everything i want to do is illegal

not really, but I'm not sure about a few of the things he says. I've never seen anything about people under 18 being prohibited from using power tools - a lot of places don't let kids near the meat slicer or whatever, but as far as I know that's just for their own liability issues.

And no houses under 900 feet? Dude must not be in the boonies, exactly, if he's in a county that has that kind of housing regulation.

He's somewhere in VA, that's all I know.

I do think the no-slaughtering-on-premises is ridiculous, however, if you're a small-scale farmer.

Like, you can dress out a deer wherever the fuck you want, as far as I know. Why not one of your very few cows.

(haha, also i figured you would be one of the first responders to this, btw)

I think this dude was interviewed in The Omnivore's Dilemma.

I think he's right on a lot of things, although his rhetorical style leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm also tempted to label this with the AGRI-REGULATION IN BEING STONE STUPID SHOCKA tag.

Hahah exactly, JJ! I have been ranting at Evan about this guy for like 20 mins without realizing he started a thread on it.

I think he's right on a lot of things, although his rhetorical style leaves a lot to be desired.

-- John Justen, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 10:26 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

this is OTM.

we're in polemic territory, obviously, but i still think some of the points are valid

Laurel: the tone of the article is all FUCK U NANNY STATE, WHERE YOU COME FROM?
DO NOT WANT OVERSIGHT
me: well yeah, dude is flying his freak flag
don't let the rhetoric get in the way, tho

From chat:

me: the only thing i wd caution so far about article is that there's a reason we have child labor laws (frown) so i know it is 2007 and all but dude people's lives were being lost. and if there weren't a law AGAINST it, someone wd do it. that is an imperfect sl'n but what to do??

he is not WRONG as far as his points are carried but he is totally ignoring how we ended UP in this system. ie 11-yr olds like my great-great-grandfather being pulled out of school to work in the coal mines

"I don’t ask for a dime of government money."

fascinating

In the disconnected mind of modem America...

Hello, Freud.

i've met recalcitrant gypsies who are more clued up about the social contract than this guy

I must say that he has many compelling points. Unfortunately, they apply to a world in which none of us no longer live.

it's scandalous that government bureaucrats can force private enterprise to build ramps for the handicapped

although his screed is somewhat undermined by being posted on the internet

maybe he reverse-engineered DARPANET from scratch

Some of these objections to the article aren't entirely fair. He's not damning gummint reggalations, or suggesting that they're inappropriate to the context in which they intend to apply. He doesn't even seem to be some "kill the mommy state" luddite/libertarian nutjob.

He's just bitching that some regulations are clumsy, nonprogressive - they don't treat different types of situations differently. It's a legit beef. There's no excuse for ill-considered, sweeping legislation and no excuse for the unthinking blanket application of statutes to situations they clearly weren't intended to govern.

Foolish bureaucratic rigidity is a huge problem. Costs tons of money, degrades quality of life, often causes real suffering and hardship.

The thread title reminds me of Duane. (Hello!)

P&Z SONNES SALATIN IN BEEF BEEF

OK, so I take my animals and load them onto a trailer for the first time in their life to send them up the already clogged interstate to the abattoir to await their appointed hour with a shed full of animals of dubious extraction.

"Animals of dubious extraction" is giving me hella mental funnies.

bob, anyone who says "i don't ask for a dime of government money" to back up their friedmanesque rants about the woes of overregulation is living in a fantasy land

Glad to see you're addressing the article, Tracer!

I am in total agreement that those laws don't apply to his circumstances! It's just that the laws weren't MEANT for him, but how difficult/dangerous is it to re-examine or re-shape them in a way that still protects those who will, at some point, not have many good choices between unscrupulous suppliers who will take advantage of loopholes? Is that nanny state-ness by definition?

I mean, the guy is obviously on the fringe, sure. But this,

He's just bitching that some regulations are clumsy, nonprogressive - they don't treat different types of situations differently. It's a legit beef. There's no excuse for ill-considered, sweeping legislation and no excuse for the unthinking blanket application of statutes to situations they clearly weren't intended to govern.

seems OTM. Then again, it's more fun to go backwoods libertarians lol u so crazy, so nevermind.

