Geoff Graham

I think a lot of folks rightly observe and articulate the problems of modernity—atomized communities, deteriorating metabolic health, ever-more industrial consolidation, etc—and assume they result from the natural progression of a humanity imperfectly directed by a central planning authority. In their view, fixing them requires a better authority rather than no authority at all. Examples: Wendell Berry advocates for price controls in agriculture and different types of price supports, many New Urbanists seek new/different land use prescriptions and federal infrastructure subsidies, etc. My sense is they advocate for these things with a kind of resignation: "It's just too that bad people, if left to their own devices, can't freely collaborate toward a better world. It's just too bad that people must have some sort of authority giving them direction." But the more I pick at any failure of modernity, the more it seems to me that it is precisely the authorities' inevitable misdirection that caused the problem. In the case of land use and the changing patterns of human settlement (an area about which I know more than a little) it seems so inescapably obvious nowadays that even those who are politically inclined toward central planning reluctantly acknowledge it. And the more I learn about agriculture, the more I see the same pattern repeating itself there. So, I don't quite get the pessimism. We don't need to try to solve the unsolvable problem of creating a better authority. If someone hangs on to that as the necessary path, I can see why they'd be pessimistic; history shows us that can't be done! But we can begin cutting Gordian knots. Ending intervention. Ending interference. Ending micromanagement. Ending central planning. Etc etc. When enough people appreciate that the central planners caused the problems, we will end the central planning. And more people appreciate that now than a decade ago. And more appreciated that a decade ago than the decade prior. So while I hear weariness and pessimism in the voices of some wise and battle-scarred critics of modernity, I'm optimistic: The path forward seems so obvious to me, and every year that passes, it seems to become increasingly obvious to more and more people. Before one can walk the way, one needs to know the way.

@Jake_W Your facts do not align with my ambitions for our new moniker, therefore I will ignore them—as per the Georgia tradition.

@ggraham As I said, pecans are basically a south Georgia thing. Their growing range for commercial purposes overlaps heavily with peanuts. North GA does better with livestock like poultry. The red clay doesn't support peanuts or pecans well. Cabbage and apples do well up here, though.

The “Peach State” moniker is not legislatively ratified. It’s just a nickname. We could all just begin referring to Georgia as the Pecan State. No one can stop us.

@Jake_W And NoGa, tho not really a crop up there. Prevalent everywhere but the highest elevations, I think.

@ggraham Pecans are also a south GA thing, particularly SW GA.

@AgroNationalism Where!?

coppice stakes

@stevemouzon I’m a very occasional F3er, but I love the story. Totally decentralized.

@ggraham From my short conversation with one of the guys, f3 sounded a lot like a group you mentioned sometime around the first l’On Dialogues.

F3nation is a group I ran across Saturday on the way to the grocery store. But I love the unintended message of their shovels-as-flagpoles. We’re Americans. We’re here to build better places than what we’ve built before. Time to get building!

@JoshPhillipsPhD @kalezelden A friend of mine hiked through South America for a summer in the late 1990s. Spoke no Spanish/Portuguese. Only book he brought was the Complete Works. Came back speaking in iambic pentameter.

Just read Shakespeare and listen to classical music for a year. See what happens.

@Jake_W Good point, tho that’s really just a SoGa thing, tho, right? Pecans in every county.

@keeper_orchard TBC, the puh-kahn state.

True

@Fomaphobic The struggle is real.

@ggraham Hilarious. You can be the Peach State or suffer people from Florida calling you the Pee Can State - it's a choice.

@jasonc_nc In his defense, the insane things that meaningfully affect the shape of our built environment are so outrageous as to be completely unbelievable to normal people who have no serious exposure to construction and real estate development.

Who’s gonna tell him?

@clearSNR I encourage you to re-review my list and see if your cause-and-effect concern is not resolved by my complete list of attributes. I know at least two math teachers/profs who have little understanding of history and who I am certain you would think would be terrible policy makers.

@ggraham The History Student or PoliSci bookworm who doesn't understand foundational cause & effect of tangible, real, physics-constrained systems is a worthless lawmaker. There are 400+ of them on Capital Hill right now and they've done nothing but screw things up for 75 years.

If we must have politicians, here are my preferred attributes: 1) Parent; 2) Humble; 3) Owns a small business; 4) Understands basic economics and accounting; 5) Good writer; 6) Intrinsically motivated; 7) Resistant to corruption; 8) Pursuing it out of a sense of duty; 9) Low time preference disposition; 10) Born and raised in my region; 11) Physically fit; 12) Deeply appreciates 'primum non nocere' and understands that the vast majority of politicians harm far more people than they help.

@TabbyTeamster Designers and printers have babies to feed, too!

The switching cost is a little high given those 🍑 are slapped on absolutely everything.

@Fomaphobic As my grandmother used to say, a Pee Can is what you take out back when the toilet’s broke.

@ggraham People don't know if it is Pee-can or Puh-kahn. Unless that's a feature not a bug.

@mnolangray This description does not align with the Mormons I know.

@clearSNR Understood. I still will take someone who knows a good bit about history over an adult who has the capacity to learn history but hasn’t yet made the attempt to do so.

@ggraham I didn't say that. I said, "Anyone who CAN LEARN Calculus has proven they CAN LEARN history quite easily" and that "those who have an exceptional knowledge of history are not necessarily prepared for 2nd year physics, chemistry or calculus." Asymmetric skillsets.

@Empty_America You must feel honored to have been invited.

I'm going to a local wedding next week that will have 450+ guests. It's going to be hosted on the bride's family ranch, so there is room, but still quite a thing to organize. I've really never heard of a wedding at that scale before.

Rootedness and subsidiarity are the antidotes to spreadsheet brain. When they are lost, efficiency becomes the ultimate value. All manner of horrors have been justified in the name of efficiency.