McMansion under construction by merfam

Remember when people where trending on such topics as “downsizing” and “simple living?”  It seems like just yesterday.  With untold McMansions listing in their weed-infested suburbs across the U.S. it would seem that the time was indeed ripe for reason to reenter our housing market and smaller footprints and more practical usage of square footage to be valued and rewarded.  The only problem is that downsizing is easy to talk about and hard to do.

American’s love things big.  As my wife and I have listed our 4 bed 3 bath, 1990 sq. ft. home in SLC for sale we have discovered that it is too small to demand top dollar (in our current crappy homes market).  I thought such a home would be ideal for all the people who have been talking about downsizing from their 3,000 sq. ft. 3 bed and 3 bath houses.  But, apparently there aren’t any such people.  What there are, are people who are looking for their first home and finding that 2,000 sq. ft. just isn’t big enough.

Redonculous.  Undergirding current U.S. home sales, or lack of them, is a symptom of our addiction to size.  Appraisers and Realtors still evaluate homes by dollar per sq. ft.  I realize this is a handy little tool to come up with a quick and dirty estimate of a home’s value.  But seriously.  Any builder can come up with stupid ways to waste square footage in order to drop this ratio.  The 1990’s stand as proof.  For decades now U.S. homes have attempted to find all sorts of ways to bloat themselves just for the sake of bloatage – no practical use at all.

I design a home with practical and usable spaces, small bedrooms, custom-built closets and multi-use family spaces and it gets undervalued in the market because it doesn’t waste space well enough.  Realtors advise their clients to steer clear, because after all, they can find a home with more square footage for the same price.  And we all know that bigger is better.  Well, my family’s is about to experience a gypsy’s square footage, if we can ever sell this just less than 2,000 sq. ft. house.  Maybe I’ll add a 1,000 sq. ft dirt room on the back.

Sweatshop in Chicago

Sweatshops.  Sounds kind’a nice as I watch the snow fall outside my window here in SLC, in April.  Oh, to feel the sweat trickle down the small of my back and then slowly spread along my waistband front and back until it looks like I have thoroughly wet myself.  Oh to feel a hard dirt floor with my blistered and cracked feet and to be able to gnaw on my swollen, spongy tongue longing for a cool drink of water.  Instead I just sit here at my fancy computer typing away with a hot mug of tea watching this freekin’ frozen crap cling to my grapevines and tulips.

Surely I jest.  But seriously, in my quest to discover the truth about global sweatshop numbers and stats I have discovered that this is an idiotic quest.  Much more important are the numbers and factors that make sweatshops not only flourish, but attractive.

Wikipedia defines a sweatshop as “a working environment with unhealthy conditions that are considered by many people of industrialized nations to be difficult or dangerous, usually where the workers have few opportunities to address their situation. This can include exposure to harmful materials, hazardous situations, extreme temperatures, or abuse from employers. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for little pay, regardless of any laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage.

Sounds great, right?  So what sort of madness causes these things to thrive around the world (even in the U.S.)?  Simply put, greed and poverty.  Nicholas Kristof raises a good point in his op-ed for the NYTimes from last year.  Sweatshops are real nice options for people who would otherwise live and work in a garbage village.  Hmmm.  So what you are saying, Nick, is that while sweatshops suck, poverty is a bit broader and can suck even more?

A study done by the Wold Bank shows that in 2005 20% of the world’s population lived in what is considered extreme poverty, on just $1.25 a day.  Around 50% live on $2.50 or less a day.  If we stretch it to $10 a day we can include 80% of the world’s population.  This, ladies and gentlemen is poverty.  Estimates say that around 12% of those living in the United States fall below the national poverty line.

The real bummer is that, like most of us, I enjoy the things that poverty makes for me.  I have a connection with my mug.  I like my computer and all the rest of the stuff cluttering my desk.  Even though I like not to think about it, I know that most of it was made by people living off of jack-crap and a cracker.  Heaven forfend, some of the crafters of my crap probably labor for a sweatshop.

So how can we combat sweatshops when so many people around the world would leap out of their garbage pile for such a swanky job?  Well, first of all, we have to share.  My two-year old gets it most of the time.  Forget the complicated economic systems and formulas.  If something is “mine,” then it ain’t “yours.”

Secondly, it is time to realize that low, low prices usually means low, low morals.  When I spend $39 for a DVD player several people just got screwed in that transaction.  When I spend $29 for a pair of jeans a bunch of people just got paid a fraction of a penny for their labor.  Crap, I know!  Sharing sometimes means we have to play fair when we use our purchasing power here in the States.  And the real stick in the eye is that I have to bother to search out commercial goods that help me share when I buy them!  Fair wage they call it.  Sweatshop-free labor.

