Making dollars and sense

Like most of the citizens of the planet I am hostage to my governments monopoly on legal tender and the expectation that land taxes be paid in that currency, in this case dollars. As governments also hold the monopoly on violence, I can be sure that some socially sanctioned unpleasant fate will visit me if I failed to comply.

In order to acquire dollars I must produce some product or service that another individual is prepared to accept in exchange for some of the surplus dollars they obtained through the same process. After first paying income tax on those earnings I can then fulfil my land tax obligation, assuming I have produced enough 'value'.

So, how can someone meet these, and other, financial obligations in a setting where there aren't many paying jobs and small local markets?

Trade and exchange is a two party deal and generally requires the physical exchange of products or services. In my case, being remote, this requires travel, an expensive proposition in both time and those pesky dollars via well maintained roads (which my taxes currently help fund incidentally).

I have managed to avoid this for the most part through a two part strategy: Firstly by focusing my primary income on knowledge based services that can be provided electronically making travel minimal and secondly by shifting the travel to the other party. Essentially this means getting the customer or trading partner to travel to me.

Producing websites allows me to work from the comfort of my own home, at a time of my choosing (for the most part) to create a high value product / service offering and residual income stream. Wonderful, while there is demand and a reliable digital communications network.

Offering niche accommodation, land based education services and high quality produce with a unique experience combined with our location on a well travelled tourist route provides a nice backup revenue stream where the customers do the driving.

Obviously, in the context of natural living, the first step to all of this is to ensure that the actual dollar denominated expenditures are as low as healthily possible. Invest in systems that reduce future bills. Install solar, grow your own food, develop a skill set that reduces reliance on trades people and so on. Ditch the non-essential things that result in financial outflow, television (advertising), complex tools and 'toys' with built in obsolescence and moving parts.

And finally, don't forget, electronic money and banking is as fragile as the electric power network. Keep some cash on hand for emergencies.