William French and Daniel Houghton were killed by a sheriff's posse, after a crowd occupied the Westminster Courthouse to protest the evictions of several poor farmers from their homes by judges and other officials from New York.
Some regard it as a battle of the American Revolution.
Last edition:
Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
An item from Cowboy State Daily columnist Dave Simpson (who is not from Wyoming, like so many of Wyoming's far right are not):
Within the column:
Apparently California hasn't had the good sense to encourage landowners to clear their land of the brush that went up in flames around Los Angeles last week, taking 24 lives and destroying 12,000 homes so far. One report explained that landowners clearing brush could be fined for killing rare, protected plants.
Good grief.
Here in Wyoming, we made our places less prone to fire.
Too bad California didn't encourage landowners to do the same.
They're paying the price now.
What a massively ignorant and mean thing to say.
The replies on twitter, at least, were not clueless:
Stephanie Hewitt@Stephhewitt1 2h
But even with thinning the forest, the Snowy Range would not survive with hurricane force winds during a forest fire. Stop the grandstanding.
Indeed the recent fire in Albany and Carbon Counties more than proved that.
Buckwild @veedawhoo 3h
Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back chiefđ
Exactly.
Traveler@JuniperMesa 1h
Fill Sky will massive amounts heat trapping gases, catastrophically overheat Planet = catastrophic climate change, Aridification, Megadrought, FireStorms gone Runaway, beyond Apocalyptic self reinforcing feedback loop, not "potential", Rocky Mountain Ecosystem, not built for heat
And right again.
Of course, as Simpson, who actual Wyomingites would not regard as a Wyomingite (you have to be born here or in a neighboring state, wondering in as an adult doesn't count), is from the far right, and as a far right migrant who didn't grow up here with winters were real, probably is in the climate change is a fib category.
It isn't.
The old saying is "paybacks are a bitch".
How naive and clueless can a person be to not realize that an urban fire.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Raymond Chandler, Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories
The fires were driven by Santa Ana winds, strong, extremely dry katabatic winds that originate inland and affect coastal Southern California and northern Baja California.
Chandler wasn't kidding. They're something else, and indeed "Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks."
I fear that Wyoming is about to get a real dope slap.
California contributes five times more to the Federal coffers than it receives.
Then I rapped upon a house with a U.S. flag upon display
I said, "Could you help me out, I got some friends down the way"
The man said, "Get out of here, I'll tear you limb from limb"
I said, You know, they refused Jesus, too, " he said, "You're not him
Get out of here before I break your bones, I ain't your pop"
I decided to have him arrested, and I went looking for a cop
Bob Dylan 115th Street Dream.
Wyoming receives more than it gives.
Sitting there smug with a 307 beer can isn't going to change that.
And we have disasters, including fire related disasters, every year.
This year, the Hageman homestead was burned in one such fire.
Guess the Hageman's didn't know enough to clear the underbrush?
I suspect nobody is going to say that.
And if the fires return here next summer, and its been a very dry winter, what will people who hold such mean spirted views say?
And will Wyoming, which had its hand out for disaster relief in 2024, be too embarrassed to ask for it in 2024. Simpson speaks for a common view here, and the GOP is threatening to hold disaster aid to California up. Indeed, our Senator, in his new whip role, has hinted at that.
Nature and events have a terrible way of humbling the arrogant.
Every proud heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured that none will go unpunished.
Proverbs, 16:5
Same day, same paper.
I think, sometimes could be real. The battle for land and people owning that agricultural landscape. The pretty views that we have, the clean water that comes with it, the beautiful tall grass thatâs waving in the wind. I mean, they want to buy it because they like that. And then they put a house on every 40 that we used to run cows on.
Montana rancher commenting on a big influx of people into Montana because of the claptrap soap opera, Yellowstone.
It's not just Yellowstone, the moronic dipshit Western melodrama that has caused this, by the way. A River Runs Through It, which is one of my favorite movies, had the same effect, as well as making fly fishing something that locals just did, along with using spinning rods, into some sort of elite yuppie thing in some quarters.
