I think this is very toxic post. I live in apartment in a size of tiny house, and I have no wish to move to suburbs and slave away my life in traffic jams. People should live in a way that they enjoy. Comparing is just a dick measuring contest. And One should be able to enjoy his mega mansion and his huge truck if he wants to too, providing it is done in environmentally safe way and all the taxes (and I mean appropriately and proportionally calculated taxes) are paid
It’s hard to take this seriously when you shit on living in the suburbs then immediately say “people should live in a way they enjoy”.
I’m not shitting on suburbs. I don’t like them though. And I don’t just say “people should live in a way they enjoy”. If you would avoid twisting the words and reading until the end You would notice a whole sentence saying: “And One should be able to enjoy his mega mansion and his huge truck if he wants to too, providing it is done in environmentally safe way and all the taxes (and I mean appropriately and proportionally calculated taxes) are paid”. If, by any chance, you are still reading, let me say that we are free to define the system of living in any way we want. And If you can find a way to do what you like in a way that is safe, constructive and not infringing on our planet and society - go for it!
Respectfully - I don’t see how mega-mansions and huge-trucks could be considered ‘environmentally safe’.
And people should also consider the “social-impact of earning”…
since most mansion-owners “leeched” their money via white-collar jobs at exploitative corporations.
…In my opinion - the entire downstream effect of our choices must be considered.
(I write this in the spirit of unified awareness - I know you aren’t pushing for mansions or trucks)
I think You can have a huge house if You build it smart. Like 100 m long earth ship or something like that. I was a bit iffy about trucks though wen I wrote this, so I know what you mean. But if you scale back to normal not Murican size car/truck and go hydrogen or electric, it is still bad, but better than I can realistically hope for with current trends. I agree with your opinion about jobs. I feel that big corporations are allowed too much free space to do what they want. I love to see innovation that big resources can bring, but it is always being overshadowed by their exploitation and lobbying in self interest. There is not enough control and they always end up exploiting their position.
My smallish place gives me a 10 to 15 minute commute. Which I take do by bicycle frequently. My friends in the suburbs travel 1.5 hours each way. Fuck that shit.
Agreed. One could generously give the OP the benefit of the doubt that the intent of the post is a complaint about the system, but it’s fundamentally flawed as it’s still an attack on the “victim” of said system.
Who are they, to tell people what to eat or what size house to live in? As long as people have the choice of food they want or home they want, that’s all that matters. Work needs to be done to make those choices equitable, but even in an equitable system there would still be tradeoffs. I just bought a house a few years ago, it’s in town, modest size (1800sq ft), and I have a 15 minute commute. I love it. My friends bought a house last year - huge, 3500 sq ft. Brand new, bit mcmansion-y, but it’s a nice house, and they love it. We paid about the same price, because their house is in the middle of nowhere. If we bought a house near them, I’d have a 1+ hour commute one way each day, and I’d hate it. I like my hobbies, but I don’t need that much space, lol.
And if someone is happy buying a tiny house, good for them. If someone doesn’t need the space - doesn’t have kids, has undemanding hobbies, isn’t throwing a lot of parties, why would they need a bigger house? It’s just more to maintain. This post is basically saying anyone who doesn’t consume - buying bigger houses and a meat and eggs breakfast - is a victim, which is just stupid. And it’d be great if tiny homes weren’t one of the easiest ways out of the current rental nightmare, but some people would still choose tiny homes even if every house cost the same and renting didn’t exist.
The thing is, the need for large expansive homes have substantially evaporated in younger generations as technology advances.
The desire for a massive home as a well off (not wealthy, but above peasant) person was due to:
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Needing somewhere to store all your necessary shit, your tools of your trade, etc etc.
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Needing somewhere for your servant(s) to live, because they took care of the house for you
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Somewhere to store all your books and other pleasantries
However, our servants are now tiny little robots that dont need to eat or sleep, they dont need an entire bedroom and seat at the table.
The entire knowledge of all of humanity no longer requires a library of alexandria, but instead can fit in your pocket.
Many folks have all the tools of their trade able to fit in a small laptop bag at most.
When you can largely fit all your requirements of modern life in a single cardboard box, as opposed to needing several rooms, the desire for a mansion dwindles. Entire kitchens have been replaced with a single microwave and a hotplate.
Meals that used to take an entire day and a whole kitchen staff to prepare, now take a single person hitting an on button.
We have VR, laptops, netflix, the entire internet, etc etc all at our fingertips.
And most importantly, we have cars and whatnot. A trip to the store is no longer a “wake up at 6 in the morning to get the horses saddled and hitched, then three hour ride into town, get back home just before sunset” affair.
It’s now “hop in the car and drive over to the store in 10 minutes”
And unlike horses, a car doesnt need a whole ass stable and stablehand. It can just… sit there lol
So yeah, its perfectly reasonable for us to slowly revert back to small life, everything we could possibly need to live life can fit in an extremely small square footage now, theres literally no need to have a giant mansion, it’s largely pointless.
I wish houses weren’t required by law to have a lawn. I could save so much space if I didn’t have one and all the junk to take care of it.
This thread blows my mind.
You’d prefer to just be boxed in with people all around you and concrete everywhere? That’s what developers would do if they weren’t required by law to give you space. Pack them into smaller spaces and get more money!
I’m mostly unhappy with front yards. Basically no one in my area uses them for anything. They’re just money and time sinks you have to put up with for very little benefit. I’m totally ok with having a backyard because it actually gets used.
