permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

Paul--

I think much of the world does in fact want to emulate American prosperity. 
They may not like our philosophy of aggression but they'd certainly like to 
be 
rich and drive great shiny autos to work. What are the Chinese buying now, 
for 
instance? Detroit SUV's not little sensible Yugos.

And it's a fine thing to live the pure life in the country. I like that 
myself. But the majority of the people on earth are brought up urban, and are 
not 
likely to trade their version of prosperity for a return to the agrarian life.

For one thing, there are too blame many of them. When the population is ten 
billion, how many little garden plots do you think we can carve for them out 
of 
the world's total arable land. In one sense it's better to house them in 
densely packed stacks. We should also be dscouraging them from taking Sunday 
drives in the country.

Urban proles are something we're going to have to live with. To me the best 
approach is to work on the technology, and give them a means of 
transportation 
that relies on more renewable fuels. Because unless the Never-ending War 
we're 
in kills a lot more people than it looks like it's killing, there are always 
going to be a lot more of them than there will be of us. 

To me, a political cause worth fighting is the lawful taking of one's land 
through the power of eminent domain. If you haven't looked at this problem, 
you 
should. Right now there are several thousand instances each year of 
municipalities claiming land so it can be given over to developers for 
"redevelopment". 
There is essentially no legal recourse other than to go up the ladder of 
appeals courts. And many of them of course will back the big guy over the 
little 
one.

So we live next door to the cities at our grave risk. Most of them want to 
expand. And when they extend their boundaries, in North Carolina at least, 
only 
the voters within the city limits have a say. Those in the rural areas being 
incorporated are not asked for their opinion.

Encroachment is a very big problem, and it is growing closer to our homes and 
farms as the population continues to increase.

M. Elvin