Here's the thing. A lot of it has a lot to do with the lack of proper land use laws in the US. Large blocks of land really shouldn't be owned as huge yards for hobbyist or the wealthy, but for agricultural production. Agricultural land shouldn't be owned by anyone other than those who work it. People who admire the wilderness, of any type, ought not to be building houses on it.
I see goofball crap like this all the time:
LAND OPPORTUNITY: 5 acres for livestock or veggies with housing â Summerland, BC
Posted by Haley Schonhofer on November 26, 2024
We always have new land opportunities coming into our inventory, some of which arenât on our blog yet! Get in touch with a Land Matcher at bclmp@youngagrarians.org to learn about the latest opportunities and to access free B.C. Land Matching Program services in your region.
Five acres?
Your crop would have to be a really premium grade of marijuana or opium poppies to make it on so little ground.
And livestock?
What, maybe a pygmy cow?
Johnathan Chapman, known to history as Johnny Appleseed, was born in Massachusetts.
During his life he introduced seed planted trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Ontario, as well as the northern counties of West Virginia, becoming a legend in his own time.
He was additionally a missionary for The New Church, a Swedenborgianism denomination.
Last edition:
Men rush towards complexity; but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings, but they dream of being shepherds.
G.K. Chesterton, The Moral of Stevenson
Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig, and those that would not should be compelled by force.
Hillaire Belloc
A really old friend of mine and I were talking about it just last week.
I had to catch up with him as he was working on something for me. It was Friday, but I was fairly formally dressed and he noted it. The reason was that I had just come from my uncle's funeral earlier that day. He extended his sympathies, but I noted that my uncle had lived a long and good life. Not a life free of troubles, as no such thing existed, but a long life, that was well lived, and he'd remained sharp right up until the end. His health had declined in recent years, but only in very recent ones. It was the last few months that were rough.
My friend and I, who first knew each other as National Guardsmen back in the 80s, are co-religious. Neither of us was married when we first met, but both of us have, and have seen our kids grow up since then. And of course, we've seen our parents pass away, his before mine. He has siblings, which I do not, and one of his brothers died, only in his 50s. I noted that in the Middle Ages, people often prayed for good deaths, and he noted that a prayer group that he's in now does that every week.
Prayer for a Happy Death
O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
I'm constantly amazed by people who work into old age, as I'd judge it, and keeping working. A dear friend of mine, now in his 70s, noted that just the other day. He doesn't have to, he just is. Likewise, I know a collection of lawyers who fit that description. The law is a hard job, surrounded by hard facts, hard people, and difficult scenarios
I think they just know nothing else, their real personalities, perhaps, burnt to the core eons ago.
In contrast, I'm also constantly amazed by those who have extensive plans for their retirements well before they can retire. Another friend of mine fits this category, but when I look at him, I can tell his physical condition is so poor it'd be amazing if he lives long enough to retire. It's one of those things where you don't know what to say. If you were to be blunt, you'd say that the dreams of early retirement are probably forlorn, but that his dreams of retiring at all may be foreclosed by a bad early death, if some correction isn't made soon, and those corrections are harder to make once you are past your 30s.
The call came to my wife on Saturday. I could tell from the tone what the topic was, without even being told. A relative of hers was on his way to the hospital by helicopter. Even though he was being sent in, in that fashion, I knew, but did not say it, that he'd not make it. I'm not even sure if he wanted to.
And so another death.
In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger. My age, in fact. I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in. He hadn't been able to adjust to them well. The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.
I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement. I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am. Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement. Not really.
Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced. People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above. Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow. Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.
It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it. The occupation itself is existentially human. It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.
Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species. Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being. It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots. And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens. It's in us. That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.
It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note. Clerics are in that category. Storytellers and Historians are as well. We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time. They're all existential in nature. Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that. The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.
Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.
If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever. I have very low interest in doing that. I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending). That probably sounds pretty dull to most people. I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.
What I can't imagine myself doing is imagining that age and decline don't occur, and that I should be in court in my 70s. I don't think that the lawyers who do that realize that younger lawyers don't admire that, and most of the lawyers I'm running into in court are younger than me now.
