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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Homesteading and controls on freedoms
  • Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:36:08 -0700


The framers would, I would say, have held freedom in such high regard that if it came to a choice of conditions of life today or freedom with the
conditions of life in the eighteeth century, they would readily choose the latter. Many of us have made the same choice.

Ah, now that gets us to our continued common interest. I see homesteaders at least partly defined, as you say, as "people with a passion for freedom." One of my homestead-books-to-be-written has that word, freedom, in its working title.

Homesteading is but a partial answer to the quest for maximal personal freedom. In even the most rural locale we are subject to many controls on our freedom: zoning laws, subdivision laws, building codes, well and septic laws, environmental laws, taxes, and more. The Amish, who live simply and mostly without machines, having thereby removed themselves from the tyranny of purchased energy, transporting themselves with horse and buggy, are subject to our many restrictive laws and to our many social conditions. It is instructive to consider one of their dilemmas: the need for acreage to preserve their way of life. Dying fathers typically split the family farm amongst male heirs. This reduces individual farm acreage, each generation incrementally exacerbating the challenge of insufficient acreage to support a family under their self-imposed conditions and now fully exposed to modern land prices and laws and the challenge not only of affordability, one of modern life's greatest restrictions, but of transportation to the new location. I was once consulted by a man who was helping a large group of such people find suitable acreage. Unable to find a large piece of affordable land in the U.S., they found their best compromise in South America. I don't recall which country. I wonder if they found greater freedom other than that which large acreage provides.






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