"Back to the Land" C/D

Yes cities are brutally ineffiecient, but they don't have to be by definition. In fact, through economies of scale it should be possible to make living in cities more efficient that living in the countryside.

(If you want a good book on how to make our lifestyle more compatible with the world read Natural Capitalism and google the Rocky Mountain Institute)

Books like his also seem to never make the distinction between consumerism and just buying things. I mean, he obviously purchases at least clothing. Does he pay attention to aesthetics? If so, then what makes his purchasing different from the greedy consumption that everone else outside of a small group of superior liberals practices? I have hundreds od CDs. Am I simply a consumer or does my knowledge of music change his perceptions? (A little off topic sorry, Aaron) (No problem Aaron!) (Thanks) ;-)

Yes we would run out of land. Also, if we stopped using hi-tech industrialized agriculture, there would be not be enough food to feed the world population. That does not mean I sneer at "back-to-the-country" type ideas, just get sad that the humanatiy has very dangerously extended its population past natural limits.

>Yes cities are brutally ineffiecient, but they don't have to be by
>definition. In fact, through economies of scale it should be
>possible to make living in cities more efficient that living in the
> countryside.

Cities, especially pre-automobile cities, are very effient. Building multi-story apartments uses a small land footprint to house many people, distribution of goods is much easier, and 99% of transportation can be accomplished by foot or public trans. Its suburbia that is super-wasteful. Huge houses w/ lawn (using up limited water supplies to grow very edible grass) and cars needed to go anywhere, sewage, gas, water, etc. lines have to be extended great distances. All this so people can complain about mowing their lawns.

While cities maybe parasitic, smelly wastelands (I live in one myself), contributing nothing in terms of material goods to the rest of the world, this is more a case of specialization taken to its logical extreme than anything else. And division of labor is here, almost certainly, to stay for the time being. Subsistence is just too intiricately tied in with every other aspect of culture, from politics to art to religion, for anyone to be in control of it. Every example that I can think of of an attempt to fundamentally alter the economic patterns of a whole culture (a la the Green Revolution, or any of the five Year Plans) for the better, has ended in disaster.

Even if we could snap our fingers and instantly be living in some sort of idealized bucolic world, I think that you'd have a hard time convincing everyone to give up all of their (admittedly excessive) material comforts.

I get great milage out of saying if this is such a real issue we should take a leaf out of the only country who had a really succesful back to the land policy: Cambodia under Pol Pot.

Its a nice idea but unworkable on a large scale which is probably a good thing too.

The root of the feeling isn't that modern conveniences are bad (you don't see me giving them up), but that the extent to which we depend upon others is really scary nowadays. I couldn't grow or shoot my own food, or build my own house, to save my life. There's always the paranoia that maybe someday I might need to and I wouldn't know how.

More than one-third of U.S. land is used for pasture—by far the largest land-use type in the contiguous 48 states. And nearly 25 percent of that land is administered by the federal government, with most occurring in the West. That land is open to grazing for a fee.

What covers the most land in America?

Urban sprawl? Forests? Lawns?

Nope.

Meat. Lots and lots of meat — as grazing land, or land used to grow animal feed.

Over 40% of the entire country.

(HT to ⁦@EnviroEm⁩ for the link!) https://t.co/5phJH6SbjT

— Dr. Jonathan Foley (@GlobalEcoGuy) July 31, 2018

give me a home where the buffalo roam

and i'll show you a home that sure stinks

And those cows are very well represented in the Senate.

yes, Bossy has at least 20 i bet

notice how the cow portion of the USA is even shaped like a Big Mac beef pattie

If everyone were to move "back to the land", wouldn't we run out of land

have you ever driven around America?

there is tons of land. in the south, most new residents to rural areas are immigrants, so rural areas will become more of a mixing pot as time goes on.

fwiw i see cities that do not do shit for the less well off, i have seen cities spend that money instead on sports arenas and highways. some cities don't care about public transportation at all. there is gentrification, there is shutting down of shelters. i guess you can ignore those things and say they aren't "city values" but you would be lying to yourself.

the truth is there are no "city values" and "rural values" that vastly differ. people on the whole want the same things. they want to be able to find a job they can work with dignity. they want the govt to be there when they need them and not when they don't. they want to be able to have a certain amount of freedom and a certain amount of security. this idea that these are two conflicting ideologies is a media construct. this is part of the divide and conquer strategy. people are people, man.

over time the cities and rural areas are going to blend, the distinctions will become less emphasizes, and as old media dies and more access is given to places that didn't have it before, we will have a more coherent and holistic understanding of this vast land and its peoples

once 3D printing hits there are going to be people starting their own communes and micro cities left and right

more access is given to places that didn't have it before, we will have a more coherent and holistic understanding of this vast land and its peoples

There are plenty of places in this vast land, many of them lying west of the notorious hundredth meridian and more than 200 miles from the Pacific Ocean, that are nearly uninhabitable at a density above one person per square mile. Most of the people who live there aren't farming, but grazing cattle or sheep, or else extracting resources via mining, logging or draining aquifers to irrigate alfalfa. It's where we put our bombing ranges.