You could look into lawn alternatives. Here the rules are no weeds and vegetation can’t be over 6 inches unless it is intentionally cultivated. So I have native plants in garden beds around my house that take up roughly 50% of the yard, and the “lawn” portion is mostly native groundcovers that are unlikely to reach above 6 inches. I rarely have to do anything to it since it’s mostly native. We go out there maybe once a month to mow the little grass that’s left (which we’re phasing out as natives spread) and pull weeds.
It was a little more work up front to make beds and plant natives, but we did it the lazy way, starting out small and expanding over the years as natives grew and spread. We did temporary borders of cardboard with rocks on top to smother grass and expand out as needed.
Is this astroturfing?
Of course I want more space! small rooms with a small number of rooms is claustrophobic and cluttered. I need space for me and all my shit!
The point is, you almost definitely have way less shit on your property, than a middle or upper class family would have in the 1800s.
You probably dont have a whole ass horse stable, and separate living quarters for your stable hand, yes? And all the “stuff” that would be involved in maintaining that horse stable, and all the stuff that the stablehand would own for their own life, right?
And you likely dont have servants, and a cook, right? And all their stuff and their living quarters?
And your computer can hold an entire library worth of books on it, an entire blockbuster worth of VHS tapes in movies, etc etc?
And you probably dont have dozens and dozens of boxes of photographs in storage, right? All of that now can fit in your pocket in a single USB stick.
No matter what your trade or craft is, even ones that involve working with your hands, its extremely likely someone 200 years ago would have required like twice as much stuff to do it. Our tools have become smaller, compact, multi-use, storable, foldable, digital, etc etc.
We’ve gone from giant machines that took up entire rooms, to extremely powerful ones that take up a fraction of the space.
Think about something as simple as just printing off some pamphlets, do you know how much stuff was involved in that process 200 years ago?
Now, you can mass produce pamphlets with just your phone or a laptop and an inkjet printer.
I would say there certainly are a small handful of hobbies and skills that have not had much change in terms of downsizing. Weightlifting / exercise, for example, is largely functionally the same. Steel is still steel and you cant really “downsize” the fact you have a certain density, and you simply just have to live with that. People have tried to come up with countless fancy ways to downsize weightlifting but at the end of the day, a barbell is a barbell.
Sewing also hasn’t changed dramatically in terms of scale either. Modern sewing machines arent that much different in size. Sure they have gotten a little bit more power in a bit smaller shape but, if you look up sewing machines from 200 years ago they, well, sorta still look the exact same not gonna lie.
But overall, most of the day to day living is just a LOT smaller and simpler. A small electric hand vacuum can do the work one handed in a few minutes that would have taken ages before. Microwaves cook food at extraordinary speeds that someone from a hundred years ago would absolutely consider borderline magic.
Servants? Stables? How rich do you think the average person is?!
I absolutely have more space and more things easily manufactured compared to a peasant with a shit ass job, even from just 100 years ago, have you seen how small the average persons house is? There’s houses around me built in the 1800s and I can barely stand up or fit a modern couch in them. They didn’t have kitchens they had a fire and a pot in the lounge.
You seem to be talking about peoples work tools, which would be at work, not in their house.
In most towns and cities, grocery store should be within walkable distance to allow people to get what they need for the next day or two, removing the necessity for large pantries or food storage rooms. Also getting benefits of eating healthier and fresher.
Also this, yeah, as farming scales and technology enables farmers to be able to manage larger and larger swathes of land with less and less labor involved, more and more people congregate in central hubs, major cities, etc, which means more and more people are within walking distance of all the needs.
Call me a peasant any day cause overnight oats are delicious. Here’s my recipe you are now asking yourselves for: 1/4 cup steel cut oats, 1 Tbsp chia seeds, a glob of honey, 1/8 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 3/4 cup of milk, then in the morning add 1/4 cup crushed walnuts and a ton of blueberries.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s gruel o’clock for this peasant.
And the quick and dirty recipe:
Maple and Brown Sugar Oats
- Oats
- Hot Water
- Brown Sugar
- Maple syrup
- Pinch of Salt
Doing this to Farina also makes Malt O’ Meal - Brown Sugar version
Sorry, but this one is just oats with sugar while the one above actually has fruit and nuts for that healthy boost.
pro tip: try frozen berries and add them the night before to infuse the oats with berry juice. which is also practical because you can mix all together the night before in a to go jar and in the morning you don‘t waste any time and can get right to slaving away for our feudal overlords
If you call it “oat milk”, you can sell gruel at a steep markup.
Basically true, but consider the alternative. Given how expensive things are now, if you don’t live a very minimal lifestyle you are going to be much more trapped in your career than someone who does. You won’t be able to retire early, you won’t be able to switch to something lower paid but more enjoyable/laid back, you won’t have the means to take some time off to pursue your own business ideas or just dealing with life stuff.
If you’re dead set on living the “American Dream” or something and refuse to hold back on treating yourself with luxuries, you are going to end up being even more of a tool of your technofeudalist masters. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to what is happening, it’s just basic self preservation of your freedom.
The problem is that more and more the tiny house and so forth is no longer a choice, but a neccessity to survive. In places like Silicon Valley a normal job basicly forces you to either communte for hours every day or live in a tiny house just to survive. Looking at the rent increases and high home prices combined with high intrest rates, the cost of housing looks like it will grow in the coming years. That is not just a US problem, but the case in many parts of the developed world. In poorer countries it is a reality for even longer and for even more people.
That being said, if you have the choice, building up some wealth is certainly a good idea. With a bit of it and some good ideas, it becomes much easier to drop out a bit out of the capitalist hellscape and avoid the worst problems.
