Is It Time To Leave America?

[Anansi1171]

130. Emigrate to California, Oregon and Washington for starters...

...richly blue states that have agricultural, technological and creative wealth, are as progressive demographically as states can be in the US but must maintain that demographic and are vulnerable to structural attack by the Right and Red-states to whom that wealth is redistributed to the tune of billions annually(such as Cheney/FERCs deregulation of energy in California during the early 2000's and Schwarzenegger's attempt to open all California Waters to drilling by out-of-state oil companies in exchange for sparing the social safety net post-2008.)

Progressives moving to those states should look to cluster in either urban centers that can be revitalized or (where gentrification makes that impractical because of the cost of housing) in suburban and rural areas where they can use cheaper land, modular housing and a denser development footprint to build communities based on share resources. Approaches could include co-housing,co-transportation,urban agriculture, barter economies and alternatives to cash, work-share approaches like software development "farms" that could provide an "insourcing" alternative that is cost-competitive to work being farmed out to India, China and the Philippines. Smaller-scale manufacturing and agriculture that can both support these communities and feed into larger supply chains. I am not talking communes and kook-shows-these are free, diverse people building a sustainable and safe place to live in connected communities of common interest - and very much a part of the world.

This model could be replicated in "Blue Islands" like Austin, Athens(GA), etc. but all the tools of the movement are there and have been since the 60's- such as "arcology"- which I believe would be the ideal realization of a 21st century civilization that positively addressed its climate and resource challenges sensibly, decades from now. What we have now is a communications revolution that can make these solutions practical and solve the paradox of actually creating longer and more fulfilling lives and much better communities for the many.

We only lack that moment of crystallization- like Neo in the "Matrix" - http://goo.gl/1HPGP - and then resolving to WALK THE PATH!