People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

holy christ

i am honestly unable to respond to what you seem to be arguing here at this point because i cant even take your points seriously anymore.

what is crazy about "rural americans have lifestyles that are massively subsidized by the federal government"?

we need robots to grow the food and package it for us

goole: true

lol @ afred's occasional incredulous interjections itt

i don't get these light rail opinions

urban and suburban americans have lifestyles non-starvation options that are massively subsidized by rural dudes for starters xxxpost

lol @ alfred being too left-wing for the democratic party and yet a status quo apologist w/ this stuff

also i am trying to imagine where you are going to put all these people in the city

the idea that we'd all starve to death if the government didn't subsidize certain rural areas is also pretty lol. farmers around the world loling along.

you are like the king of strawmen!

i suppose we could just sprawl out and build some new urbs outside the city limits for them to live in

xxpost yeah see now you are just being willfully obtuse

lol @ alfred being too left-wing for the democratic party and yet a status quo apologist w/ this stuff

Cuz in your mind "left wing" and "status quo apologist" are irreconcilable? Lead the revolution into Costco.

we need robots to grow the food and package it for us

This is almost the case already? There isn't much farming done by farmers at this point in South Dakota where my Mom's family comes from.

no i mean literally robots

If there's anything the "left wing" got consistently wrong in the twentieth century, it's trying to change people's minds about perceptions, biases, and the other elements which make us human.

"Rural" is a lot more nebulous than "suburban," guys. There are a lot of different sorts of rural, everything from living on a farm to living in a small town but not being directly connected to farming to just having an acreage and working elsewhere (or being retired).

iatee, you are basically the urbanist equivalent of get-off-my-lawn type dudes who grouse about welfare queens taking all their tax dollars.

if history has taught us anything it is that massive urbanization is the best possible environmental outcome

I really should back off the thread for now, since I'm at work and our customer base is 100% rural and I shouldn't be opining about this shit on company time, heyo.

if history has taught us anything it is that massive urbanization is the best possible environmental outcome

this is 100% true

(in 2010)

iatee, you are basically the urbanist equivalent of get-off-my-lawn type dudes who grouse about welfare queens taking all their tax dollars.

right except this is isn't an imaginary black woman, it's an actual thing that's happening and nobody is denying? urban areas DO massively subsidize the rest of america. on the county-level, on the state-wide level, on the federal-level.

iatee, wtf planet are you living on?

crazy alternate one apparently

by that logic all of us in flyover country are just suckling on the coastal teat too though right?

most of the time. is this something you didn't know?

I think you're ruffling feathers because instead of saying good interim steps and being productive, you're talking about things that make sense across the 50-150 year range. Increased urban transportation, encourage in-fill of urban neighborhoods instead of suburban expansion, and decreased immediate rural subsidies make sense. Scoffing at all subsidizing, assuming that we can move the majority of rural people into urban areas, and getting pissed off because people do not want to live and work in the same relative area is kind of concentrating on the larger picture so much that no one wants to be in your club.

Late to the party, was going to say that I don't think hardly any individual privately owned "family" style farms are hardly feeding ANYONE, relative to the total population and not to how many people belong to a CSA in your locality (which I am all for, just ftr). So it's not like the rural folk are out there harvesting your food, no matter how many caps say "If you ate today, thank a farmer" which is nice and all but it's all agribusiness now.

Agribusinesses that are massively supported by the government, did I mention.

If anything, it's probably the suburbs that do most of the subsidizing, because that's where a majority of taxpayers live. And the idea that you aren't creating imaginary people to rail against is laughable.

If there's anything the "left wing" got consistently wrong in the twentieth century, it's trying to change people's minds about perceptions, biases, and the other elements which make us human.

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 3:41 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

ease up on the pol pot business man!! we just want better designed bus service, in addition to internment camps for soccer moms

so when we all live in LA and NYC, what the hell do we do with all this stupid land were stuck with.

sell it to canada?

Too much "externalities" in LA, mang.

is kind of concentrating on the larger picture so much that no one wants to be in your club.

What's funny is that jj, for one, is already IN the club and doesn't want to be because of the delivery of the club manifesto.

yeah! fuck Canada! they can have all this useless shit were living on! xxxpost

otm

What's funny is that jj, for one, is already IN the club and doesn't want to be because of the delivery of the club manifesto.

― the soul of the avocado escapes as soon as you open it (Laurel), Wednesday, June 9, 2010 Suggest Ban Permalink
1:51 PM Bookmark

^^^

Same here, pretty much.

What's funny is that jj, for one, is already IN the club and doesn't want to be because of the delivery of the club manifesto.

I am not the leader of the club and shouldn't be treated as such. I'm just a hardline member. this has always been political issue #1 for me, so it's like, I dunno, arguing with an abortion activist.

yes. yes it is.

look, I admit it!

I'm so obviously not getting any more shit done here now, but here's what I believe:

Many of the things you're going for are good ideas, iatee, but you're missing the source. The situation we're in, where we have lots of sprawl and large resource pipelines (oil, agriculture, transportation) that fuel us, are a result of mass utilization of natural resources and corporate/government action over a hundred years. The system does need to be restructured. Proposing massive restructuring at the personal level works if a person feels it is their duty, but advocating that for everyone doesn't make you a game-changer, it makes you a dick.

We know that a lot of things you're saying are neat ideas, but you need to be honest and admit that the city structures you love wouldn't be shit without the massive subsidized pipelines I've just mentioned that are fueling not just the countryside, but the CITY. The countryside doesn't have air pollution issues, farms are the largest polluters due to immature farming practices (that are most definitely adapting), but the majority of foodstuffs are going to where the majority of people are.

So you can wipe out all subsidies to the rest of the country, but that's what's propping up urban america.

So what I'm saying, is we need to kneecap urban america first, then work on the rest.

And, full disclosure, I am totally looking forward to going on my summer vacation to the rural resort-oriented countryside where I will stay on a ridiculous amount of land in a house where there are sometimes breezes in my bedroom even with all the windows shut, and be driven around in one of the several family vehicles to such destinations as "the beach" and "town, where all the stores are." My family (and their whole town, and every town like it, which is most of the state of MI) would be one of the first to go in our new fascistic energy crisis solution.

haha uh forgot that there was an iowan in the thread when I mentioned subsidies

btw, i think my whole take on all of this could have just been me answering the original thread question with "dudes"

I can't wait to see these imaginary cities that can absorb 5-10 times their current populations and provide housing and employment for everyone. I bet they'll look like this:

http://www.willhines.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/logans.jpg

something tells me that iatee wouldn't be this gung ho about cities if they weren't where he himself preferred to live. seems a bit selfish tbh.

I like how we are ready to wipe out all the middle Americans, but keep all the douchebaggy city dwellers that live in 4-story single-family homes and drive their SUVs 4 blocks to the Whole Foods.

We're going to be like the pioneers who foolishly tried to take their pianos in covered wagons across the prairie and had to leave them beside a river somewhere, only in reverse.

ya seems reasonable that there would be some correlation there xp