Zoning & the Fourth Reich (Part 2)
by James Stivers of the McCroskey Territorial Agrarian Society
copyright, 2024
For Part 1 of this series, click here: Part 1
For Part 3 of this series, click here: Part 3
The Building Code Scam
Just like the sucker punch from the Covid vaccination hysteria – in which you were condemned for being socially irresponsible for avoiding the injection and putting everybody at risk – who would dare build a house without the building inspector holding your hand?
It might be hard for Americans of the 21st Century to comprehend how once upon a time in our nation’s history, virtually all able-bodied men built a house with their own hands at least once in their lives . . . all without government supervision. In fact, for the first pioneers, they had to build their own domiciles because when they arrived it was a howling wilderness which greeted them.
For centuries, the meaning of “settling” the land was understood to include the task of building permanent structures for habitation and cultivation. The Amerindians were not commonly known to dwell in fixed structures, but in temporary tents and huts which allowed for frequent migration. The concept of land title and an estate which could be passed down to heirs was unknown to them.
For many generations, it was considered a rite of passage into manhood for American men to build their own homes . . . more so than the ability to use a firearm. Under the watchful care and assistance of fathers, uncles, cousins, and other kinsmen and neighbors, young men cleared the land and built homesteads for their prospective brides. As they got older and wiser, they would, in turn, help the next generation to settle the land in the same manner.
That was the prevailing custom until the close of World War 2 and the passage of the GI Bill. With government aid, war veterans returned home and could dispense with the task of “settling” the land and building homesteads. Instead, the federal government paid for the creation of a “building industry” for tract housing projects. Thus was created in conjunction with the mass production of the automobile, the modern phenomenon of the suburb.
With easy financing, veterans bought these inexpensive houses and went to college to learn their place in the corporate bureaucracy of American industry. With the Cold War as a pretext, the modern military-industrial warfare state was born.
By the late 20th Century, the homesteader became extinct, even though as much as 40% of the continental United States still remained empty and sequestered by various parks, refuges, and federal reserves. While there was a “back-to-nature” movement in the 1960s and 1970s which saw a resurgence of homesteading, it was not enough to off-set the trends. What we saw in Europe during the peasants’ revolts of the previous century – a consolidation of agriculture into the hands of the few resulting in mass migrations to the cities and draconian land-use restrictions which criminalized the act of homesteading – America followed the path of the Old World.
Associated with “trashy hippies,” local law enforcement would look for ways to harass these new “drop-outs” so they would go back “to where they came from” and get a “real” job.
Economic theories were propounded that said we did not need so many farmers because modern technology had created greater efficiency. But there was a certain strangeness to the logic which begged the question as to whether the glass was “half-full” or “half-empty”?
Whereas before, a man could live comfortably from the production of 40 acres, he now had to have 400 acres to maintain his standard of living. By the time of the 21st Century, it was more like 4000 acres that were required.
Many old school agrarians have noted the irony. How was it that plantation-style agriculture – notorious as a colossal failure during the years of slavery – was suddenly more viable than the traditional homestead which had settled the vast North American continent?
Of course, technology replaced the manual labor of the slave, but technology is very wasteful. Mechanization creates efficiency of production, but not the conservation of resources. Mass production pays little mind to wasting resources and requires an ever greater pillaging of Nature’s bounty.
In contrast, the meager production of Thomas Jefferson’s idealized small farmer and tradesman required a judicious economy of consumption and the reliance upon renewable resources.
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps America’s last statesman of that persuasion, once belonged to the Free Soil Party. He was quoted as saying,
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.
M. G. Kaines, Five Acres & Independence, Dover Edition, 1973
As late as the 1930s while the nation was reeling under the Great Depression, Kaines could write his book, 5-acres and Independence, and offer advice which millions successfully employed during those dark years.
But zoning laws were used to prevent breaking up large farms into smaller ones. Five acre parcels were not to be had for most Americans. 40-acre sections were typically the smallest parcel which were allowed. The rich, not willing to buy these parcels themselves, were content to use zoning and land-use regulations to prevent smaller affordable parcels for poor people, and thus, kept out the nation’s “riff-raff” from becoming their neighbors.
In 1912, there were more millionaire-farmers in Whitman County, Washington – the home of the great Palouse Prairies – than there were brokers on Wall Street. Charles Walters documented the decline of American agriculture in his literary classics and his monthly publication, Acres, USA, in which he proved that emptying the countryside was a deliberate government policy in conjunction with the policies of the newly created Federal Reserve. Bankers would not lend for small land parcels, and would only lend for farmers to buy ever larger tractors to farm ever larger farms.
So exasperated was Walters to this tragedy that he once exclaimed of the USDA – founded by Abraham Lincoln as a temporary measure to assure a constant food source for the Union Army – that it was and remains the principal cause of the decline of American agriculture.
Considering that modern agriculture requires heavy inputs of fuel and fertilizer for growing and processing food, one wonders if we are really witnessing the “burning-out” of a civilization. Add the exponential costs of health-care which is aggravated if not caused by consuming low quality food, has our exchange of health for “cheap” food been worth it?
Our Houses are Making Us Sick
It was zoning that gave us racial segregation and it was the Building Codes which gave us unsafe building products, such as lead paint and asbestos, to grease the wheels of corporate profits.
It was the Building Codes which required the use of these toxic substances, that are now widely touted as adverse to health and the environment. But the stupidity of the past has been replaced by a new stupidity, all in the name of public health and safety.
It continues today with building materials that are making us sick in our homes. Saturated with fire retardants – to satisfy the greed of insurance companies – the personal responsibility of the homeowner to prevent and put-out small domestic fires then shifted to tax-supported fire departments which might be 20 minutes away. These fire retardants are known carcinogens but are necessary to buy time until the “experts” can finally arrive to put out the fire.
Codes for a Captured Market
(to be continued)
For Part 3