[Outcast_Searcher]

There are no services in most of rural America anymore. All the small towns are ghost towns.

Why put statements like that (with no citations) into the middle of an interesting conversation, where you are making some valid points?

Unless you are willing to define services, and demonstrate how NONE of them are provided in most of rural America, the first point clearly doesn't hold.

Fair enough. In the Midwest where I live, smack in the middle of the corn belt, all the small towns of say 150 to 1000 people, and there are many of them, no longer have schools, grocery stores, hardware stores, gas stations, banks, restaurants, doctors, dentists, etc. Within 7 miles of me, there used to be 5 towns that had all these things when I was 16. Now, you have to drive 25 miles to buy even gas or any food. Not one business remains on main street, except maybe crop services or a post office. There used to be 4 farmer families per section (square mile 640 acres) now there is hardly one per section; some none at all. Farmers now farm large acreages of 800 to 1,200 acres instead of 160 acres. The population is gone and all the services that supported them.

Now, this may be much different in other small towns areas of America for sure, but this is where much of the food is grown, and we were discussing where people could return to farming the land. Sorry for not elaborating further at first.

Fair enough (back to you). My experience is with towns a little larger (say more like 3000 to 5000 population), so what I see may be slightly different. My grandfather lived in Spruce Michigan 35 years ago, with population about 150, and I can certainly imagine many services in such a town (or one several times that size) going away due to cost cutting -- both government and private.

So if we're going to screw much of the small farmer community, that would give the monoculture "efficient" corporate farming industry little competition. Somehow, I don't see that as a good thing for anyone but agribusiness.

[ennui2]

en wrote: "Astyk herself mostly lives off her husband's living"
I hadn't hear that. Do you have some link on it, or is that just your wag?

Here you go.

It helps that I grow a majority of our food. It helps that I make money writing and teaching and farming. But we live on my husband’s salary, and have relied on his benefits.

[Newfie]

In capitalist systems, efficiency means greater productivity at the same or lower costs, and that in turn means more goods and services available. But to profit from sales of goods and services, there has to be more consumers with more money to buy or pay for them. And that can only happen if there are more jobs.

That's right. So if the ever increasing efficiency reduces jobs, where do the jobs come from? The service sector, a very wasteful and inefficient medical insurance system, locking up lots of folks, etc.

Kinda defeats capitalism. This is why we are post capitalisism and on to
Consumerisim.

Bertrand Russel identified the problem and wrote about it 80 years ago.

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

[dohboi]

Thanks for the link, en.

It sounds like a lot of smallish farmers that I know. At least one person has to go into town to make enough cash to keep the thing afloat. That's why we need a different structure that allows people to stay on the land and focus on the vital work of growing the world's food.