Everyone I knew who dreamed of city life then made it happen post-college promptly moved out when COVID hit, if not before. None of them want to go back. I came from a very, very small mountain town. Nature in abundance, and very spotty wifi.
Great and yet awful article, research and content respectively. I just recommended and quoted from it on James Corbett's article: https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/history-repeating-the-war-on-the. Comments are only on the Corbett Report. But I wondered if it was a typo when you said 2.96B would be herded into cities by 2010. Did you mean 2030?
I also mentioned in my comment the resemblance to Operation Green Hunt in India a decade ago, with the same goal of moving 90% of the population off the land and into the cities. Arundhati Roy wrote about it. It employed violence along with economic pressure, and was completely upfront about its goal. Glad you're focusing on this.
Arundhati Roy was likely spewing a typical Chicken Little "the sky is falling" story that people who do not know India well, may have taken seriously. Operation Green Hunt was a local government military operation in 2009 against India's Shining Path, the Naxalites, the name being later used to describe all such operations against the Maoist insurgents. Whatever one might think of that (one cannot deny the violence on both sides, nor the issue of exploitation and expropriation of forest lands and their wealth away from the indigenous populations which the "Naxals" were to some extent helping to resist), it seems a stretch to spin it as a machination concerning "moving 90% of the population into the cities".
Regarding the Naxals ("Naxalism"), one cannot help applying the Eric Hopper dictum to some extent: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
And the word green probably referred to forests, where the guerillas typically operated.
But the name "Green Hunt" was surely irresistible as the type of conspiratorial ("they're out to get us") tropes that author indulged in often. Would make a good title for a thriller novel.
Rural exodus is on the other hand very real in India, leading to galloping urbanization because the cities are magnets of economic growth, along with the corporatization of agriculture and other factors which pauperize rural folk and push them to the city.
This uncontrolled urbanization is of course catastrophic on multiple counts, but then, "the people get to participate in growth." Who is to stop that, or rather how is that to be managed? That impulse towards urbanization is not just about policy, it is also a massive cultural shift, dans les mentalités.
It's quite a different story from the American predicament which this article is addressing.
On the other hand, the Indian planning and policy elites being very much tied to globalist influences, there is indeed a promotion of urbanization as a good in the 'sustainability' scheme of things.
This is a wonderful article with a lot to take away. Glad to have discovered this blog with such vitality and originality of thought!
A country with a caste system is the same as a slave-owning country or a country under apartheid--there's no pretense that people are equal or have inherent rights. The only difference with the US is the pretense.
I think that's why it simultaneously shocked me and was refreshing to have the Minister state matter-of-factly that their goal was to move 85%? 90% of the rural residents into cities. Arundhati is a journalist, she cites sources and gives quotes. It's not opinion.
Her book Walking With the Comrades is an account of the Maoists or Naxalites who she spent time with. Like the Zapatistas, they're certainly an armed resistance movement protecting the people in rural areas. I don't have her book with me, but I remember it having facts and statistics on the violence done in order to move people off the land where they were in the way of the MoUs, the Memorandums of Understanding with the mining companies.
And during the pandemic, the treatment of these rural villagers who were the urban servants needing to go out to get the masters' provisions was horrific. I remember seeing story after story about them being beaten for being on the streets and trying to get home. If there was any silver lining, I'd hoped it was a repatriation of the rural villages.
I'm from Appalachia and books like Ramp Hollow chronicle how this was done here.
Thank you for your thoughtful reaction and the mention of Ramp Hollow which I would love to read.
The outrage a modern person might feel about caste is certainly understandable, if it is equated to slavery or apartheid.
However evoking these images is not instructive as regards the actual picture. In fact the historically comparable phenomena to those things in India, such as bonded labor and exclusionary practices against 'lower' castes, especially the shocking phenomenon of untouchabililty, have been outlawed since a long time and any such occurrences today are likely to provoke a big public outcry.
Caste is indeed a hierarchical social organisation (each person being born into a caste positioned in a ritual hierarchy, which also overlapped with occupational function). However in what sense is the hierarchy operational in today's India? Without understanding that, one is left with a caricature, tilting at imaginary windmills.
