book, did you spend a lot of time in the caves with Daniel? 

Sundeen: Over the past two years I made about five trips to Moab and spent a lot of time with Daniel in his caves and traveling around dumpster diving with him. I got a pretty good view of what his day-to-day life is like.

Patch: What do you say to someone who says that this is just glorified homelessness?

Sundeen: Well I think that's kind of what it is. Most people who are homeless suffer from mental illness or addiction and that's not the case with Daniel. He's made an intentional choice based on an entire lifetime of study of religion and philosophy and politics, that this would be more fulfilling to him than the life that the rest of us lead of anxiety and grasping for more.

Patch: Is this a lifestyle that a large amount of people could adopt?

Sundeen: People always ask me, "What if everyone lived like Daniel? Wouldn't the world collapse?" If everyone lived like Daniel, parts of our civilization would in fact collapse. But what if everyone in the world lived like Americans? I think the world would collapse even faster. He is just one person living like this. He's not asking anyone else to do what he's doing. But he's not just sitting in a cave getting enlightened. He's very engaged. He has a blog. He isn't a complete hermit. 

Patch: What about the concept of "no such thing as a free lunch"? He hasn't spent or earned money since 2000, but there is money that goes into the computer that he uses to write his blog and the food that he takes from dumpsters, etc. 

Sundeen: Daniel says that he is absolutely dependent on the hard work of everyone else and on natural resources. But whether or not that makes him dependent on money is a different question. People say if you are digging out of a dumpster that you're dependent on other people's money. But if a grizzly bear is digging through a dumpster, is that bear dependent on money? Is there such thing as a free lunch? All of nature other than humankind has a free lunch. We work for it and Daniel does work but he doesn't accept money. He worked on a fishing boat in Alaska for a season. The other deck hand made $10,000 but Daniel didn't take any money. 

Patch: What's next for Daniel?

Sundeen: I assume he's going back to Moab. I have no doubt that he'll go back to his life in the canyons as soon as we're done with this tour. 

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