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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Cities (Astyk's blog)

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  • From: dan conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Cities (Astyk's blog)
  • Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:12:37 -0600

The defining factor as to whether a city or town is sustainable is it's Net Usefulness. Does the presence of the city or town add value to the farms and villages surrounding it? If it only consumes resources (imported oil, imported food, imported people, imported trinkets) and doesn't provide useful labor or goods above what it consumes, then you should get out. In other words, is there a natural demand for that particular concentration of bodies, or does it simply exist because of inertia and money? Is it a shining inspiration of cooperation or a black hole sucking up everything within its reach?

I used to think we should just nuke any city over 100,000 and we would be better off as a country. Sharon thinks 1,000,000 (She doesn't say it that way, but abandoning a city is equivalent to bombing it...). I think most on this list would agree that anything over 1000 or so is probably just a scam to suck value(including youth) away from the land and provide cannon fodder for the war mongers who think there is always another place to steal resources from.

I think of cities as giant barns (CHFOs..combined human feeding operations), but nobody in charge seems to understand that they need to cull the herds as long as they get so many government subsidies to keep them operating.
Civilization (city-based thinking by definition) and sentience are not all they are cracked up to be. Urbanites (and sub-urbanites and ex-urbanites) think they are smarter than farmers because they have more money. When the money is worthless, they demand that they be taken care of by the farmers or the mobs band together and chain the farmers up. When is the Farmers' Union going to call for a 'preventive war'? How about a "1 Percent Doctrine"?
Sure, we can imagine peaceable rural and semi-rural areas where we feed our neighbors and help each other survive the coming Imperial Collapse, but the vast chasm between 1,000,000 people per square mile and .5 people per square mile is going to be a problem unless cannibalism becomes fashionable again.

Dan C






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