Re: [pf] we took the wrong track, in the '50s and '60s

by tully

10 December 2000 23:44 UTC

At 04:26 PM 12/8/00 -0800, Molly Williams wrote:
>We currently live far from everything but not because we thought the
>house was a deal. We love all the land we have, and use it for cutting
>our Christmas tree, snowshoeing, gardening (food and ornamental),
>bird-watching, deer- and moose-watching, walking, privacy, wildflower
>study.

I also live in the country with acreage and it is a 35 mile commute to work 
with increasingly bad traffic jams at the remote end of the commute coming 
or going.  I've always felt guilty about the thousands of gallons a year I 
was using (even in a Geo Metro), aghast at how many times that was being 
multiplied around our nation and elsewhere as millions of others commuted 
to their daily jobs, so many in SUVs...  I found it hard to justify living 
out in the sticks, even though I paid off the place years ago.

But as populations converge into tighter and tighter spaces, it becomes 
more difficult to find places where one could bicycle to work, especially 
in the corporate "campuses" springing up around airports and off 
interstates like is happening in North Carolina and elsewhere in the 
sunbelt.  Do I want to contribute to making that urban/suburban blight 
worse by taking up occupancy there?  Mass transit is better than car 
transit, but isn't the best solution no transit?

How many people on this list, if given a computer, 2 phone lines, and a way 
to tie to a network at their jobs could do their jobs from home?  How many 
others might be willing to share housing with those out in the country who 
did telecommute, and instead of working for the "man" were to contribute 
instead to the pooling of resources and tasks like meals, laundry, cleanup, 
gardening, etc.?  Yes, I'm talking about a communal type effort of home 
sharing, if not a full blown intentional community.  I suspect there are 
many more people like me, who could happily support this new direction.  It 
could do so much to help everyone involved, including Gaia, and also assist 
in getting our population more evenly distributed and transit needs down to 
a minimum.  I hope we are seeing the next great "back to the land" 
movement.  Maybe we'll even do it right this time...

>[Of course, we already pay a premium,
>because we pay fairly high property taxes,

I pay next to nothing in property taxes ($350/year for 6.7 acres and an old 
house) because I was intent on living well below my means.  We could have 
easily obtained a $150,000 mortgage at the time (and oh, how the banks and 
tax collectors would have liked my money), but instead we owner-financed 
(at 14% interest!), paid $300 in closing costs, and thus owned this place 
we bought for $37,500 back in 1982 and paid off 7 years later.  It is now 
accessed at $56K, hence the increased (ha!) tax value I pay.  There is no 
need to purchase at the limit of one's paycheck.  Not only do we pay 
terrible interest payments for years, we also pay property taxes on that 
high value forever.  There are always places available at half the housing 
cost you could mortgage.  Why isn't that alternative chosen more often?  I 
think the simplicity movement is beginning to show that we have choices and 
can avoid living from paycheck to paycheck if we quit letting ourselves be 
brainwashed by Madison Avenue.

>80% of which pay for public
>schools, which we don't use. But that's another discussion!]

I think everyone uses public schools whether they personally have children 
in them or not.  The alternatives of crime, prison, welfare, etc., is the 
far costlier alternative IMO.  The child we school might not need to mug us 
later.

>I think some people should live rurally, even if it means a long
>commute, but as Don said in the discussion on libertarianism, we should
>pay some kind of premium for that.

The premium would be paid if we doubled and later tripled the price of 
gasoline.  Things would really start changing for the better then, you can 
bet!  Even if the tax money didn't go to mass transit or alternative energy 
research, the increased price alone would start fixing transit problems by 
encouraging mass transit, telecommuting, shipping and consumer reductions, 
environmental improvements, etc.  I see no other way to get all that to 
happen quickly enough.  Our artifically low fuel prices are costing us 
dearly.

>I used to live in Baltimore City, without a car, and I walked or took a
>bus everywhere. Occasionally friends drove me to the grocery store. I
>was happy with the lifestyle, until I got mugged, and then I realised it
>really wasn't safe to wander around in the evening or on weekends (when
>much of the city wasn't well peopled) as I was wont to. That experience
>put a damper on city life for me, in a way that frequently being
>harrassed on the streets by the mentally ill and drugged did not.
>(But that's /another/ story!)

I have a friend in Baltimore who was also mugged, the only other person I 
know to have it happen to them.  Baltimore must be in serious 
trouble.  Could it possibly have something to do with the funky low rent 
places like Fells Point becoming all high class condos?  I lived for awhile 
in Fell Point back in the 70's and loved its rundown shabbiness and even 
its derelicts reeling down the streets at night.  I went thru there 
recently and didn't recognize anything.  Even the Baltimore city dock is 
now all shiny and fancy with none of its original flavor.  And those 
horrible stadiums!  The same thing has happened to those wonderful old 
docks in Seattle which are now all fancy, and too high priced to be worth 
going into.  I'm afraid to see what has happened to the French Quarter in 
New Orleans... tell me its still funky there...  I can report that 
Manhattan is still just fine...  Living in small quarters and home sharing 
is alive and well there.  The awful roads will destroy a car in short 
order.  Its marvelous.