And indeed, frankly, it isn't admirable. People who work a hard non-existential job and keep at it into their advanced old age, or at least past their 7th decade, have just lost something they were when they were young, and much of that is themselves. They've lost who they were.
AN ACT OF FAITH IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HOUR OF DEATH
From the works of St. Pompilio M. Pirrotti
On my journey toward eternity, dear Lord,
I am surrounded by powerful enemies of my soul.
I live in fear and trembling,
especially at the thought of the hour of death,
on which my eternity will depend,
and of the fearful struggle that the devil will then have to wage against me,
knowing that little time is left for him to accomplish my eternal ruin.
I desire, therefore, O Lord,
to prepare myself for it from this hour,
by offering you now, in view of my last hour,
my profession of faith and love for you,
which is so effectual in repressing and rendering useless
all the crafty and wicked schemes of the enemy
and which I resolve to oppose to him at that moment of such grave consequence,
even though he should dare alone to attack with his deceits
the peace and tranquility of my spirit.
I N.N.,
in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity,
the blessed Virgin Mary,
my holy Guardian Angel
and the entire heavenly host,
affirm that I wish to live and die under the standard of the Holy Cross.
I firmly believe all that our Holy Mother,
the holy, catholic and apostolic Church,
believes and teaches.
It is my steadfast intention to die in this holy faith,
in which all the holy martyrs, confessors and virgins of Christ have died,
as well as all those who have saved their souls.
If the devil should tempt me to despair
because of the multitude and grievousness of my sins,
I affirm that from this day forth
I firmly hope in the infinite mercy of God,
which will not let itself be overcome by my sins,
and in the Precious Blood of Jesus
which has washed all my sins away.
If the devil should assail me with temptations to presumption
by reason of the small amount of good
which by the help of God
I may have been able to accomplish,
I confess from this day forth
that I deserve eternal separation from God
a thousand times by my sins
and I entrust myself entirely
to the infinite goodness of God,
through whose grace alone I am what I am.
Finally, if the evil spirit should suggest to me
that the pains inflicted upon me by our Lord
in that last hour of my life
are too heavy to bear,
I affirm now that all will be as nothing
in comparison with the punishments I have deserved throughout life.
In the bitterness of my soul
I call to remembrance all my years;
I see my iniquities, I confess them and detest them.
Ashamed and sorrowful I turn to you,
my God, my Creator and my Redeemer.
Forgive me, O Lord, by the multitude of your mercies;
forgive your servant whom you have redeemed by your Precious Blood.
My God, I turn to you, I call upon you, I trust in you;
to your infinite goodness
I commit the entire reckoning of my life.
I have sinned greatly, O Lord:
enter not into judgment with your servant,
who surrenders to you
and confesses his guilt.
Of myself I cannot make satisfaction to you for my countless sins:
I do not have the means to pay you for my infinite debt.
But your Son has shed his Blood for me,
and greater than all mine sins is your mercy.
O Jesus, be my Saviour!
At the hour of my fearful crossing to eternity
put to flight the enemy of my soul;
grant me grace to overcome every difficulty,
for you alone do mighty wonders.
Lord,
according to the multitude of your tender mercies
I shall enter into your dwelling place.
Trusting in your pity,
I commend my spirit into your hands!
May the Blessed Virgin Mary
and my Guardian Angel
accompany my soul into the heavenly country. Amen.
We should all hope and indeed pray for a happy death. And perhaps we should pray for a happy life, which is one worthwhile. That doesn't, quite frankly, include the "I'm going to work here at my desk until I die". That's surrendering to fear or meaningless, in most cases.
Again, there are exceptions. People with Existential Occupations, people who own their own special business, and the like. The list can't really be set out in full.
That doesn't include pouring through the latest edition of the IRS code for deductions, or reading the Restatement (Second) of Torts, or engineering an oilfield implement.
This from one of the blogs linked in here:
It is an interesting prospective, and isn't apocalyptic as some agrarian stuff can be. I was frankly a little surprised as I have mixed feelings about this blog, and I really did after I briefly subscribed to the podcast which was a little out there on some things, I thought. But frankly that's my view on the entire "homesteading" movement.