The first fact to note is that India is a modern state based on the equality of citizens, and caste stratification is not allowed to define citizens' status or rights.
Following significant reform movements, Indian society has made enormous efforts to move away from caste-based discrimination over the last hundred years, whether through massive affirmative action for historically disadvantaged groups or democratic political representation (parties representing virtually every grouping, at all levels of government), as well as an elaborate system of redress against discrimination.
This has made for a significant social mobility for disadvantaged castes. A big part of Indian politics consists of jostling and politicking over affirmative action quotas and power-sharing. Paradoxically, it is the very factor of affirmative action, which was to do away with caste hierarchy in the opportunity structure, which has solidified caste, by making it an advantage factor (in higher education, employment, preferential treatment in other domains).
With more and more people from all strata getting educated, accessing opportunities, and even intermarrying, the traditional hierarchy is getting blurred, it could be argued that "caste feeling" is evolving towards being a factor of identity and cultural practice, or as social capital.
These quite mundane facts of contemporary India do not make for a dramatic reductionist narrative of oppression. Rather caste is better viewed as a sociological parameter of Indian society (concerning not just Hinduism but other religious formations as well), with historical baggage around which there is social struggle and evolution.
It was thus amusing to hear the spokesman of the Confédération Paysanne (a French agricultural union) at the height of the anti-globalization movement proclaim on French radio, "We have to abolish the caste system in India!"
Unlike the Ancien Regime with its three estates, there could be no call to revolution to topple caste, as it never rigidly defined the governance system. The 'greats' of Indian history, literature and arts, came from across the caste spectrum.
India is a raucous democracy. Ministers and politicos all round say outrageous things, stirring controversies. A minister saying things like "rural residents must be pushed into cities" may not be of much consequence, while certainly providing fodder for outrage dissertations. Today such statements would not pass without intense scrutiny.
Arundhati can be largely considered to be a polemicist, often fielding pick and choose "creative facts" in service of dramatic impact.
Yes there were cases such as those MOUs with mining companies where people were moved off their lands forcibly. "Collateral damage" in euphemistic terms, in the unholy trample towards development. Justifying protest movements. While providing a check on corruption and abuse, the longer term outcomes of these blockages were not always clear. There was a nihilistic aspect - what was to come next? The heroic triumph of stoppage of projects, after long drawn wrangling over environmental impact, compensation, rehab etc (the activists had no intention to settle, making it all morally cloudy - especially if we looked at their funding source). Millions invested would go down the drain. Decades of work blocked.
Sometimes the defense of the noble 'little people' a la blue people of Avatar was quite cringe-worthy, in its displaced romanticism.
The 90s and 00s were the high point of NGO/activist power against development projects especially involving multinationals. The protest sector developed, enriched itself, accumulated power, globe-trotted and produced its celebrities (with photo shoots). Arundhati was one of the prime stars, writing lyrical prose about innocent 'tribals' loving their river to be protected against the big bad government wolf coming with its big bad dam. David against Goliath!
A new genre of writing, with glamor quotient.
People over time became cynical about these shenanigans, and the sheen wore off.
I'm sure Walking with the Comrades is a good read.
The Naxalites were a remarkable movement for change in their heyday and had far-reaching influence and impact. In their later phase, they were systematically bombing infrastructure that the government constructed to develop isolated areas (their strongholds), and killing people who "collaborated" including respected public officials, which didn't help their legitimacy.
You're right about the horrible things that happened during the pandemic with the villagers and other dysfunctions.
May I ask your caste, Anu? The people I visit when I'm here (in my hometown) are an older couple who've traveled every winter for 30 yrs to Southeast Asia and parts of India. They work with marginalized artisans like the Dalits and the Muslims in India, who they say are even lower. They got stuck in India in 2020 for almost a year before they could come back, so they haven't traveled since. They're very savvy and not the NDGs or naive do-gooders as I call some in this field. They tell a very different story than what you present. I don't know you but I've had years of seeing their integrity in action. So when they and Arundhati Roy tell me one thing and you tell me another, I have to take the word of people who've put their lives where their mouths are.
I try to read Corbett, because I know he makes logical sense, but his sarcasm and "inside" language gets in the way of me fully diving in, especially because I also read "for" other people in hopes to share important posts/articles with them.
