Sorry about the long pause. I allowed my temper to flare, then I broke protocols, and as a result, I'm dealing with Covid.
4 years Covid-free, down the tubes. Mrs Riggerjack is... thoroughly unthrilled.
Chenda,
Would it be fair to say that you have placed brackets around the concept of a building, so you can judge more accurately a renovated building vs a replaced building? This seems a highly concientious methodology.
But outside the brackets, there's a lot of factors that seem to be missing. Buildings may last indefinitely when properly maintained. But how much else needs to be true, for this to be true?
If you look at these buildings around you, the 16th through 19th century buildings that could last forever, look at where they are built.
Wasn't that a wetland drained for building sites? Pasture land probably within 100 Year floodplain of your river, back when your rivers ran wild.
Levees were raised, canals cut, dams placed, and the river was no longer wild.
But what happens when sea level changes, and all of those means of taming the river suddenly get to be much too energy intensive to maintain?
What happens when you're Levee isn't quite up to the task?
How often will your investment be zeroed out?
This is a critical thing to understand in choosing an investment. But few of us give any kind of thought to this, because we buy our infrastructure in pre-packaged formats.
We change formats by buying a different package (moving), or by voting for an addendum to the package.
But just because you aren't thinking about it, doesn't mean you weren't making an infrastructure decision. Tax bill, home payment, rent payment, toll, fee, fare, whatever you call it, it is still an investment decision.
But now that you are thinking about it, if you were to make these infrastructure decisions a la carte, what would you choose?
Would you choose to be powered by coal or uranium?
Would you choose to draw your drinking water from sources others are using as a sewer?
Would you choose to live below a dam?
Would you choose to live so completely seperated from nature? So far from the sources of your food?
Would you choose to live so close to people who did make these choices? Would you choose to wait for 51% of them to prioritize correcting any of these decisions?
That seems to me like a huge sacrifice, for minimal, very temporary gain, to me.
I think the reason you and I come to different conclusions, is you value the factors inside your brackets. And I have mentally discounted the value inside the brackets by all the factors outside the brackets.
But as each of us is speculating on future values, I admit you could be right.
My own choices would be solar power, clean water, bicycle trails, gardens and greenhouses, living in a forest, with neighbors who chose the same for themselves. I would choose to live in an eco-skunkworks, populated by people who aren't just interested in building an eco-villiage for themselves,
but as an exercise in learning to create eco-villiages.
…..
Outside those brackets, if one looks at the costs of refurbishment of an existing building we'll find that the same physical structure varies in cost considerably depending on where it is. As we move into high cost of living cities we find that infrastructure costs are mainly network costs.
For instance, in New York City, one will pay a higher cost per square foot than any place else in the nation for construction. This isn't because the quality of construction in New York City is higher than it is elsewhere. It's that labor costs more, materials cost more, coordination and permission cost far more. What one is actually buying in a high cost of living city when one purchases infrastructure is the value of being connected to the local, fully developed networks.
To the extent that one has good access these networks, and these networks fulfill one's needs, it makes sense to continue to invest in these networks.
But if what one wants is something different from what the networks provide, starting in a place where these networks are not established, means that one can freely remake rules and create new networks.
If my concern was:
If I wanted to set up a steam engine generator to charge a battery bank with bio gas, can I do so without interference? What if I want a hen house?
then the most important resource I would need, is neighbors who also want the freedom to set up similar systems (followed by some kind of safety check, because pressure vessels sometimes explode
). As the ERE city thread shows, such a place does not exist. If I want such a place to exist, I have to create it.
......
To the extent that one is underserved by these expensive Networks, one can be displaced by others who have better access to these Networks. This is generally expressed as gentrification.
Gentrification can be understood as a force. One can resist this force by banding together with locals and trying to resist the invaders with more money, or one can harness this force by owning infrastructure in places that are appreciating.
One can understand gentrification as a place where the cycle of depreciation / renewal meets a cycle of immigration, meets a cycle of international capital flows.
Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a book
2140 which examines these Cycles in a lightweight novel format, if you're interested.
Understanding gentrification as a stage of interaction of cycles then gives one the ability to be strategic in how one harnesses the forces involved. This understanding gives insight into when to engage, and when to disengage. When to buy, when to sell.
…..
Outside those brackets is an assumed Network availability that makes the investment in a building worthwhile. But the metacrisis is an understanding of all of the ways that those networks lead to failure.
I spelled out Adam's perspective give you a simple tool for assessing the outside of your brackets in a thousand year lifespan.
The fact that your buildings have been there for a few centuries means less if one is aware of how much change is already baked into our future. Buildings were built in places that were originally unsuitable for such buildings. Rivers had to be channeled to dry up that land. Rivers needed to be dammed, and at this point your main river needs a seawall, just to reduce flooding.
