When I was a kid, "bum" was a common word, as well as a derogatory word. As kids, we probably misapplied the word more often than not, because we sometimes based our categorization on a first (and perhaps only) impression. That aside, I understood what made one a "bum" for the most part: being voluntarily unemployed or way underemployed; living with and/or off of others; moving around to live off others after the one before kicked you out; looking for and being content with state welfare; and generally, just not aspiring to any particular way of life and not harboring ambitions geared toward success and achievement.

The new group of bums are called compactors, freecyclers, freegans, frugalists, garbage pickers, or dumpster divers. I am reading far too many articles about this topic lately. These are people who are said to hate the consumer culture. So they live on nothing, with nothing, and beg, barter, or steal in order to get along.

For Rebecca, browsing Dumpsters also is a way to protest the country’s rampant consumer culture.

The rest of us are mere corporate salary (or wage) slaves, trapped by our desire to acquire. That's the despicable thing about human beings: they desire more comfort, entertainment, and abundance, and they are willing to voluntarily trade their labor for it.

But you must wonder if ...... the compactors, freecyclers, freegans, frugalists, garbage pickers, and dumpster divers really just hate their own lives, and hate others for being happy, enjoying an increasing standard of living, or building a life of luxury. For certain, they hate the advancements that capitalism brings us, and they hate that consumers have so many choices for making their lives better, and oftentimes at lower costs and using less time.

These free-wandering types strike the average person as being losers who don't want to work a job and who can't make it in the world of hard work and achievement. So they conjure up every excuse to "live the simpleton life," exclaiming that it "makes them happy" to be nothing, have nothing, and strive for nothing. The physicists, accountants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, insurance agents - they are all giving up "real life" for the nihilistic life of chasing down dollars and silly, unnecessary consumer items. I noted several quotes from this story that basically spells out the kind of people who engage this lifestyle and claim it as being morally and spiritually superior (bold is mine).

Freegans — whose efforts to live outside the conventional economic system may include hitchhiking, foraging for food and eschewing regular jobs — say there is growing interest in adopting at least parts of their philosophy.

...Prieur, who owns a piece of land but has no permanent home, estimates that when he’s staying with his sister in Seattle

...Rebecca passes up pasta and a few other items, explaining that she prefers ready-made food because she doesn’t like to cook.

...Jacqueline Blix and David Heitmiller once held high-powered telecommunications jobs and were self-professed yuppies. Then in the mid-1990s, they read a book called “Your Money or Your Life” and had a revelation: They could just stop working.

They all have something in common: they lack the ambition gene, and essentially, in order to excuse their lack of ambition and success, they claim they have traded their former life of a slave/consumerist for the new, happy life of a frugalist bum.

Of course, foraging for food involves two things worth pointing out: trespassing on private property uninvited, and opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is that it takes a lot of time to bypass the efficiencies and conveniences of capitalism, and revert to barbarian ways. Of course, the frugal unemployed have the time because they don't work (or hardly work) in the first place. One frugalist remarked that she had time management problems because she had all kinds of time and nothing to do with it. "You really are faced with, "What am I going to do with my life?" she says.

These people often trespass, and usually without permission, in order to gain food and other disposed items from dumpsters. They seem to think that since the item was throw away, it's an automatic invite for them to trample on the property of others and take what they want. You hear them complain about store/restaurant management telling them to get lost. "Well, they threw out the stuff, so why can't I have it?" Truth is, most people are disgusted by the types that'll eat out of dumpsters and look for scraps from retailers. Most sensible people find those types of people (those who are voluntarily unaccomplished) to be appalling, so they sometimes just don't want them hanging around. Then there's a sense of abnormal you get from these people that makes you disgusted by them. The following comment is more than "frugal" - it's demented.

Thompson is most meticulous about one thing: paper towels. She's had the same roll of Costco paper towels since March 2006, and she estimates that there's still about an inch left. If a houseguest asks for a paper towel, they most likely will be turned down.

...Thompson, who also lives in Seattle, has been trying to conserve paper towels for about 10 years, motivated by a combination of environmental activism and lifelong frugality.

This is coincidental, but... I came home from work tonight and found that one of my dogs had puked on my cherished hardwood floor (using an abundance of fine oak, by the way) in the living room, leaving a trail of of nearly-dried puddles that had been there for about ten hours. In my usual manner, I went through (4) cleanings of the area, using nearly a half-a-roll (an extra large Bounty roll) in the process. I shop with coupons, at sales, or for "buy one get one free" items, and that's about as "frugalist" as I get.

I prefer the frugal yet anti-frugalist life of ambition: I work hard, I get promoted, I get paid, I save money in every manner possible, yet I rely on the division of labor to make my life less uncertain and more pleasurable. It is, in fact, the abundance of consumer goods and services that allows me to make choices that will gain me more leisure time so I can spend that time on my passions and hobbies, instead of crawling the neighborhood begging for leftover items, free items, and diving into dirty dumpsters. Abundance means I can enjoy occasional maid service during my busy times; weekly lawn service; extra-soft Kleenex (with lotion) in decorator boxes that match my bathroom colors; (4) types of foot and body exfoliators; (4) scents of Bath & Body lotions; (2) special heel and foot lotions; shoes for every occasion; and throwaway items such as laptops, electric toothbrushes, cell phones, microwaves, etc.

The abundances of the marketplace are not a reason to condemn the human race and reduce yourself to living like a pauper. One Marxist I know once complained that there are "too many choices" for consumers, leading to what she called "choice oppression." People like that are free to barter and dumpster dive, and leave the good jobs and shopping malls to me. Just don't expect that I won't notice - and criticize - their hatred for humans, progress, and our civilized way of life.