He Found Freedom His Way

More than a decade ago, Daniel Suelo closed his bank account and walked away from the economic system that made him a wage slave.  He offers a subversive version of living,
one that upsets the conventional view. "Our whole society is designed so that you have to have money," Daniel Suelo says. "You have to be a part of the capitalist system. It's illegal to live outside of it."

This is the story of a thoughtful and intelligent man who has a different vision of the good life. His vision took him far from the view shared by those in capitalist society. It is about a man who succeeded in finding the life he sought. It addresses the big questions many ask but few try to find satisfactory answers for. Suelo found his own answers on how to live despite a society and culture obsessed with money.


Suelo hears all the time "that we're living in different times now, that however noble his values, their practice is obsolete. He even heard it once when he knocked on the door of a Buddhist monastery and asked to spend the night, and a monk informed him that rates began at fifty dollars. The Buddha himself would have been turned away, Suelo observed."

A book has been written about him, The Man Who Quit Money, and it is "an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs-for shelter, food, and warmth-but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement. In retracing the surprising path and guiding philosophy that led Suelo into this way of life, Sundeen raises provocative and riveting questions about the decisions we all make, by default or by design, about how we live--and how we might live better." More