This is again a very important posting by Elizabeth.A splendid wordsmith with the truth to back it up. Three or four years ago I struck up a conversation with a local farmer here in R.I USA at a market and learned his farm was about a mile from my home. I had moved permanently to R.I from Sag Harbor NY where I did home restoration work for the rich and famous and not so rich and famous since the early eighties. Sag Harbor for those who don't know used to be Southamptons poor dumb cousin as it was a hardscrapple fishing village with a Main Street about two blocks long and at one time boasted having the most bars per capita of any town in the US. I had watched for decades potato fields, which most of eastern L.I. was famous for slowly make way for subdivisions of McMansions "till there was virtually no farms left that actually grew anything. When working for rich city people who every weekend head west to the Hamptons to live next to the same people only with nicer landscaping between them became untenable I moved into our 18th c home I restored in R.I never to go back. The farmer whom I befriended seemed like someone I had a few things in common with and when he told me how it was impossible to get any help other than the one Guatemalan fellow he had I decided to volunteer a few hours most mornings to help him out. His farm was about ten acres where he raised cows and pigs for meat, chickens for eggs and vegetables all without chemicals. When he purchased the farm in the 90s the town and surrounding neighbors fought to keep him from farming the land even though it had been farmed by the previous owners. He said he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight city hall and finally they dropped the lawsuit. This is sort of the same mentality I experienced in the Hamptons when the famous Bridgerhampton race track operational since the 1950s was forced to shut down by the locals who had moved near and around the track decades after it was opened Now it is a pricey golf club that sits atop the only aquifer that feeds the areas water supply. I can tell you as fact that local ,small time farming is a very tough and not very profitable vocation. I could spend every waking hour every day there and never get to the end what needs to be done. Last year was the last year we raised turkeys as few people want to spend the money for an organically raised bird . He tells me the cows will be the next to go as hay, electricity, and fuel have risen too much to make it worth while. My generation will be the last to remember what it was like to live in a sustainable agrarian society and that memory is fading fast. I fear that people will only rise up when they are at the point of starvation. That time is definitely on its way.
Absurdistan is my favorite substack and I am happy to be a paid subscriber and support Elizabeth Nickson. I enjoy every article she writes. They are all well written, well researched, and illuminating.
As for me, I live in Healdsburg, California (wine country). What was a nice farming town is now a world class tourist destination with four star hotels. Our plaza is overrun with tourists. We are like a landlocked Venice, Italy.
If you do move to the countryside, make sure the small town you choose is not coveted by the rich.
I'm on my way to Church, so only have a moment, but just have to say that, with yesterdays post on The Pipeline, you've wrapped and tied with a bow why those evil bleeps must be stopped. What hasn't been turned into The Wasteland has had its productive past surgically removed (think of Squamish's Britannia West pulp mill or Nelson's Kootenay Forest Products sawmill) and replaced with chic vegan restaurants and other services for the wealthy climbers, skiers and dirt bike crowd. Sure, you can earn a living there, waiting tables. The towns are shiny and painted nicely, just like Disneyworld. On the east coast there's a bit less Wasteland, but the it's still largely encroachment from the cities - the DC-Baltimore corridor in Maryland, the DC-Northern Counties and Richmond in Virginia, etc. God help us, for we have sinned by not pushing back before this. God help us know what to do now.
And just think about how many people still are not paying attention. I never hear concerns expressed at social gatherings. People have drliberately blocked out how how government policies are destroying the world.
I'm very grateful to Elizabeth for introducing me to Feargus O'Connor Greenwood's "180 Degrees: Unlearn the Lies You've Been Taught to Believe" a month or so ago. It has a lot of excellent suggestions how to effectively spread the word without chasing all of your friends and relatives away. Not everyone can hear the truth, but with care and caution the word can be spread. I sincerely hope.
"But the hive mind is on the march." Agreed, but there is a resistance that must be toppled further.
I live in a town in MN of 5,000 with smaller surrounding communities. It is 40 miles from the TC and is an Ag+bedroom community. It is a treasure. The public schools are asking for money in an off year and they(aside from early voting) should be widely voted down. The 'Soccer Moms' are onto them after 2020-21 where schools were closed but still had their kitchens open to prepare 1,000 meals a day for 'poor' yet closed for education. "The Math" as you talk about is not working.
