Nomadland

It's been... a day.

I read Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder today. It describes part of the lifestyles of the houseless in the US---these are people who, for whatever reason, eschew the norm of owning real estate to stay in, and instead live in vans or recreational vehicles (RV)/motorhomes. They are the internal itinerant workers of the US, travelling from one potential work place to another depending on the season. The setting is a little different from the more usual idea of itinerant worker, where the source is often from an economically less developed country (like Mexicans heading up north into the US during harvest season).

The lifestyle is one way of looking at minimalism, or the more pragmatic look of trying to reduce personal consumerism to ensure that unnecessary expenses are kept to a minimum. The people that Bruder follows and highlights in the book are of a specific demographic (the old/retired), with some hints that there was a slow increase of some from the middle-age demographic (between 30--50), though there was never much details there. I'm not sure if it was probably hitting a little too close to home for Bruder, and/or the inclusion of a study of that particular demographic may muddle the overall narrative.

There has been hints in the work that with increasing legislation and potentially the scrutiny of Big Tech, it may become increasingly difficult to live half-way off the grid the way the featured nomads lived in the US, but that angle hasn't really been explored in detail---again the narrative might be affected. Bruder is primarily a journalist and not a sociologist, so I suppose it would be asking a little too much for more details.

I mean, there's a reason why the book is a digestible sub-three-hundred-page book and not a thousand five hundred page tome.

It did get me thinking though. Was it possible to turn one's back against the consumerism that is present in SIN and live in a similar way that Nomadland has chronicled? The primary premise of success in Nomadland is the availability of the road (and vehicle) as an alternative domicile, and the easy access to itinerant work for the times where money is actually needed (like purchasing parts and fuel).

Kinda hard in SIN.

Vehicles are pricey in SIN due to the control measure of the Certificate of Entitlement (COE); the COE itself also kills the second-hand market's cheapness since almost all vehicles are less than twenty years old. Fuel is also expensive in SIN. These cost-related issues can already throw a wrench into the feasibility; the road network in SIN is also too dense and compact to support the use of them as surrogates to domiciles. Parking areas in the residential areas are heavily scrutinised---there are only selected parking areas that allow non-season parking ticket holders to park their vehicles overnight. And SIN doesn't really have the space nor the norm to have RVs or motorhomes, leaving only vans as a viable alternative. Vehicle inspections are frequent and strict, making any after-market modifications to the vehicle to support living on the road (like installing solar panels or attaching propane tanks for cooking) cumbersome if one were to make them detachable to allow the passing of the vehicle inspection.

There is also no real itinerant work available in SIN---traditionally, these were provided for by agriculture (SIN doesn't have that scale of agriculture that requires such seasonal labour), and the more recent ``Amazon.com warehouse fulfilment centres'' (SIN isn't a central hub for retail).

The NRIC (a more matured version of the US's Real ID) basically forces everyone who possess it (SIN citizens) to announce an address. Though I am not certain if the address must be residential, or if it can be something like a P.O. Box. If it has to be residential, then it is basically the final nail in the coffin of possibility for living a lifestyle similar to what was explored Nomadland.

Maybe there is a way. But it isn't obvious though... governance in SIN is much tighter than in the US, with very little leeway that can allow such alternative lifestyles to take place, and this is under the assumption that there is no active campaign to prohibit such lifestyles in the first place.

That's all I want to update. Till the next one.