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SaidAchmiz comments on Academia as a career option, its social value, and alternatives - Less Wrong
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I'd just like to provide a cultural difference information that I have consistently noted between Americans and Brazilians which seems relevant here.
To have a job and work in the US is taken as a de facto biological need. It is as abnormal for an American, in my experience, to consider not working, as it is to consider not breathing, or not eating. It just doesn't cross people's minds.
If anyone has insight above and beyond "Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism" let me know about it, I've been waiting for the "why?" for years.
So yeah, let me remind people that you can spend years and years not working. that not getting a job isn't going to kill you or make you less healthy, that ultravagabonding is possible and feasible and many do it for over six months a year, that I have a friend who lives as the boyfriend of his sponsor's wife in a triad and somehow never worked a day in his life (the husband of the triad pays it all, both men are straight). That I've hosted an Argentinian who left graduate economics for two years to randomly travel the world, ended up in Rome and passed by here in his way back, through couchsurfing. That Puneet Sahani has been well over two years travelling the world with no money and an Indian passport now. I've also hosted a lovely estonian gentleman who works on computers 4 months a year in London to earn pounds, and spends eight months a year getting to know countries while learning their culture etc... Brazil was his third country. Oh, and never forget the Uruguay couple I just met at a dance festival who have been travelling as hippies around and around south america for 5 years now, and showed no sign of owning more than 500 dollars worth of stuff.
Also in case you'd like to live in a paradise valley taking Santo Daime (a religious ritual with DMT) about twice a week, you can do it with a salary of aprox 500 dollars per month in Vale do Gamarra, where I just spent carnival, that is what the guy who drove us back did. Given Brazilian or Turkish returns on investment, that would cost you 50 000 bucks in case you refused to work within the land itself for the 500.
Some of these examples seem to boil down to "it's possible to convince other people to support you, while providing nothing much in return". If rejecting such lifestyle options is a "Protestant ethic", then color me Protestant.
Other examples you provide are more like "if you aren't picky about the lifestyle you want, or where to live, then you can support yourself on less". Fair enough. Most people are more picky than that. For example, I like indoor plumbing, and can think of very little that I would be interesting in spending much time seeing in other countries. (Note: I have been to a total of 10 countries in my life.)
The reason Americans consider working a de facto biological need is that things people want and need cost money, and jobs are how you get money. There are exceptions to both of those rules, but to imply that the rules are thereby false in the general case is quite silly.
This, especially the latter part, is ridiculous.