This is not a normal 'recession' type of year even though interest rates are high, etc. Honestly, I think Trump dropping our corporate tax rate from the highest in the world(39%?) to 21% is going to be our saving grace as work is coming back here by the 10s of thousands of assembly hours alone in my company. If you are willing to work there is much to be had. Keep the faith!
Danimal28: My family's heritage (after emigration from Europe) is in the Twin Cities area and all the small farming communities around the TC. I was born in Richfield, MN. Buffalo, Chaska, St. Cloud, Montrose, all those small communities are where the country relatives lived.
It's a nice area but the weather is hell. The people are great.
I can still see the man skiing in Minneapolis in May.
It was on the TV news.
"What do you think of this May snow?" He was asked.
I'm not sure if the low-contact areas (EU, US, UK, Japan) can be saved. The global South, and Dixie within the US, are managing pretty well because high-contact societies naturally resist craziness. Constant contact among a wide variety of people is necessary for both physical and mental immunity.
There are micro communities within the EU etc which will survive and thrive. One thing that is disappearing and shouldn't be continued is the generalization of things, countries and people. please.
Is it high-contact, or is it religion? Conservatives abound in Dixie, and much of South America is Catholic, and traditional. Perhaps the two are linked. Conservatives tend to be very family-oriented.
There is something about the family farm that is rarely discussed. It supports the other members of society to specialise. I consider meagre earnings, supporting very undervalued land (not farmable - rock and desert ) with heavy focus on home production of most food a major effort in undermining the current system dynamics at play. Basically live on land people don't want and don't try to compete. Just let the toxic system burn out while hashtag living your best life. Micro farms may be the way to destabilise a parasitic banking class, dunno but it's my thing.
I'm 1/2 through the well written article by Elizabeth Nickson. I enjoy her writing very much.
I don't know whether the old TV show "Green Acres" or the Sci-Fi movie starring Charleton Heston ("Soylent Green") applies. Oh what a sad mad world we live in.
"Soylent Green is People". I think we are already there. Mike Adams , The health ranger, did a documentary called "Biosludged" in 2018. Using humans as fertilizer. I think it was Canada that first proposed it but not sure. I have heard even worse as far as using humans for "food" One thing I have learned in recent years is that most of the shit going down now was telegraphed by the insiders through Hollywood.Sci Fi is not fiction it seems.
Nice piece, a little narrow in perspective but it's glorious heart is in the right place, I say this as a regenerative organic farmer😉🎩
Unfortunately, the middle class that has/had the power of time wealth, to ponder the spiritual health benefits of a good organic cuppa and conversation, vs the time-destitute lower socioeconomic class, the middle are being steadily and systematically wiped out or pushed into "upper middle poor".
So unless we can get more traction of understanding within the poor that THEY need to start producing some food, any food, not only for their own benefit, but so we can begin to strip the technocracy from their stranglehold on the food system and their profiteering.
Amazon was, for a brief period, helpful to rural customers. Now, with their cut off of rural delivery, they have relegated themselves to the same status that The Whole Earth Catalog once had for rural buyers: a dream book pastime for winter months, resulting in few purchases after long shopping projects. Leave Amazon to its own devices and it will self destruct.
👍👍👍 Thanks. It is an awful spector we face but there is hope. Resist much . Obey little
Superb. Thank you. Indeed, no one is dreaming of moving into a tiny, surveiled closet in an urban hellhole.
Everyone I knew who dreamed of city life then made it happen post-college promptly moved out when COVID hit, if not before. None of them want to go back. I came from a very, very small mountain town. Nature in abundance, and very spotty wifi.
On the process for manufacturing slurried protein, I think Smaje made a typo, "...stainless steel biorector," should be stainless steel biorectum.
Great and yet awful article, research and content respectively. I just recommended and quoted from it on James Corbett's article: https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/history-repeating-the-war-on-the. Comments are only on the Corbett Report. But I wondered if it was a typo when you said 2.96B would be herded into cities by 2010. Did you mean 2030?