Health & labor codes/laws can only assure a basic level of safety to the greatest number, they do not nec. guarantee the lucky few (relatively speaking) access to an optimal level of product/lifestyle. Like so many other things, ugh.

well you're right, i'm not addressing the substance of his complaints - i couldn't. it's the conclusions he draws that come straight from the john birch society

maybe the guy just listens to too much talk radio

xpost

I went to a John Birch Society meeting once, with sort of "Ghost World" motives, when I was in high school. It was simultaneously the most boring and creepy thing I've seen. (Well, more boring than creepy.)

I was with him for the on-farm processing, and the "agritainment" and about half with him for "collaborative marketing" b/c some of that shit is ridic. But then how do law-makers, city planners, architects provide for the handicapped when it's not financially preferable for vendors to do so? And he lost me with the labor complaints because that is people's lives we're talking about, and v plausibly my ancestors actually.

Wait, why shouldn't he be able to build a house smaller than 900 sq ft?

every last real estate developer and contractor I know hates ADA regs. nb: none of them would build a damn thing that was handicapped accessible if they didn't exist.

Maybe they have a statute against things looking somewhat inhospitable?

xp

You know, this thread title has put Weird Al's "Everything You Know is Wrong" on repeat in my head. Weird Al.

I still don't get the 900sq ft thing - that's the kind of thing that goes into a deed restriction or restrictive covenant in a city or upscale rural subdivision - not county codes. Maybe Virginia is just crazy.

I don't understand the construction complaints at all, though -- where exactly does this guy live? I have never built a house but if you live outside city limits and are owner-occupier (ie not forcing it on a rental tenant) and don't care about the re-sale value of yr house, who exactly is forcing you to make it 900 sq feet? There are some very VERY small houses in Ventura, CA that I saw.

xxxxp yeah, exactly!

I mean there are all those "alternate housing" shows/specials/articles about people building yurts on like half-acre sites in the Southwest, with no plumbing and no central heat/air and sometimes not even running water.

Our local newspaper is full of articles and letters to the editor lamenting the lack of things for young people to do. Let me suggest a few things: digging postholes and building a fence, weeding the garden, planting some tomatoes, splitting some wood, feeding the chickens, washing eggs, pruning grapevines, milking the cow, building a compost pile, growing some earthworms.

Oh holy fuck I would have loved to live in a place where these were rules when I was 12. I spent all my summers posthole-digging all over the place, putting rocks into a wheelbarrow & then emptying the wheelbarrow onto neighbors' property, scooping up ostrich shit (really), weeding gardens, etc etc etc, from like 7-5 every day except Sunday. Not to complain. Chores. Whatevs. But is this from a world where kids aren't their parents' farmed-out laborers until they turn 16, get jobs at the Taco Bell and buy their own Plymouth Sundance that lasts half a year?

Haha, I would doubt even half of the houses in my neighborhood are over 600 sq. ft., which is about what mine is.

I can’t even use the "U" word.

What is this word he refers to?

I am too dumb to go on.

Union, I'm guessing.

A lot of it reads like hippie-talk, not talk-radio-talk! Such as:

These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest.

As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers

A lot of it is just silly though. Some kid wants to learn to farm as an unpaid "intern"? The government doesn't classify that as slavery, or all volunteering or helping neighbors with chores would be illegal, and that guy might be surprised to learn they are not. Please.

These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest.

As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers

key word here is retail. subsistence? go for it. unless he start stockpiling illegal weapons, he'll stay outside the law every step of the way, just like a fucking city dweller who makes fucking beer in the fucking bathtub.

what gets me is this guy wants the right to compete in the marketplace without adhering to the imperfect laws that the community was forced to enact decades ago in order to PROTECT THE CUSTOMER.

I'm sure he would find it a little less satisfactory had the computer he purchased to write this manifesto come with no warranty whatsoever, and keeled over spitting flames when he was only three hundred words in.

Everybody who lives in my city has the opportunity to purchase organic free-range hippie goods, from buffalo, candles, crabs, heirloom spanish tomatoes and green eggs to baked goods, rabbit sausage and grass-grazed unpasteurized cheese at least once a week. If he hasn't figured out why he should try to play the game, he has at least three congresspersons he can talk to.

Meat processing centers ARE oppressive to the small farmer. That doesn't stop me from paying the premium for the small farmer's goods and it sure as hell doesn't stop hundreds of other people. Cibola Farms sells out of bacon every Sunday at my market. Get one clue and hire a reefer truck, you whiner.

