51–60 of 77 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like trouble for the urban way of life, too. Where do all the young urban types come from? Not from downtown. Where do all the older folks go when their savings or mobility dwindle? Not downtown.
They are settling down in the cities, which America decided can be livable if you invest in transit and walkable neighborhoods.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right, but with the wrong goal. We need culture and people in rural areas. We need a new "small town culture" I'm not sure what that will look like, but this one is rotten.
Support remote work and rural infra investment (shoutout to Bernie Sanders and his rural internet investment plan). I want to live in rural areas while still being able to work a job that isn't going to (needlessly) require me to be onsite in a downtown core (Disclaimer: I work remotely). > We need a new "small town culture" 100 percent. Community building is hard, not profitable, but necessary. It used to be churche…
Because life without friends is hard on the mental health.
If you can make friends in a rural area, they're likely going to be the best friends anybody could ever ask for. But when there are approximately 5 people your age and gender within a 25 mile radius of your farm it's pretty hard to find someone with any sort of shared interest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Support remote work and rural infra investment (shoutout to Bernie Sanders and his rural internet investment plan). I want to live in rural areas while still being able to work a job that isn't going to (needlessly) require me to be onsite in a downtown core (Disclaimer: I work remotely). > We need a new "small town culture" 100 percent. Community building is hard, not profitable, but necessary. It used to be churche…
> why would I live in the condo? Because life without friends is hard on the mental health. If you can make friends in a rural area, they're likely going to be the best friends anybody could ever ask for. But when there are approximately 5 people your age and gender within a 25 mile radius of your farm it's pretty hard to find someone with any sort of shared interest.
I prefer to take my chances in a rural area, and having to bootstrap community, versus tolerating an urban lifestyle.
Good. It needs to die and be replaced with something new. I grew up there and the only reason it has survived this long is encouraging teenage pregnancy.
People actually care about strangers, and go out of their way to be friendly to you here. Also, every company I've worked with recently is embracing remote work.
Good. It needs to die and be replaced with something new. I grew up there and the only reason it has survived this long is encouraging teenage pregnancy.
I am not from small town America - but I think this attitude which is openly celebrated among many is sickening. Its the kind of rhetoric that leads people to believe in ideas like "white genocide" and other frankly dangerous and violent partisan ideas.
Though, this is what we asked for, and no one cared to stop it. It's obviously a massively multi-faceted problem, but one of the bigger parts is: along the way we lost the idea of what our local community is. We instead replaced it with social media, and listened/espoused the opinions of people on the other side of the country who had never lived outside of a city.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right, but with the wrong goal. We need culture and people in rural areas. We need a new "small town culture" I'm not sure what that will look like, but this one is rotten.
Support remote work and rural infra investment (shoutout to Bernie Sanders and his rural internet investment plan). I want to live in rural areas while still being able to work a job that isn't going to (needlessly) require me to be onsite in a downtown core (Disclaimer: I work remotely). > We need a new "small town culture" 100 percent. Community building is hard, not profitable, but necessary. It used to be churche…
Good. It needs to die and be replaced with something new. I grew up there and the only reason it has survived this long is encouraging teenage pregnancy.
I am not from small town America - but I think this attitude which is openly celebrated among many is sickening. Its the kind of rhetoric that leads people to believe in ideas like "white genocide" and other frankly dangerous and violent partisan ideas.
Environmental destruction is the story here, but with one misunderstanding. > Rural America is eroding. If you talk to farmers such as Short and Roger, they lament it. But almost nobody thinks it can be prevented. More efficient farming... The new farming isn't more efficient physically, chemically, or biologically. It consumes without replacing resources like topsoil, biodiversity, water, etc. It looks more efficien…
> The new farming isn't more efficient physically, chemically, or biologically. It consumes without replacing resources like topsoil, biodiversity, water, etc. It looks more efficient financially only by neglecting the future costs to restore those resources. B.S. Farmers aren't stupid, they still remember the lessons of the 1930s. They all plan to farm until they're physically unable to, and hope that the family far…
And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food actually comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of the largest farms in the US in 2011[1].
Most of our agriculture today is not good old Farmer John and his wife and eight kids going out to hoe the beans at dawn. It's massive operations with hundreds or thousands of acres, huge agricultural machines, and, yes, loads of chemicals treating the soil to make it produce even when we've stripped it bare of nutrients by forcing it to grow the same crops year after year. (It's also many thousands of migrant farm workers doing the actual physical labour, but that's a separate issue...)
There are good permaculture movements springing up that seek to return to more sustainable methods, but they're almost exclusively individuals or small-community groups.
As for glyphosate...OK, sure, it can help to reduce the mechanical damage to the ground caused by repeatedly tilling the soil. But count me in the Extremely Skeptical camp as to it being "totally harmless" to humans, particularly given how influential Monsanto's money is in shaping the research into the subject. (And that doesn't even touch on the effects on the environment from spraying it all over the place, year after year, and letting it run off into waterways...)
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/16/the-d...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The new farming isn't more efficient physically, chemically, or biologically. It consumes without replacing resources like topsoil, biodiversity, water, etc. It looks more efficient financially only by neglecting the future costs to restore those resources. B.S. Farmers aren't stupid, they still remember the lessons of the 1930s. They all plan to farm until they're physically unable to, and hope that the family far…
> They all plan to farm until they're physically unable to, and hope that the family farm will stay in the family for generations to come. And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food actually comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of the largest farms in the US in 2011[1]. Most of our agriculture today is not good old Farmer John and his wife and eight kids going ou…
Those large farms are also small family farms. I know a guy who owns 15,000 acres but it's a 3 man operation: him, his wife and a single hired man. That's the norm in Saskatchewan.
> as to it being "totally harmless" to humans,
Of course it's not "totally harmless". It's just better than the alternatives.
Good. It needs to die and be replaced with something new. I grew up there and the only reason it has survived this long is encouraging teenage pregnancy.
Not every small town is like whatever place you were obviously abused in. I couldn't imagine having to move back to the city. It's exciting and fun to visit the city, but the indifference people display to each other is taxing on my soul. The drug addicts over-dosing, people with mental health issues wandering, the rent being too-damn-high, etc... People actually care about strangers, and go out of their way to be fr…
It's not that people in the city don't care. There you are forced to realize that nobody is.