Take a look at a terrain map. Look at maps of 100 year floodplains. Now raise that floodpain 30 ft. What are your “indefinate buildings” standing in now?
When the wind blows, buildings with wet foundations act differently depending on what soils they're in. If they're in Bedrock and there's a SF miracle substance you get Manhattan in K.S.R's
2140.
https://storiesforearth.com/2022/01/03/ ... -robinson/
If they're in fill, or drained soils, you get Brooklyn in
2140. It doesn't matter how solid the foundation is, or what strength your framing has, when the wind blows, and one's footing is in mud, one's building is going to fail in ways that can't be repaired easily, if at all. That has nothing with how long the building could have been maintained indefinitely had external circumstances remained the same.
Climate change shows the change is already baked in. The metacrisis shows the diminishing returns baked into the potential responses to this change. How much of that change is going to destroy the networks you are depending on for the value to remain in your infrastructure?
It's very hard to find buildings that predate the 20th century in Washington State. Most of our old buildings are from 1901 to 1910. There was lots of development here at that time, and some of it hasn't burnt or rotted away, yet.
But if you look at a satellite image of Washington State, one can't help but notice a grid pattern in the rural areas. This is commercial timber stands being harvested and replanted. This is the infrastructure that I would change.
Commercial timber stands are planted, allowed to grow until harvested, depending on the goals of the landowner. If one wishes to grow clear straight lumber, stands planted in a commercial harvesting operation is about as efficient way to do that as it's possible to do.
But a commercial tree stand of Douglas Fir has about the same relationship to a forest, as a cornfield does to a meadow. If I want to create a forest from Douglas Fir stand, there would have to be some thinning, clearing out areas for other species grow and turning that mono crop of Douglas Fir into a richer and more robust forest.
If I were being strategic, buying pre-harvest timberland and with a small team of people form a non-profit organization dedicated to turning timberland from industrial wholesale input production, to varied retail uses. A private camping club seems a good start to that process.
A club that brings together backpack style campers with enthusiasts who would like to try building alternative buildings. People who would choose to build with the intent of minimizing external resource importation. Heated by the sun, cooled by the Earth, powered by by solar cells and solar collectors and other forms of alternative power. High speed fiber optic internet, because that's kind of necessary everywhere now, and cheaply available.
To accomplish this, I would need people invest to financial, labor, and intellectual capital in a piece of industrial tree cropland. People invest most easily where they have means of monitoring/liquidating that investment.
A club based on love of camping, and alternative building. Intent on creating great camping, and designing, building, testing, and documenting integrated systems. With the intent to eventually write the code for alt systems, available for adoption elsewhere. There is already a large overlap in these groups of people.
This club can sell memberships to people who intend to drive from the city, park their car in a place that isn't going to get broken into, and have a hiking/camping “leave no trace” experience.
There is already existing demand to this product. When I was young, I could go to Lake Ozzette, out on the coast, and when I was down on the beach, see one other camper on a holiday weekend. Miles of sandy beach, all to myself. One could go up any logging road and camp at any of the logging benches. The logging roads are gated off, now, and Ozette was hip deep in campers last time I was there. Boondocking is still possible, but cars left at trailheads are subject to meth-head taxes.
Simply providing a place where someone could reserve a parking and camping place behind a gate has value, today.
The financing can be arranged by secured bonds. The agency issuing the bonds would arrange for bond to be collateralized by an asset so that at the end of the bond term, the bondholder either holds the cashed out value of the bond, or owns a physical asset.
The labor can be compensated with similar bonds.
This is going to make a new kind of securitized investment vehicle. One where one can choose to invest in the change one wants to see in this world. And either gets the change and their money back, or or just the change, and ownership of same.
Since these bonds are directly tied to assets, when there is a default, bankruptcy isn't necessary.
After the start of membership sales, we can begin to design improvements. Clusters of campsites could get bathrooms, with integrated waste water treatment. Solar charging stations, wifi, timber framed pavilions, cabins, or whatever other improvements are chosen.
New memberships can be sold to match the new spaces.
But the people who are onsite, creating these improvements, need infrastructure of their own. They need cabins, etc for themselves. They need shops and work spaces, gardens and storage spaces... in short, they need the means to build for themselves.
Building a wood mill/shop seems an efficient way to begin turning trees into retail products.
Building garden/greenhouses to provide fresh foods to residents and campers.
Building cabins provides potential rental income.
Eventually, one ends up with a small on-site community of “staff”. People who are living in the woods, in integrated infrastructure. People who have experience designing, building, and maintaining that infrastructure. People who have had several iterations to improve their designs. People who have worked together, and separately, developed the means to coordinate efforts, and the means to resolve differences.
