cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/66479569
Nationalism, the rightwing, racism - they are all returning full force in Europe. Trumpism and Russia are using all their powers to destroy European democracies; through open and covert propaganda. You, the voter, can never claim you weren’t warned.
“rural” has no future in a modern industrial society. Build the housing in cities, end the car age. The rural people either are hyper exploited workers from a minority, or they’re LARP-ing fools who exist on in a relationship of being dependent on subsidies and aid skillfully controlled by conservatives (usually something about religion) to keep them stupid and dependent.
and just farm your food on your balcony i guess
It’s not like that. Actual modern agriculture requires very few people, fewer and fewer. There’s some seasonal work on the horticulture side, but large agriculture is heavily mechanized and now getting automated.
What this really means is that, in the rural space, a tiny percentage of people actually WORK in rural activity. Various government-policy-types have tried to promote diversification, but it’s not working out well in the West.
If you do the math, it means that a huge majority of the population is there – not being rural. They are stranded. The poor ones are dependent on various aid and shit jobs. The rich ones own farms. The middle ones are LARP-ing as “true rural” something something, so there’s a stupid competition to show who’s the best at acting as some traditional character (whatever the local flavor is.)
Actual modern agriculture will end up as outposts only; a couple of permanent workers, some seasonal workers, and nobody sticks around to “start a family.”
The more this rural spectacle is allowed to go on, the more fascism there will be.
As someone who was born into life in the sticks, there is nothing that can separate a farmer from his oppressors. May as well let them rage out there. No one is saying to hurt the farmers, only to let them be backwards.
Which is unfortunate because ofc I know without a doubt that I’d rather have a neighbor I know, who I share fence with, who can birth a horse or punch a bull in the face, on my side, than the entire floor of an apartment building in the city.
Sadly that same neighbor, who will except me and any other “weirdo” or non white that he knows, all day and with his whole heart, will also vote to kill us all and push an economic policy that keeps him under the boot of a bank, all day too.
No amount of closeness to him or logic will fix this. He follows overt displays of power, herd thinking, and whatever mindset calcified in him before the age of 16. That’s just the truth.
Not necessarily. Rural people are typically farmers or large landowners.
The problem is that a lot of rural people are more dependent on (fossil) fuels due to having to drive by car to a station, stop, or destination.
While they do tend more conservative, the other issue is also that farming isn’t yet fully automatised. Sure, there are tractors and the like, but a human still needs to drive them. If we want less land usage for farms, we’d need to shift to producing veggie and lab meat, as then we don’t need to use a lot of land for feeding cattle. So we need to help financing farmers to switch over, and be less dependent on fossil fuels.
With the freed up land, we then can build more housing, and reforest. On top of that, since more people might move toward the city, or congregate into small hamlets, that will make expanding public transit easier.
The problem is that the agriculture economy only needs a few people, so everyone else is standing around trying to find a way to live, and there is no way, so they work as entertainment for the rich and powerful.
Your observations are correct, but they won’t change the bigger economic point of rural society being economically non-viable.
It’s really similar to mining towns, mining also got heavily mechanized and automated, it’s just that there’s no cultural traditionalist fantasy to reproduce for entertainment, for performance, within the mining economy.
There is a different strategy of repopulating rural lands, but that is not going to happen within the current economy and goals. That would require much more organized sacrifice, plus exceptional logistics and transportation (not cars.) Otherwise, rural life always will mean a lack of access to education, healthcare, civic life and democracy, and even good plant-based food.
Right now we’re suffering from the failure to modernize fully, the process is uneven and exploited by the privileged. We either need to finish building modernity or we do something totally different. Fascists and conservatives use these stranded masses to gain power, and that leads to collapse. It’s all very unsustainable, this middle-ground, this incomplete transformation, like a bird that didn’t fully get out of its egg.
Harshly worded but nonetheless true. Three downvotes and no upvote as if people want a better world without keeping the resources in mind.