Whiny Journalists
There's a brand of whiny, journalists who use nostalgia to attack the affluence that capitalism has bestowed on us. Usually, they flash their columns on July 4th. Their gimmick is selfishness masked in childhood memories. The scene is always one of youthful recollection; the bucolic picnic grounds, rippling lake, quaint rural paradise of their youth. (Aunt Gertrude always made her famous stuffed eggs, Mama fried up a mess of chicken.) I encountered one of these scribblers the other day bemoaning the excess of of happy boaters that crowded the lake she and her family used to visit in serene solitude.
Alas, the days of yore - they are no more. Too much competition. the newly enriched public has squeezed them out. And evil developers responding to the publics' desires have build homes, condos, vacation cottages. And there's too many cars, too. Can't hardly find a place to park, compared to the good old days when "we": pulled up rite beside the water. This widespread prosperity makes them yearn for their privileges of yesteryear. The spoiler is that devil - headstrong capitalism - that answers needs without asking society's permission.
It was lovely when they owned the only home on the hillside - serenity and an unobstructed view was exclusively theirs. But today everybody wants serenity and an unobstructed view. And since they can afford it, builders supply it. What's the world coming to? The big news is that everybody's competing with "us". We need a new set of "Grandfather" laws, they clamor. If it wasn't that way when Mama packed up her fried chicken and Auntie Gertrude half poisoned the family with her stuffed eggs - well, it just shouldn't be legal. Why not a little central planning? Say, 20 speedboats, l2 catamarans, and 28 water skiers. A lake traffic planning commission - that's what we need. They could regulate lakeside housing too.
These dreamers would call themselves "Liberals". They don't know that they sound like Aristocrats.
They yearn for the generalized poverty of their youth where less fortunates were confined to baking backyard outings while they splashed in the unpolluted blue of the lake. Damn developers - now the lake, due to a genial economy, is full of non-plutocratic ex-backyarders!! There oughta be a law..........
Comments (3)
Bill, Realist and Property Owner
This is the age old battle between a utopia and reality. The utopia is the way it was then before capitalism and greed gave people the same wealth they had.
The sad part is that instead of accepting the goodness of all of they they desire the use of violent force to keep the other newly wealthy people at bay. Of course they would enjoy the privilege of violence and property theft at the expense of the new arrivals. The little issue is that those that use the force end up taking the property from the original theives themselves.
Published: July 4, 2007 2:58 PM
Mark B.
I might suggest to the columnists that they do what I did. Go out and use some of that money of yours and BUY a large plot of rural land. Say 20 or 30 acres. Encircle a nice lake, as I have. If YOU own, nobody can develop on it, can they.
I, and a few like minded folks, have stopped development dead, simply by buying up the land.
But for those of you who don't own land, don't complain. If a developer owns the land and wants to put up a 1000+ unit development, that is his absolute right.
Published: July 4, 2007 4:48 PM
Christopher Hettinger
I don't like the whole anti-aristocratic idea going on in thos blog. Aristocrats, despite occasional arrogance, have been responsible for most of the liberties you enjoy. Where as the common folk coddled up the centralizing monarch and later the elected officials and let things slide. Hmmm...
You fall prey to socialist thinking even as you belittle it... The problem today is that there is no natural aristoi remaining in force that can stop the state. It was they, who maintained decentralization for so long. Magna Carta, American War for Independence, all of these "democratic" battles for freedom were aristocratic movements.
Of course, even the nobles were eventually overtaken by Leviathan eventually. Versailles is a testament to that fact; the nobility was kept under this king's control through favors and, yes, privelages.
Published: July 4, 2007 7:27 PM