I also mentioned in my comment the resemblance to Operation Green Hunt in India a decade ago, with the same goal of moving 90% of the population off the land and into the cities. Arundhati Roy wrote about it. It employed violence along with economic pressure, and was completely upfront about its goal. Glad you're focusing on this.
Arundhati Roy was likely spewing a typical Chicken Little "the sky is falling" story that people who do not know India well, may have taken seriously. Operation Green Hunt was a local government military operation in 2009 against India's Shining Path, the Naxalites, the name being later used to describe all such operations against the Maoist insurgents. Whatever one might think of that (one cannot deny the violence on both sides, nor the issue of exploitation and expropriation of forest lands and their wealth away from the indigenous populations which the "Naxals" were to some extent helping to resist), it seems a stretch to spin it as a machination concerning "moving 90% of the population into the cities".
Regarding the Naxals ("Naxalism"), one cannot help applying the Eric Hopper dictum to some extent: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
And the word green probably referred to forests, where the guerillas typically operated.
But the name "Green Hunt" was surely irresistible as the type of conspiratorial ("they're out to get us") tropes that author indulged in often. Would make a good title for a thriller novel.
Rural exodus is on the other hand very real in India, leading to galloping urbanization because the cities are magnets of economic growth, along with the corporatization of agriculture and other factors which pauperize rural folk and push them to the city.
This uncontrolled urbanization is of course catastrophic on multiple counts, but then, "the people get to participate in growth." Who is to stop that, or rather how is that to be managed? That impulse towards urbanization is not just about policy, it is also a massive cultural shift, dans les mentalités.
It's quite a different story from the American predicament which this article is addressing.
On the other hand, the Indian planning and policy elites being very much tied to globalist influences, there is indeed a promotion of urbanization as a good in the 'sustainability' scheme of things.
This is a wonderful article with a lot to take away. Glad to have discovered this blog with such vitality and originality of thought!
A country with a caste system is the same as a slave-owning country or a country under apartheid--there's no pretense that people are equal or have inherent rights. The only difference with the US is the pretense.
I think that's why it simultaneously shocked me and was refreshing to have the Minister state matter-of-factly that their goal was to move 85%? 90% of the rural residents into cities. Arundhati is a journalist, she cites sources and gives quotes. It's not opinion.
Her book Walking With the Comrades is an account of the Maoists or Naxalites who she spent time with. Like the Zapatistas, they're certainly an armed resistance movement protecting the people in rural areas. I don't have her book with me, but I remember it having facts and statistics on the violence done in order to move people off the land where they were in the way of the MoUs, the Memorandums of Understanding with the mining companies.
And during the pandemic, the treatment of these rural villagers who were the urban servants needing to go out to get the masters' provisions was horrific. I remember seeing story after story about them being beaten for being on the streets and trying to get home. If there was any silver lining, I'd hoped it was a repatriation of the rural villages.
I'm from Appalachia and books like Ramp Hollow chronicle how this was done here.
Thank you for your thoughtful reaction and the mention of Ramp Hollow which I would love to read.
The outrage a modern person might feel about caste is certainly understandable, if it is equated to slavery or apartheid.
However evoking these images is not instructive as regards the actual picture. In fact the historically comparable phenomena to those things in India, such as bonded labor and exclusionary practices against 'lower' castes, especially the shocking phenomenon of untouchabililty, have been outlawed since a long time and any such occurrences today are likely to provoke a big public outcry.
Caste is indeed a hierarchical social organisation (each person being born into a caste positioned in a ritual hierarchy, which also overlapped with occupational function). However in what sense is the hierarchy operational in today's India? Without understanding that, one is left with a caricature, tilting at imaginary windmills.
The first fact to note is that India is a modern state based on the equality of citizens, and caste stratification is not allowed to define citizens' status or rights.
Following significant reform movements, Indian society has made enormous efforts to move away from caste-based discrimination over the last hundred years, whether through massive affirmative action for historically disadvantaged groups or democratic political representation (parties representing virtually every grouping, at all levels of government), as well as an elaborate system of redress against discrimination.
