yonder
yonder's Journal+1000. Exactly, a steady-state economy.
To me it is so obvious and makes perfect sense. There are limits we can't grow our way out of: That two bedroom house might work for a family of four, but not a family of twelve; that small island paradise independently sustained 500 people for centuries but now that its resource value has been discovered, it cannot independently support 100 times that number. Extend that thinking out to our little blue marble and you get the same result without reeling in growth and adopting some kind of steady state system.
40 years ago, economists/futurists Herman Daly and Hazel Henderson were proponents of withdrawal from growth based economic systems and embracing ones relying on sustainability. In my layman view, it makes even more sense now rather than continuing to feed the malignant growth that will soon enough be our undoing.
Other than a golf course or other manicured landscaping,
when is the last time tfg visited a park, walked a dirt path, a beach, a streamside or experienced any other natural setting?
Have his gouty toes ever felt sand or grass or anything other than shoes and socks?
Has he ever caught the wild scent of spruce or pine or a new-mown meadow after a fresh rain?
Have his ungloved fingers ever got so cold they hurt or he sweat from actual exertion rather than arrhythmia?
I'm going out on a limb here and gonna say nope and never — nothing other than viewing an external world from the inside of a car, plane, a building, a golf cart on a comfortable day and always surrounded by his yes-men, keen to jump at every bark.
I've a friend who has long lived a stones throw from Risch's quarter/quarter section of land.
They have both resided there as many new subdivisions explosively sprouted around their properties and elsewhere west of the airport and its noise impact area.
This noise issue is not a problem for my friend and is the first he's aware of since the F-4 Phantoms left their Idaho ANG mission some 30 years ago. Even then, living there came with the understanding that the airport and ANG runways were there long before either him or Risch. Why then did the junior Senator ever move to that white-picketted property to begin with?
Before his passing, former Gov. Cecil Andrus used to famously needle Risch for his squeaky-squawky, short-statured nature. I wish the Governor could still be here if only to hear him offer up more of his special Jimmy Risch observations.
This is a good piece of reporting from the Idaho Statesman that should shed some light on Risch's shenanigans. It looks like this may be an uphill battle for the Senator. Hopefully it remains that way and loses steam before any changes dangerously impact far more people and airport operations.
+1. Apart from politics, I'd add that what we might call popular culture
is shaped by the corporate boardroom as well. Those moneymaking schemes for the shareholders turn into what many people consider their personal "brand", what they identify with, the intentions of which is largely unbeknownst to themselves.
That ruthless corporate marketting is pervasive. It is insidious. I'd guess most people, including myself, don't realize just how inescapable it is despite ones level of awareness and any steps taken to avoid becoming part of it.
If this example of AI germplasm gains a toehold,
we can expect it to insidiously overtake human input in arts and culture. Right now, it is easy enough to discover as it is still in its infancy. What happens as this technology matures? Before we know it, only the most discerning eye might be able to determine its subtle origin. The rest of us meanwhile, will be unwittingly basking in its easy allure as we call it's product, our culture. Maybe that is when we become the machine?
Thanks for this very good post.
For as long as us humans have left to control the world we’ve created, good and bad, AI is as real a threat as anything excepting castastrophe from climate change or war. This immediate threat to our cultural creativity is among the beginning steps to total appropriation of what make people human: our birthright to interact with others and the world around us, as humans.
This line from your post jumped out at me: “the tech companies ripped off human culture and are selling it back to us.” That is the essence of what unbridled greed has in store for us. An easy creation, falsely disguised and marketed as art, becomes our culture, not for the benefit of people, but for the few who benefit from the people.
A world where crafty offerings from Home Shopping Network, Industrial Light and Magic, the simple poured-concrete landscape lion, velvet Elvis’, The Bachelorette, etc. are offered as proxies to art, is not a world that advances our humanity, IMO.
Offered with no context or evidence of a connection and little comment:
If we keep ignoring the world around us and our responsibility for the direction it is heading then maybe we’ll soon be the ones trying to avoid out of control manifestations of that ignorance which lead to our demise.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127165879
I'd like to see more of that creativity.
Many western states have their wealthy assholes buying available property adjacent to public lands, then trying to close off those public areas by any means. In Idaho, the Wilks brothers have been slapped down several times for gating access roads with historic prescriptive rights-of-way in order to enhance their new-found private holdings.
And why does it seem these hoarding types originate from areas other than the West? Does that “I got mine and want more and yours” mentality grow from rarely seeing big, blue sky? Wide open, uninterrupted vistas without congestion? Or is it simply any space without fences, public or private, need to be controlled in order to show the rest of us who has what?
Elk Mountain (the mountain) is a landmark to those regularly traveling I-80 between Rawlins and Cheyenne. Elk Mountain (Frederic's ranch) is just somewhere a rich jerk can hang his hat as if to say to all those travellers: "That mountain you see is mine....got it?"
Yes, the purchasing power of people from other areas is undeniable.
True or not, one local take is newcomers can often buy two or three times the house compared to where they're from. I don't doubt that is the case for many people, despite their political/religious persuasion.
The Boise area is thriving with an excellent quality of life, jobs, an okay arts/cultural scene, low crime, easily accessible public lands/outdoor opportunities and a decent university — a great place to raise a family — and one reason I planted myself here those many years ago. But one doesn't have to travel far from this purplish area to find themselves in backwardsville either. Those attributes are attractive to many and have resulted in the crazy growth southwest Idaho has experienced in the last couple of decades.
Of course with that growth come the downsides, eventually but surely. Long gone are the days of being able to drive across town in 10-15 minutes. We've noticed an increase in the general snarliness and impatience of people and I suspect that will continue to grow as things get more crowded.
In high school I read an essay by Thoreau or perhaps Emerson that has stayed with me because it applies to most everything. I think it was titled Compensation. Basically, you can't get something for nothing, everything has a price. Joni Mitchell sang "They Paved Paradise and put up a Parking Lot". All true, IMO and it certainly applies here. The very things that make a place attractive will eventually be the cause of its undesirability.
Your young friends who came here from Washington - I believe they made a good choice and were not too late in making their decision. I would be curious how they like it so far.
I moved to southern Idaho 44 years ago to escape the in-migration
of folks to the front range of my native Colorado. Except for the in-place RW politics here, I'd found my own slice of heaven with plenty of decent Western weather, gorgeous, wide open space and far fewer people. Despite the similar influx of people now, those characteristics, though impacted, are still available.
My wife and I are too old to pick up and try moving again. And really, we wouldn't want to. We'll take our chances in the south here with odd politics, increasingly smoky, late summer skies, Mormons (with regular cycles of their namesake crickets which aren't really crickets), the very rare tornado, much rarer serious earthquakes and hopefully rarer still, far-in-the future lava flows.
However, those redoubt-hungry transplants in their new woodland paradise up north might get chased out by Bigfoot, the ever increasing chance of another Wallace-style Big Burn or far more likely: getting eaten alive by their particular brand of religion they think is called Christianity. They'll get tired of trying to out kook themselves.
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