Additionally, there is demonstrable examples of working integrated infrastructure. One could walk from cluster to cluster and see the iterative improvements.
When thinking of applying what has been learned here in new, possibly larger projects, we have the means of capitalization, organization, a skilled and experienced work force. We have an off-site membership to draw from to fill new teams, for new projects.
We have a membership of campers coming out to use the facilities we built. We have a customer base to fund a market garden. The best kind of customer base, one that provides its own transportation. Develop that market at the same time as the market garden.
When we want to demonstrate our accomplishments, we can do it by renting any of the cabins that is available. When we build out the next phase, or a new project, we do so on a foundation built for the purpose.
Maybe the next project is an artist's colony, or a high end health spa, or a retirement community. Any of these is easier to sell with a demonstration.
…...........
Since we're still asking rhetorical questions, do you see how most people resist almost all change because they need to fit it within the framework of their current system which is usually some variation of "need to pay the bills, spouse not interested, don't want to look weird, the children still deserves a normal life, need to do it as a community, happy to follow but not to lead,... right down to ideological concerns and refusing to move before some pet peeve is solved first"?
This is why it is necessary to fit [the transition to] the new environment into the existing framework lest we create yet another talking fest where everybody agrees what a great idea something is and not much else ever happens
What I understand, is that outliers following any standard Lifepath (TM), depending on Serendipity to fill in where Strategy would have been appropriate, live lives of disappointment and frustration. It's all over the journals, here.
Square pegs are dissatisfied with round holes. My culture has no interest in creating square holes. This signals opportunity without competition, to me.
I believe happiness is strongly correlated to actualization. To the ability to create a predictable change in one's life. The more one's desires diverge from the outputs of the systems one interacts with, the less satisfaction one can wring from those systems.
Consider how much of the camping club above requires work done on-site, and equally important, how much work
doesn't need to be on-site.
It seems both counterproductive, and pointlessly cruel to deny outliers the satisfaction of participating in change creation, merely because they have followed standardized paths, and thus have acquired standardized obligations.
With a camping club, they can participate from a distance. Then come out for a weekend, if they so choose. If they can relieve themselves of their obligations, perhaps they can come play full time. There are many potential stages one could occupy between distant supporter, weekend camper, and full time resident, sponsor of an expanded project...
With such a radically different environment, being able to choose and vary the level of one's involvement becomes far more important. Both to those on-site, and those off-site.
The last thing I want to live with, is a neighbor who feels trapped.
For what it’s worth, I disagree that my statement leads inevitably to a policy of non participation.
My apologies for my sloppy writing. Edited.
A lot of the discussion points seem to tie into to the various ERE City threads.
Yes, I participated in them. To me, they stand as a 20+ page testament to how even a forum full of people dedicated to practical means of self actualization is still so
bafflingly passive in the way they perceive the world around them.
An easy example of this is demonstrated by cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands. In places with a ton of cycling infrastructure, people cycle more than anywhere else in the world. They don't do this because it's good for the environment (even if some might virtue signal that), rather they do it because it's the most convenient, efficient, enjoyable, etc transportation method.
I've heard this pointed out many times. Odd that the Netherlands in general, and Copenhagen in particular, are
notoriously flat never seems to get mentioned.
Think of this as one end of the spectrum.
This is the other end of the spectrum.
What a fine metaphor. Let me abuse it a bit. You have described the full visual spectrum, and I don't disagree (much) with any of what you wrote. But as with a real spectrum, the interesting/fun/useful parts are outside of your described full range.
At the end of the day, you're not going to convince most people to move to woods/rural areas.
I wonder, how much changes when you stop focusing on mass appeal? My culture is all over this, why would you choose to compete in such a saturated market?
Why try to change anyone's mind? If someone doesn't already
want to do the work you want to do,
why would you want to work with them?
There are 8 billion of us, if you eliminate all but 1 in a million, you are down to a pool of over 8,000; probably still too many. With this thought in mind, maybe reread your post.
yes, moving out to the sticks to 'homestead' is, strategically speaking, insane.
I agree, don't try it. But I would say that homesteading is extremely visible within my culture, as WB described, above.
the sublime joy of grokking that everything rots and nothing matters and so everything matters
Beautifully put.
Small quibble, not everything rots. Since you have interest in earth sheltered housing, maybe it would be worth reading some archeology papers on what factors make a site more or less intact for excavation. Those same factors will apply to your projects.
Then I realized that my actual job was really serving as cheap TA labor carrying part of the university culture.
It's essentially carrying on an idea.
It's 2024. Surely, you think of cheaper/more effective means to do this?
We have words for people who see things that aren't there. 