This has made for a significant social mobility for disadvantaged castes. A big part of Indian politics consists of jostling and politicking over affirmative action quotas and power-sharing. Paradoxically, it is the very factor of affirmative action, which was to do away with caste hierarchy in the opportunity structure, which has solidified caste, by making it an advantage factor (in higher education, employment, preferential treatment in other domains).
With more and more people from all strata getting educated, accessing opportunities, and even intermarrying, the traditional hierarchy is getting blurred, it could be argued that "caste feeling" is evolving towards being a factor of identity and cultural practice, or as social capital.
These quite mundane facts of contemporary India do not make for a dramatic reductionist narrative of oppression. Rather caste is better viewed as a sociological parameter of Indian society (concerning not just Hinduism but other religious formations as well), with historical baggage around which there is social struggle and evolution.
It was thus amusing to hear the spokesman of the Confédération Paysanne (a French agricultural union) at the height of the anti-globalization movement proclaim on French radio, "We have to abolish the caste system in India!"
Unlike the Ancien Regime with its three estates, there could be no call to revolution to topple caste, as it never rigidly defined the governance system. The 'greats' of Indian history, literature and arts, came from across the caste spectrum.
India is a raucous democracy. Ministers and politicos all round say outrageous things, stirring controversies. A minister saying things like "rural residents must be pushed into cities" may not be of much consequence, while certainly providing fodder for outrage dissertations. Today such statements would not pass without intense scrutiny.
Arundhati can be largely considered to be a polemicist, often fielding pick and choose "creative facts" in service of dramatic impact.
Yes there were cases such as those MOUs with mining companies where people were moved off their lands forcibly. "Collateral damage" in euphemistic terms, in the unholy trample towards development. Justifying protest movements. While providing a check on corruption and abuse, the longer term outcomes of these blockages were not always clear. There was a nihilistic aspect - what was to come next? The heroic triumph of stoppage of projects, after long drawn wrangling over environmental impact, compensation, rehab etc (the activists had no intention to settle, making it all morally cloudy - especially if we looked at their funding source). Millions invested would go down the drain. Decades of work blocked.
Sometimes the defense of the noble 'little people' a la blue people of Avatar was quite cringe-worthy, in its displaced romanticism.
The 90s and 00s were the high point of NGO/activist power against development projects especially involving multinationals. The protest sector developed, enriched itself, accumulated power, globe-trotted and produced its celebrities (with photo shoots). Arundhati was one of the prime stars, writing lyrical prose about innocent 'tribals' loving their river to be protected against the big bad government wolf coming with its big bad dam. David against Goliath!
A new genre of writing, with glamor quotient.
People over time became cynical about these shenanigans, and the sheen wore off.
I'm sure Walking with the Comrades is a good read.
The Naxalites were a remarkable movement for change in their heyday and had far-reaching influence and impact. In their later phase, they were systematically bombing infrastructure that the government constructed to develop isolated areas (their strongholds), and killing people who "collaborated" including respected public officials, which didn't help their legitimacy.
You're right about the horrible things that happened during the pandemic with the villagers and other dysfunctions.
May I ask your caste, Anu? The people I visit when I'm here (in my hometown) are an older couple who've traveled every winter for 30 yrs to Southeast Asia and parts of India. They work with marginalized artisans like the Dalits and the Muslims in India, who they say are even lower. They got stuck in India in 2020 for almost a year before they could come back, so they haven't traveled since. They're very savvy and not the NDGs or naive do-gooders as I call some in this field. They tell a very different story than what you present. I don't know you but I've had years of seeing their integrity in action. So when they and Arundhati Roy tell me one thing and you tell me another, I have to take the word of people who've put their lives where their mouths are.
I try to read Corbett, because I know he makes logical sense, but his sarcasm and "inside" language gets in the way of me fully diving in, especially because I also read "for" other people in hopes to share important posts/articles with them.
Corbett is awesome, but dives so deep it's impossible to share his stuff. This is a common problem with those of us going down the rabbit holes.
It’s the sarcasm that’s a turnoff for some people I read “for.” They have no problem going deep. In fact, they are the ones who taught me to go deep!
In spring2020, I asked a question, terrified.
He gave a smart ass answer . I still smile, but then I'm from ny
You're lucky - most of the people I know struggle with more than one whole page of text or 3 minutes of video...