How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your TV; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.
Edward Abbey
His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.
Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.
So we've gone through this and lamented on the state of the world.
We looked at how working for largely local businesses, in an economy in which most were local, would work, in terms of economics.
In other words, if you needed an appliance, and went to Wally's Appliance Store, owned and operated by Wally, rather than Walmart, owned and operated by anonymous corporate shareholders, how would that look?
And we looked at something more radical yet, Agrarianism.
So how does this all tie together, and what difference would it really make?
Let's revisit the definition of Agrarianism.
Given the above, isn't Agrarianism simply agricultural distributism?
Well, no.
Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is âthe idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of societyBradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.
Agrarianism is agriculture oriented on an up close and personal basis, and as such, it's family oriented, and land ethic oriented.
We also noted that agrarianism as we define it incorporates The Land Ethic, which holds:
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac. Aldo Leopold.
So what would this mean to society at large, and a distributist society at that?
To start with, it would mean a lot more family farm operations, and no remotely owned and operated ones where the land was held by Bill Gates or the Chinese Communist Party. Combined with Distributism, it would also mean a lot more local processing of agricultural products. Local packing houses, local flour mills, local bakeries.
It would also mean a society that was focused on local ownership of homes with residents who lived a more local, land ethic focused, lives.
Indeed, the local would matter much more in general.
And with it, humanity.
There would still be the rich and the poor, but not the remote rich and the ignorable poor.
Most people would be in the middle, and most of them, owning their own. They'd be more independent in that sense, and therefore less subject to the whims of remote employers, economic interests, and politicians.
All three major aspects of Catholic Social Teaching, humanity, subsidiarity, and solidarity, coming together.
An agrarian society would be much less focused on "growth", if focused on it at all. Preservation of agricultural and wild lands would be paramount. People would derive their social values in part from that, rather than the host of panem et circenses distractions they now do, or at least they could.
They'd derive their leisure from it as well, and therefore appreciate it more. If hiking in a local park, or going fishing, or being outdoors in general is what we would do, and we very much would as the big mega entertainment sources of all types are largely corporate in nature, preservation of the wild would be important.
And this too, combined with what we've noted before, a distributist society and a society that was well-educated, would amount to a radical, and beneficial, reorientation of society.
We won't pretend that such a society would be prefect. That would be absurd. Human nature would remain that. All the vices that presently exist, still would, but with no corporate sources to feed them, they'd not grow as prominent.
And we will state that it would cure many of the ills that now confront us.
Such a society would force us to confront our nature and nature itself. And to do so as a party of a greater community, for our common good.
Which, if we do not end up doing, will destroy us in the end.
Last prior:
Finis
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day: Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day : A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure....
In the afternoon, I went out fishing and took the dog. On the way, I was listening to a podcast, like I'll tend to do. It was a Catholic Answers Focus interview of Carrie Gress and it was profound. I'll post on that elsewhere.
Here is elsewhere.
The title of the episode, and it should be easy to find, is Can Catholic's Fix Feminism? Gress' answer seems to be no, but what was so interesting about it is that she, as a woman who holds a PhD has had a career as a professor was frank on some things that we've addressed here repeatedly, but from a more academic standpoint, and she was able to thread them together. Without really expressing it the same way we have here, she's spoke on metaphysics, theology and evolutionary biology, as well as political science.
We've typed out all of that here, but without really including the Marxism portion.
Gress basic thesis is that feminism really came out of the same radicalism as Marxism, and adopted a Marxist view that women should be compelled to live to the male standard. It didn't really free women at all, it forced them into the male world where they're now judged on how well the live up. . . and down, to it. She dared to say something that's an anathema to modern Americans, that your career will not make you happy, and it very well may make you miserable.
