Sunday, October 7, 2012
Starting with the Same Lie on Both Sides
I was just rereading an old article on Time rethinking the American dream:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2013850,00.html
One interesting point about it is that as much as liberals may now want to malign the concept of so-called homeownership, they used to respect it just as much as conservatives back when they were accusing bankers of racism when they were just objectively evaluating the risks associated with mortgages (yet even now no one dares suggest the very concept of a mortgage is part of the root problem). No one on either side dares question the application of the term "owner" to a person who has absolutely no equity in the house he/she occupies. It may have been a minimal risk for someone to take a 50% loan or less on a house back in the mid-20th century when the fundamentals of the US economy were sound & therefore the risk of job loss low. But it's frankly irresponsible to encourage anyone now to take on debt & get tied down to one location when they may lose their job tomorrow & have to move out of state or even overseas to find work.
But beneath all this is an even more sinister problem. The article's author rightly bemoans American politicians for idolizing the American dream while making essentially a similarly materialist mistake by considering only monetary morals divorced from acknowledgement of God. It's easy to make this mistake; in our fallen state we naturally avoid the thought of God's painful holiness hovering over our shoulders. Yet if we're to get on the right road we must consult the map made by the same One who aligned & paved the road. Similar to de Tocqueville's statement, we ceased to be great when we ceased to follow God. So while many may say our greatest problems are the holocaust of 50 million unborn dead, $16T in debt & over $100T in unpayable obligations, or inability to compete in a global market w/ poorly educated workers who demand tens more in pay than their well-taught foreign rivals; the true problem is our sin and our hatred of God. Dear God, please have mercy & lead us back to You.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Tinkering w/ a Wrong Strategy
http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles/2012/02/18/20120218arizona-homes-verrado-development.html
In the above article, the writer suggests DMB has rethought its approach to development & fixed it by putting jobs before houses, but I posit that it's still wrongheaded in trying to be overambitious from the start in an effort to build big commercial/industrial projects to drive sales for expensive homes (plus the fact that its new Eastmark development is partly centered around a failing company, First Solar, as a potential employer).
Urban redevelopment needs to reorient toward the way urbanization used to happen centuries ago (which requires patience but I believe pays off in monetary, aesthetic, & health ways in the long run). Farmers would pool their defensive resources in order to fend off marauders & thieves, & this would often involve building their homes close together in villages. Eventually as their farms became more successful & they built up their wealth, they could improve their homes & even build defensive walls around their villages -- the start of small cities. Gradual improvement further required the addition of roads & other infrastructure such as water & wastewater distribution systems.
Urban planners & developers could incorporate some of this in fixing our cities by trying to implant more bucolic environs in the desolate empty lots & barren developments that blight our recession-fraught cities. Some of this is already happening with the urban gardening movement. But it could be improved on a larger scale, I believe, if planners rezoned failed developments for agricultural use & the developers were willing to give up their failed development models & start thinking in a more traditional way (by traditional I don't mean early 20th century but thinking more 19th & further back where possible). Amerindians could be employed in teaching urbanites how they herd sheep & farm corn (not GMO corn, of course). If this is done in a slower way, not trying to achieve economies of scale which merely look at the short-term unit costs of food but also considering the severe longterm medical costs of farming in a more industrial way which produces unhealthy food & more pollution, society would benefit greatly. I also think urbanites would enjoy learning a slower way of life which tears them away from their nerve-wracking addiction to 24-7 wireless connectivity to a demanding commercial world & revisits the more patient days of yore.
In the above article, the writer suggests DMB has rethought its approach to development & fixed it by putting jobs before houses, but I posit that it's still wrongheaded in trying to be overambitious from the start in an effort to build big commercial/industrial projects to drive sales for expensive homes (plus the fact that its new Eastmark development is partly centered around a failing company, First Solar, as a potential employer).
Urban redevelopment needs to reorient toward the way urbanization used to happen centuries ago (which requires patience but I believe pays off in monetary, aesthetic, & health ways in the long run). Farmers would pool their defensive resources in order to fend off marauders & thieves, & this would often involve building their homes close together in villages. Eventually as their farms became more successful & they built up their wealth, they could improve their homes & even build defensive walls around their villages -- the start of small cities. Gradual improvement further required the addition of roads & other infrastructure such as water & wastewater distribution systems.
Urban planners & developers could incorporate some of this in fixing our cities by trying to implant more bucolic environs in the desolate empty lots & barren developments that blight our recession-fraught cities. Some of this is already happening with the urban gardening movement. But it could be improved on a larger scale, I believe, if planners rezoned failed developments for agricultural use & the developers were willing to give up their failed development models & start thinking in a more traditional way (by traditional I don't mean early 20th century but thinking more 19th & further back where possible). Amerindians could be employed in teaching urbanites how they herd sheep & farm corn (not GMO corn, of course). If this is done in a slower way, not trying to achieve economies of scale which merely look at the short-term unit costs of food but also considering the severe longterm medical costs of farming in a more industrial way which produces unhealthy food & more pollution, society would benefit greatly. I also think urbanites would enjoy learning a slower way of life which tears them away from their nerve-wracking addiction to 24-7 wireless connectivity to a demanding commercial world & revisits the more patient days of yore.
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