This is again a very important posting by Elizabeth.A splendid wordsmith with the truth to back it up. Three or four years ago I struck up a conversation with a local farmer here in R.I USA at a market and learned his farm was about a mile from my home. I had moved permanently to R.I from Sag Harbor NY where I did home restoration work for the rich and famous and not so rich and famous since the early eighties. Sag Harbor for those who don't know used to be Southamptons poor dumb cousin as it was a hardscrapple fishing village with a Main Street about two blocks long and at one time boasted having the most bars per capita of any town in the US. I had watched for decades potato fields, which most of eastern L.I. was famous for slowly make way for subdivisions of McMansions "till there was virtually no farms left that actually grew anything. When working for rich city people who every weekend head west to the Hamptons to live next to the same people only with nicer landscaping between them became untenable I moved into our 18th c home I restored in R.I never to go back. The farmer whom I befriended seemed like someone I had a few things in common with and when he told me how it was impossible to get any help other than the one Guatemalan fellow he had I decided to volunteer a few hours most mornings to help him out. His farm was about ten acres where he raised cows and pigs for meat, chickens for eggs and vegetables all without chemicals. When he purchased the farm in the 90s the town and surrounding neighbors fought to keep him from farming the land even though it had been farmed by the previous owners. He said he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight city hall and finally they dropped the lawsuit. This is sort of the same mentality I experienced in the Hamptons when the famous Bridgerhampton race track operational since the 1950s was forced to shut down by the locals who had moved near and around the track decades after it was opened Now it is a pricey golf club that sits atop the only aquifer that feeds the areas water supply. I can tell you as fact that local ,small time farming is a very tough and not very profitable vocation. I could spend every waking hour every day there and never get to the end what needs to be done. Last year was the last year we raised turkeys as few people want to spend the money for an organically raised bird . He tells me the cows will be the next to go as hay, electricity, and fuel have risen too much to make it worth while. My generation will be the last to remember what it was like to live in a sustainable agrarian society and that memory is fading fast. I fear that people will only rise up when they are at the point of starvation. That time is definitely on its way.
Absurdistan is my favorite substack and I am happy to be a paid subscriber and support Elizabeth Nickson. I enjoy every article she writes. They are all well written, well researched, and illuminating.
As for me, I live in Healdsburg, California (wine country). What was a nice farming town is now a world class tourist destination with four star hotels. Our plaza is overrun with tourists. We are like a landlocked Venice, Italy.
If you do move to the countryside, make sure the small town you choose is not coveted by the rich.
this piece was pointy as a sharp ass knife. i LOVED it. thank you. i FEEL your rage and see you incensed. brill. did i say thank you already?
I'm on my way to Church, so only have a moment, but just have to say that, with yesterdays post on The Pipeline, you've wrapped and tied with a bow why those evil bleeps must be stopped. What hasn't been turned into The Wasteland has had its productive past surgically removed (think of Squamish's Britannia West pulp mill or Nelson's Kootenay Forest Products sawmill) and replaced with chic vegan restaurants and other services for the wealthy climbers, skiers and dirt bike crowd. Sure, you can earn a living there, waiting tables. The towns are shiny and painted nicely, just like Disneyworld. On the east coast there's a bit less Wasteland, but the it's still largely encroachment from the cities - the DC-Baltimore corridor in Maryland, the DC-Northern Counties and Richmond in Virginia, etc. God help us, for we have sinned by not pushing back before this. God help us know what to do now.
And just think about how many people still are not paying attention. I never hear concerns expressed at social gatherings. People have drliberately blocked out how how government policies are destroying the world.
I'm very grateful to Elizabeth for introducing me to Feargus O'Connor Greenwood's "180 Degrees: Unlearn the Lies You've Been Taught to Believe" a month or so ago. It has a lot of excellent suggestions how to effectively spread the word without chasing all of your friends and relatives away. Not everyone can hear the truth, but with care and caution the word can be spread. I sincerely hope.
"But the hive mind is on the march." Agreed, but there is a resistance that must be toppled further.