Tying it in to Marxism is also a bit of an anathema of a topic too, to most, but if you look at it, it's hard not to go there, at least in a fellow traveler's sort of way early on. To at least a degree, even if you want to just lighten it up, early feminism fits into the family or radical movements of the early 20th Century, all of which were pretty heavily dominated by far left thought. Communism itself was very hostile to motherhood and marriage, and wanted to destroy the latter. The early radical Communists were opposed to both, and Whitaker Chambers discusses in Witness. The association, at least tangentially, is there. And of course, as the far left saw human value only in terms of people being "workers", this makes sense. The American far left still speaks this way today, with Bernie Sanders, for example, being in favor of warehousing children so that their mothers can work, adopting the traditional leftist view that a human's value is found only there.
We've dealt with all of this before, of course, and frankly we've taken it one step further.
We are so in the thick of this that we hardly appreciate where we at on these matters now. But this explains much of the misery of the modern world. We don't live in accordance with our natures, or at least very few of us do, and we're really not allowed to. An aspect of that is this topic. Women have careers open to them, and should, but they are now compelled to act like men within them, in every fashion.
I've recently had the displeasure of witnessing this in a peculiar fashion. It hasn't been a pleasant thing to observe. The interesting thing is that in observing it, when people feel free to make comments, they grasp their way back to the old standards, as with so much else, even while not living them.
Related Thread:
Why, exactly, do you think this would do a darn thing?
Well, here's why.
A daily example.
When I started this entry on Monday, March 4, I got up, fixed coffee and took the medication I'm now required to as I'm 60 years old, and the decades have caught up with me. The pills are from a locally owned pharmacy, I'd note, not from a national chain, so I did a distributist thing there. It's only one block away, and I like them. Distributism.
I toasted a bagel, as in my old age the genetic "No" for adults consuming milk has caught up with me. I got that at Albertson's and I don't know where the bagels are made. Albertson's is a national chain that's in the process of trying to merge with another national chain. Corporate Capitalism.
The coffee was Boyers, a Colorado outfit. Quasi distributist there.
I put cream cheese on the bagel. It was the Philadelphia brand. Definitely corporate capitalist there.
I'd already shaved (corporate capitalist, but subsidiarity makes that make sense).
I got dressed and headed to work. My car was one I bought used, but its make is one that used to be sold by a locally owned car dealer. No more. The manufacturers really prefer regional dealers, and that's what we have. All the cars we have come from the dealer when it was locally owned.
I don't have that option anymore. Corporate Capitalism.
In hitting the highway, I looked up the highway towards property owned by a major real estate developer/landlord. A type of corporate capitalism.
I drove past some churches and the community college on the way in. Subsidiarity.
I drove past one of the surviving fraternal clubs. Solidarity.
I drove past the major downtown churches. Solidarity.
I drove past a collection of small stores, and locally owned restaurants adn bars, and went in the buildings. Distributism.
I worked the day, occasionally dealing with the invading Colorado or other out of state firms. Corporate Capitalism.
I reversed my route, and came home.
So, in this fairly average day, in a Western midsized city, I actually encountered a fair number of things that would be absolutely the same in a Distributist society. But I encountered some that definitely ran very much counter to it.
Broadening this out.
A significant thing was just in how I ate. And I eat a lot more agrarian than most people do.
The meat in our freezer was either taken by me in the field, or a cow of our own that was culled. Most people cannot say that. But all the other food was store bought, and it was all bought from a gigantic national chain. In 1924 Casper had 72 grocers, and it was less than a quarter of its present size. In 1925, just one year later, it had 99 grocery stores. The number fell back down to 70 in 1928.
When I was a kid, the greater Casper area had Safeway, Albertson's, Buttreys and an IGA by my recollection, in the national chains. Locally, however, it had six local grocery stores, including one in the neighboring town of Mills. One located right downtown, Brattis' was quite large, as was another one located in North Casper.
Now the entire area has one local grocery store and it's a specialty store.
Examples like this abound. We have a statewide sporting goods store and a local one, but we also have a national one. The locals are holding their own. When I was young there was a locally owned store that had actually been bought out from a regional chain, and a national hardware store that sold sporting goods. So this hasn't changed a lot.
And if we go to sporting goods stores that sell athletic equipment, it hasn't either. We have one locally owned one and used to have two. We have one national chain, and used to have none.