But it’s true.  We live in such a screwed up world that it is our responsibility as consumers to ensure that we don’t get the best price on a product, but that we share our surplus wealth with those who need it.  This is one case when buying can be saving.  By buying socially-aware goods we can save human lives, dignity and health by freely offering up what we can afford to live without when we are buying the things we choose to live with.

The answer, of course, is nobody knows.  But I have to write about something, so… let’s say… meaningful and fulfilling lives.  But first, where are they moving?  States like Texas have had a positive population gain over the last couple of years mostly due to strong energy sector jobs.  But let’s face it.  As an former resident of Texas, I realize not everyone wants to move to the armpit of hell, Houston.

Many are decrying the fact that young people are fleeing the country like scripted drama from prime time television.  But just like prime time TV, there are pockets of CSI, er, young people still finding home in the country.  Others, like a recent Wall Street Journal article, talk about the opposite trend.

The Journal’s story is entitled, “Green Acres is the place to be,” and it represents the perspective that people are migrating back to the country.  ”Motivations can vary, but typically there are three groups: young people buying land as an asset or investment, with vague hopes to live on it someday; exurban commuters who have jobs in big towns or cities but want to escape the sprawl; and back-to-the-land types who want to dabble in hobby farming.”

Honestly, if i were a God-fearing country boy, I would have to admit that the Wall Street Journal doesn’t make these folk sound very appealing.  Land speculators, commuters and hobby-farmers sound like the sort of people I would harass with bottle rockets or small arms fire, or perhaps some mailbox baseball. All said, it seems obvious that young people are leaving Rural America.  This is not exactly a new trend.  The recent book, Hollowing Out the Middle, addressed this issue in candid detail.  A splendid blog, Reimagine Rural, also dedicates much time and energy to the topic.

While most movement is out of the country and toward the city, there is a significant movement in the opposite direction.  While many of those individuals moving back to the country may not be representing country folks’ interests, I believe that some are.  Because of the longevity of the trend to flee the country many God-fearing country boys and girls are waking up every morning to the sounds of honking, train whistles and sirens.  With the help of a dream-crushing economy, many of these country-gone-city folk are also waking back up to their childhood memories of a simpler life.  By simpler I mean more straight forward: no gym fees, no commuter traffic, no HOA fees.

I see these folk as not so much pretenders or redneck wanna’bes, but rather prodigals returning home.  After spending so much of their formative years desiring nothing more than escape from a provincial life, now they wonder if the city was a harpy, a siren luring them to destruction.  After all, if you are going to be unemployed, why not be unemployed back home surrounded by family and homegrown food and cheap property prices.  But seriously, some of these people are returning to the country with actual skills and a passion to make Rural America great again.

The question still remains on where they will end up.  Certainly things like broadband and coffee shops will play a part.  More importantly, where will they find open arms and a welcome embrace?  Which small towns will decide that the Prodigal deserves a fatted calf after all?

To continue my theme on blemishes within the American Dream that hinder sustainability I thought I would turn to a nurturing image in celebration of Mother’s Day.  I know, so sentimental.  Anyway, the problem here in the USA is not that our breasts are shriveled and dry (if only they were), rather the problem is that we suck at the wrong tits (if sustainability is what we seek.  And it isn’t, but it should be.).You see, the Mother’s Milk of consumerism comes from the twin breasts of repetition and redundancy.  For survival we need to buy a new car every two years and a new computer every 18 months.  We need every family to own multiple cars, a washer and dryer, a lawn mower, a foot massager, an oven, microwave oven, toaster oven and grill.  When was the last time a company was rewarded for reducing the number of items we need or the frequency of which we purchase them?  Don’t even get me going on the need for extended warranties (again).

Occasionally one product or service replaces the need for another, like my cell phone has replaced my land line.  But, I still need to buy a new cell phone every year or two (and amazingly this isn’t because I loose them or drop them.  They just suck.).  At least my old phone that used to sit on my desk worked for several years.

So basically we can’t share, and our industries build stuff to break and be replaced.  These two basic realities have fattened us for the last couple of decades until we have reach super-sized proportions.  Now we have high blood pressure and bad cholesterol.  Somehow we need to find healthier milk to sustain us.  We need to suck from the breasts of community and quality.  If we could learn to share redundant goods in community and reward industries that create quality goods (perhaps by broadening a lease system)  we could continue to grow big and strong in a sustainable fashion.  But first American society is going to have to be weened away from the milk of waste.