I live in a town in MN of 5,000 with smaller surrounding communities. It is 40 miles from the TC and is an Ag+bedroom community. It is a treasure. The public schools are asking for money in an off year and they(aside from early voting) should be widely voted down. The 'Soccer Moms' are onto them after 2020-21 where schools were closed but still had their kitchens open to prepare 1,000 meals a day for 'poor' yet closed for education. "The Math" as you talk about is not working.
This is not a normal 'recession' type of year even though interest rates are high, etc. Honestly, I think Trump dropping our corporate tax rate from the highest in the world(39%?) to 21% is going to be our saving grace as work is coming back here by the 10s of thousands of assembly hours alone in my company. If you are willing to work there is much to be had. Keep the faith!
Danimal28: My family's heritage (after emigration from Europe) is in the Twin Cities area and all the small farming communities around the TC. I was born in Richfield, MN. Buffalo, Chaska, St. Cloud, Montrose, all those small communities are where the country relatives lived.
It's a nice area but the weather is hell. The people are great.
I can still see the man skiing in Minneapolis in May.
It was on the TV news.
"What do you think of this May snow?" He was asked.
"I think it sucks!" The skier replied.
I pray you're right. I wish I could live to see it.
Will the powers that shouldn't be EVER figure out how hubris works...or doesn't work...
I'm not sure if the low-contact areas (EU, US, UK, Japan) can be saved. The global South, and Dixie within the US, are managing pretty well because high-contact societies naturally resist craziness. Constant contact among a wide variety of people is necessary for both physical and mental immunity.
There are micro communities within the EU etc which will survive and thrive. One thing that is disappearing and shouldn't be continued is the generalization of things, countries and people. please.
Completely agree! ❤️
Is it high-contact, or is it religion? Conservatives abound in Dixie, and much of South America is Catholic, and traditional. Perhaps the two are linked. Conservatives tend to be very family-oriented.
There is something about the family farm that is rarely discussed. It supports the other members of society to specialise. I consider meagre earnings, supporting very undervalued land (not farmable - rock and desert ) with heavy focus on home production of most food a major effort in undermining the current system dynamics at play. Basically live on land people don't want and don't try to compete. Just let the toxic system burn out while hashtag living your best life. Micro farms may be the way to destabilise a parasitic banking class, dunno but it's my thing.
I'm 1/2 through the well written article by Elizabeth Nickson. I enjoy her writing very much.
I don't know whether the old TV show "Green Acres" or the Sci-Fi movie starring Charleton Heston ("Soylent Green") applies. Oh what a sad mad world we live in.
"Soylent Green is People". I think we are already there. Mike Adams , The health ranger, did a documentary called "Biosludged" in 2018. Using humans as fertilizer. I think it was Canada that first proposed it but not sure. I have heard even worse as far as using humans for "food" One thing I have learned in recent years is that most of the shit going down now was telegraphed by the insiders through Hollywood.Sci Fi is not fiction it seems.
Ron.C: In California it is now legal to compost Grandpa's body in your garden.
How Liberal !
Ron.C: Oh, lots of jokes about this California law:
"Mommy, why do these potatoes smell like Grandpa?"
Nice piece, a little narrow in perspective but it's glorious heart is in the right place, I say this as a regenerative organic farmer😉🎩
Unfortunately, the middle class that has/had the power of time wealth, to ponder the spiritual health benefits of a good organic cuppa and conversation, vs the time-destitute lower socioeconomic class, the middle are being steadily and systematically wiped out or pushed into "upper middle poor".
So unless we can get more traction of understanding within the poor that THEY need to start producing some food, any food, not only for their own benefit, but so we can begin to strip the technocracy from their stranglehold on the food system and their profiteering.
Keep up the good work👏👏🙏
#wearemany #wearememory #wewillnotforget #getlocalised
You're seriously unable to find a replacement for Amazon? C'mon, I NEVER use it - so why do you?
Amazon was, for a brief period, helpful to rural customers. Now, with their cut off of rural delivery, they have relegated themselves to the same status that The Whole Earth Catalog once had for rural buyers: a dream book pastime for winter months, resulting in few purchases after long shopping projects. Leave Amazon to its own devices and it will self destruct.
Oh wow - didn't know that. I hope you're right about it self-destructing - IMO that would be magnificent.