In gas stations, we have a locally owned set of gas stations and the regional chains. At one time, we only had local stores, which were franchises. The local storefronts might be storefronts, in the case of the national chains, as well.
When I was a kid, the only restaurants that were national were the fast food franchises, which had competition from local outfits that had the same sort of fare and setting. The locals burger joints are largely gone, save for one I've never been to and which is a "sit down" restaurant, and we have national and regional restaurant chains. We retain local ones as well.
We don't have any chain bars, which I understand are a thing, and local brewing, killed off by Prohibition, has come roaring back.
We used to have a local meat processing plant that was in fact a regional one, taking in cattle from the area, and packing it and distributing it back out, including locally. There are no commercial packing plants in Wyoming now. The closest one, I think, is in Greeley Colorado, and the packing industry is highly concentrated now.
We don't have a local creamery, either. We had one of those at least into the 1940s, and probably well beyond that. The milk for that establishment was supplied by a dairy that was on the south side of town. It's no longer that and hasn't been for my entire life.
We've been invaded by the super huge law firms that are not local.
Our hospital is part of a private chain now, and there's massive discontent. That discontent took one of the county commissioners that was involved in the transfer of that entity out of county hands down in the last election. But that hasn't arrested the trend. My doctor, who I really like is part of a regional practice, not his own local one, anymore. This trend is really strong.
And then there's Walmart, the destroyer of locally owned stores of every variety.
So would distribution make anything different?
The question is asked by a variant of Wendell Berry's "what are people for", but in the form of "what is an economy for?".
It's to serve people, and to serve them in their daily lives, as people.
It's not to make things as cheap as possible.
On all of the retail things I've mentioned, every single one could be served by local retail stores. If we didn't have Albertson's, Riddleys and Smith's, we'd have a lot of John Albertson & Son's, Bill Riddley & Family, and Emiliano Smith's stores, owned by their families. If Walmart didn't exist, and moreover couldn't exist, it would be replaced locally, probably by a half dozen family owned retailers. . . or more.
Prices would in fact be higher, although there would be competition, but the higher prices would serve families who operated them, and by extension the entire community. And this is just one example.
Much of the old infrastructure in fact remains. As discussed above, numerous small businesses remain, and according to economic statistics, small business remains the number one employer in the US. But the fact is that giant chain corporations have made a devastating impact on the country, making all local business imperiled and some practically impossible to conduct.
Reversing that would totally reorient the local economy. Almost everyone would work for themselves, or for a locally owned business, owned by somebody they knew personally, and who knew them personally.
And with that reorientation, would come a reorientation of society.
We'll look at that a bit later. Let's turn towards the agrarian element next.
Last Prior:
From the Cowboy State Daily:
The real thing that will affect agriculture, particularly the beef industry, is in failing to attempt to arrest climate change.
I've long been utterly baffled by; 1) grazers failure to get a clue over climate change, and 2) ongoing agricultural admiration for the Republican Party.
More than anyone, those who graze ought to be able to freakin' wake up and notice that the climate ain't what it used to be. I'll hear ranchers talk about it, but they seem incapable of closing the circle. Gee, it's been warm. Gee, it's been dry. Gee, we have no grass.
D'uh.
But climate change? Nope, not happening.
Now there are some exceptions. The late Pat O'Toole, who married into a Carbon County ranching family, was one. But by and large ranchers simply refuse to believe that something is happening, even while worrying about what is happening.
Hmmm. . .
And ironically, practices in the industry which gave it a larger carbon footprint are quite recently Older ranchers can easily look back on an industry that wasn't diesel powered.
On the GOP, ranchers seem to have a really dedicated belief that the Republican Party protects their ability to do what they want. In reality, the Democrats have preserved ranch lands themselves. The GOP is more of the development party, which never ends up actually benefitting ranchers. I'll them complain about this too, but not close the circle. Why is this oil company in my pasture? Why are squatters trailers showing up all over. Why are out of state rich buying this up and not doing anything about it?
Why indeed?
Maybe because of how we vote and whose support we choose to ignore.
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