That deadly flaw is a trained lack of contentment.I’m not talking about a European sense of impotency (I know, I know.  Such insensitivity.) or an entitled sense of apathy.  I am talking about a bread of ambition mixed with arrogance that strives toward selfish consumption.  If I am content it means that when I look at another I don’t see them with either selfish envy or boastful pride.  Instead I celebrate the other person for who they are at the same time that I strive to improve myself.  This is what it is to be content.  This is something that we here in the U.S.A have little of.  We are schooled to see others as stones or burrs.

All of the common calls toward sustainability must first and foremost be calls to contentment even while we continue to strive for improvement  and a better tomorrow.

But is all of this just modernist, Jean-Luc Picard type thinking that is already being supplanted by the post modern sense of relativist spirituality?

One of the cornerstones of The Venus Project, or its activist arm, Zeitgeist, is to kill the modern monetary system replacing it with a resource based economy.  On the surface I would agree that this sounds like a great thing.  Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where stuff is worth what it is actually worth?  Oh, I forgot, alot of people wouldn’t.  This is where I start to get a bit discombobulated with the whole plan.

Call me a pessimist if you must, but I harken from protestant roots and still very much believe in total depravity (otherwise known as the theology of how all people suck).  I would love to get behind the Venus Project and help build a society that is completely sustainable — one without war, poverty, and injustice.  But I just don’t see how getting rid of money is going to achieve this.  I can’t quite accept that people won’t still fight over fame, pride, lust, etc. even once the lure of greed and monetary need are gone.  (Just because all my physical needs are met doesn’t mean I won’t want to boink your wife, does it?)  In a resource based economy won’t someone still decide to jockey for power by controlling a crucial resource?

Even if you just see it as an old story, Cain killed Able before money existed and before resource scarcity could even be conceived.  He did it for power, control and to manipulate.  Now, it might still be nice to eradicate our outdated monetary system, but I still think the best route toward sustainability and stability is gonna’ have to include humility and selfless sacrifice in the face of human hubris, and that includes well intentioned hubris like that of the Venus Project.

First off, I have to admit, I am pretty much a libertarian — a redneck, granola, libertarian.  I got my first lessons in politics on the ranch, and if you plan on running a productive beef ranch you have to make the decision to allow only the most virile and quality male cattle reproduce.  The vast majority of the male heard it “cut” or castrated before they are a year old.  These steers are sent off to the feedlot and the meet packing plant.  Only the select few are allowed to become full grown bulls and guide the genetic future of the heard.

Now I don’t mean to be crass, but this is the way you gotta’ run a nation.  If the goal of ranching were to have a bunch of healthy, well adjusted and emotionally stable cattle for “putting out to pasture” then a socialist program could succeed.  If your goal is to produce quality beef only the libertarian approach will do.  Europe has been ranching the socialist way for decades now.  That is why their outlook on life can only be described (in the redneck lexicon) as “vegetarian.”  Much of the developed world seems to be jumping on board with the vegetarian ranching way of life — healthy, happy and well-adjusted, but with no beef.

But what the U.S. does is beef.  It is what we are.  We are meat eaters, innovators, bold and daring “grab the bull by the horns”ers.  Let others sit around and nibble grass and quibble about tolerance and diversity in regards to current peoples and trends.  We make the peoples and the trends.  We run cattle.  Now sure a lot of people are going to lose their nuts while only a few rule the heard.  But that is why the redneck invented the Sunday Calf Fry or the Testicle Festival.  (Actually, I am not sure who invented this, but I am guessing it wasn’t a hippy.)

Make it a celebration.  That is what we are in need of now.  Lots of weak companies in the U.S. need to be cut.  But waste not want not.  Call up the friends and relatives (especially the unemployed ones) and celebrate the taking of corporate balls with a B-B-Q and a picnic.   The strong companies that survive will run the economy better than the pathetic, wobbly-kneed companies that are bound for the packing plant eventually.  It’s the libertarian way.  It’s the redneck way.  It’s the American way.

Now don’t get me wrong, the government has a role just like the rancher does.  He builds fences and pastures.  He puts the bulls in with the cows at a certain time and removes them at another.  He regulates the herd.  If a certain bull goes feral and starts tearing through too many fences or goring other bulls then that bull might get shot.  It’s not a free-for-all, and it’s not a fair-for-all.  Sure, it’s painful as hell sometimes, but it is possible that what is detrimental to the many (steers getting their nuts cut off) can be beneficial to the whole (a stronger and healthier herd).  Cowboy up, Obama.  Cowboy up.