LAWS should be PERFECT!!!! because if you're not a PERFECT OMNISCIENT CREATURE you shouldn't be ALLOWED TO WRITE LAWS!!!!

anyway it sounds like the guy is an earnest fool but that still makes him a fool. better ways to change the world than writing your freakouts down on the webbernet. Lord don't I know it.

also anyway a little googling seems to confirm the guy's kind of an idiot when it comes to reading building codes, in VA 900 sqft represents the line between a tent that requires a permit and a tent that does not. I have reviewed the entire commonwealth of virginia statewide building code and this is the only instance where the figure of 900 square feet is even mentioned.

EVAN STOP LISTENING TO PEOPLE WHO CLEARLY HAVE COLON FUNGUS

Tombot has been on fire these last few days.

This is the same guy who said "Why do we have to have a New York City? What good is it?"

tombot otm

Health & labor codes/laws can only assure a basic level of safety to the greatest number, they do not nec. guarantee the lucky few (relatively speaking) access to an optimal level of product/lifestyle. Like so many other things, ugh.

-- Laurel, Wednesday, August 29, 2007 7:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

this is also kinda otm w/r/t his ideas abt industrialized food (this whole "slow food"/local farmers/organic farming/michael pollan thing), which is to say that as good and healthy and fun and tasty it would be for all of us to eat "hand-grown" crops and shit, if we actually want to feed all 6 billion ppl on this planet (and were not feeding all of them right now), were going to NEED pesticides and industrialized farmer and probably some kind of genetically engineered crops

well most of all we can't afford to have the processing inspectors making house calls at every farm when they butcher an animal. it's horseshit either way, we chose the lesser of two evils, which is having huge centralized slaughterhouses that favor the mass agribusinesses but at least there's FDA personnel available on site to monitor 24/7.

I personally am completely against GMO crops BTW; in 1991 we burned down 5000 homes in Berkeley and Oakland because we couldn't even figure out the side effects of importing trees from Australia, fuck if we have a clue what a GMO crop could do to the world.

(blue gum eucalyptus)

i personally look forward to the day when i can vote an ear of corn into elected office

the best pesticide is a hungry bird. the best herbicide is a hungry goat.

The first time I read it, I didn't even notice that one of his knocks on slaughterhouses is that they're "visited daily by [...] illegal alien workers." I guess these illegal alien workers are making his lovingly raised meat unclean?

same as they do with wine grapes and bathroom tile

http://www.co.augusta.va.us/doc/BCHAPTER25ArtVII.pdf

^^^
contains code relating specifically to sub-900ft secondary dwellings on more than 5 acres of land

and the CHILDREN THEY CARE FOR

xpost

County Code in case ILX wants to set up a commune near this guy:
http://www.co.augusta.va.us/attorney/augcode.htm

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/KellySpinach.article_1.jpg

the best pesticide is a hungry bird. the best herbicide is a hungry goat.

HAHAHahaha my parents got a pygmy goat expecting it to eat the two acres of cheat grass on our property. Didn't really work. (That said, I don't think anything eats cheat grass.)

A sudden influx of baby geckos has showed up in my house & they're eating the baby cockroaches! Crazy adorable ceiling lizards are my idea of an excellent pesticide (also my dog won't die if he eats them).

</cuets animal obsession tangent>

btw on point with all my rants on this thread I think everybody with an interest should seriously check out this book

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Things-Bite-Back-Consequences/dp/0679747567

i support limited child labor, seriously. i think 11-year-olds being able to get jobs for, like, 2-6 hours a week in a safe environment is probably a great idea. i had one through a family friend, and it was one of the most useful experiences of my life.

(just to be on record)

if we actually want to feed all 6 billion ppl on this planet (and were not feeding all of them right now), were going to NEED pesticides and industrialized farmer and probably some kind of genetically engineered crops

to play off-topic devil's advocate, we already have all of the above in spades and the situation is dire.

also: max, why should industrialized farms in the West be feeding everyone? wouldn't it make more sense for people to be growing their own food locally?

a: yes, but they can't, since most of the arable land in many countries is being used for industrial, export crops. whoops!

that's what i wanted to say. thanks.

Of course it wd, Evs, and people are welcome to grow THEIR OWN, or truck their products to market like the other farmers, as has been said.

For chrissake, I think the animosity on thread is backlash because YEAH we are all in agreement with Joel's basic goals. But how much better if his fervor were directed at something that could effect a change for the better, and not just leave consumers/the public unprotected? Put yr shoulder to the wheel you can turn, dude.

I mean I think his basic ire is justified, but after yr done venting, what are you actually going to DO about it?