…are why we have a Constitution.
With a Second Amendment.
Backed by the most heavily armed civilian population in the world.
My ideal land use distribution (based heavily on KSR): all agricultural land is collectively owned and scientifically managed to balance quantity, quality, and variety of food against sustainability and ethical practices. No single-family or corporate for-profit farms.
Oh, boy. Because communist/collectivist farms run without even the possibility of gain have always out-produced capitalist farming. Just ask the old Soviet Union why they needed US grain.
But Kotsko has a way to keep farm costs down.
Young adults have to do a period of public service, and one option would be a “tour of duty” as a farm worker for a few years. Everyone would at least know someone who knows firsthand what goes into food production.
Slave labor. On plantations. I’ve heard of this somewhere before.
The overwhelming majority of people live in a handful of ultradense urban cores, connected by high-speed rail. No car-based suburban communities exist. A handful of people stay in rural areas full-time to manage the work brigades or run wilderness retreats or whatever.
What happens to those ultradense urban cores (doesn’t that sound pleasant) when the farmers say, “Hey, why should we ship this this food to the hive-dwellers for nothing?”
A few days ago, this megalomaniacal psychopath was tweeting along similar lines.
“In discussions of reducing car dependency, one often hears, “What about people in remote rural areas?” And my gut instinct is — people shouldn’t be living there in the first place. The solution is to give them generous grants to relocate among other humans.”
“‘But what if they like living in remote rural areas?’ Sorry, you can’t always get what you want. A lot of people would like to live in dense, transit-rich settings but can’t — either because they can’t afford it or it simply doesn’t exist where they are.”
I asked him, “Once you’ve forcibly relocated everyone to your urban hellhole (Spent too much time in Chicago; never going back), who is going to grow the food and maintain the rest of the infrastructure that keeps your cities alive?”
He never replied to me, but I see that he hit on forced slave labor as the solution. Even CNN could figure out how this goes
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge ordered people out of Phnom Penh, the capital, and other cities in Cambodia to work in the countryside.
It is said to be responsible for about 1.7 million deaths, roughly a quarter of the population at the time. Its stated aim was to create a Communist utopia, but instead the regime forced Cambodians into what has been described as a living hell.
City-dwellers were marched into the countryside and forced to work as farm laborers. Those already living in rural Cambodia were expected to produce enough food for the country while teaching farming to those who had never done it before. Currency was abolished, and anyone with an education was considered a threat. No one was allowed modern medicine, and the country isolated itself in an effort to become completely self-sufficient.
The results were disastrous: People died of starvation and disease as soldiers tortured and killed anyone suspected of being disloyal.
Added: My sister’s sarcastic comment on “Pol Pot” Kotscko’s plan:
Hey, maybe we could have a decent cotton industry again.
Yeah; I’m just imagining the reaction of some young, urban Black to getting his draft notification to go work a cotton plantation in Georgia.
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