So I'm trying of think of something monastery like, but without the religious aspect, and I'm really drawing a blank. Since you basically surrender your life to the community and ultimately to whoever is leading it, the religious element seems almost necessary to make this work. I think the only exceptions to this are probably something like the military or meditation/yoga practice communities - but they almost inevitably come with religious elements to them(although in some you can be much more lax about actually subscribing to the spiritual elements).
Isn’t one of the big problems with academia that you’re still heavily beholden to economic interests? See: all the talk on HN about research being about quantity over quality.
At least in the US, it’s also incredibly expensive, especially if you’re not part of target demographic whose spent some years optimizing to reduce that cost.
If your goal is to be a top researcher at a top university, yeah economic interests are a top concern. If instead you just want to study and be left alone, there's plenty of room for that. For instance you can just study and then teach what you study, then do it again the next day. As long as you teach enough students to cover your salary (not hard), then there's a place for you.
I'm a professor and I talk with a lot of adjuncts. I'm not saying it's easy, and I don't think the OP of this thread was looking for an easy life. They wanted a life free of commercial toil in which they could devote themselves to raising chickens and open source work. If that's all you want to do, you can do this on an adjunct's salary. No commercial work necessary, just teaching people what you know.
If you want to raise a family of 4, own property and cars, dine out, and do all the normal things that most adjuncts want to do, then yeah, that job won't afford you the life that you're looking for.
Also I will note that this piece is conflating the adjunct position with the property of being non-tenured. In fact there are many non-tenured positions that are not adjunct positions, and they can pay much more. These can be called among other things, "instructor" or "research faculty" or "visiting professor".