Reuse and core remodel projects are exciting, but there is a problem here that runs much deeper than the upgrading of an old home.  Communities and codes and current thinking all need to be upgraded.  Heaven forfend I sound old-fashioned here (never you mind the folksy sayings), but mobility and convenience have combined in the U.S. to mortally wound our sense of place.  What happened to our obligation to neighbors?  To the live local mindset?

Eric Morris of Freakonomics wrote last week about the top ten and bottom 10 walkable cities.  Most notable was his observation that “Six of the 10 most walkable cities were among the 20 largest urban places in 1900.”  At the same time, “None of the least walkable cities were among the 20 largest urban places in 1900, and five were not even in the top 100.”  The U.S.’s walkable cities are well over 100 years old.

Our scale for life was different then.  We knew the value and protected the value of our neighborhood because it wasn’teasy to often move in circles far abroad from it.  Now I am not saying I think we should all hitch some oxen to carts and put on galoshes(or rubbers, depending on where you’re from)  in order to slosh around our neighborhoods on rutted-out, mud roads.  But I am saying that we should be challenging our local planning departments to pull there heads out of their proverbial 1950 asses.  Modern is getting really old these days, and even back then newer wasn’t necessarily better.

I am glad to see Obama’s emphesis in volunteerism.  I too agree, that if we want to help our nation crawl out of recession we should start with committing to the life of our neighborhood.  If you have to load up the Lincoln Navigator to head the 30 minutes downtown for your stint of volunteerism then you are: 1.) not volunteering in your neighborhood 2.) volunteering in a means totally irrelevant to your lifestyle 3.) begging to be broken into and robbed.  Really though, if we want to help the economy maybe we should consider volunteering dinner for the family living just next door.  That means you may have to meet them first.

All of this to say that I don’t think there is an easy answer to our empty house problem.  Some urban and rural neighborhoods probably don’t have enough champions left to survive.  The ones that do won’t recover quickly.  Relationships don’t form overnight.  But I think if we hope to reuse many of the worthy but empty homes around the U.S. we have to do it a neighbor at a time.

Well, a group of dark skinned youth began to stride toward my vehicle while I idled waiting for the light to change.  I decided to play it cool.  I was a friendly person, so I assumed they just wanted directions or something.  About that time the car behind me started to blow it’s horn rather urgently.  ”The light is red you frick, damn,” I thought.  After another short moment the car pulls around me and guns it through the intersection while flying me the bird to boot.  ”Whatever Jackass,” I continued my inner dialogue, and then noticed that the approaching youth didn’t look as friendly as I had initially estimated.  And then suddenly…

The light turned green, and I calmly accelerated and continued my drive around scenic Detroit (only a little more nervous than I had been before).  All this to say that I have since been a huge non-fan of Detroit.  Honestly, it is a bit of a hell hole, and has been for a long time.

Some history:  In 1943 Detroit had its first race riot as blacks protested jobs for the war build up going only to whites.  Throughout the 50’s and 60’s the inner city continued to slide into black poverty while car companies built new facilities in the suburbs that were open to white workers only.  Then in 1967 Detroit suffered its second race riot after several cases of police brutality and an entire black neighborhood was bulldozed for Interstate 75.  Almost 200,000 people, mostly white, had fled Detroit between 1950 and 1967.  Almost 100,000 more fled after the riot of 1967.  Only poor, mostly black, residents remained.  At the hight of the unemployment leading up to the riots blacks hovered around 15% while whites stayed around 6%.

Here we are today, still paying the price of our racism over forty years ago.  Unemployment for January was at 20%.  Maybe with all the high paying, low skill jobs that went to whites throughout the car industry boom disappearing, the racial divide is closing.  Maybe not.

It was after the 1967 riot that Detroit became the leading city in the U.S. for gang violence and drug activity.  For forty years Detroit has remained close to the top of this list.  Now it is taking another heavy blow (with the Detroit Lions logging the worst NFL season ever!), and what is to be done?

An artist couple in Detroit has decided to do the insane and care about their neighborhood and their community.  They have started a project they call the Power House.  Who says that artists can’t be crazy and inspirational?  Oh, right.  Nobody does.  This is exactly the kind of thing we depend on artist for, and so far they have convinced a handful of friends to move into the neighborhood as well.  Through their collective efforts in the bombed out shell we call detroit they are gaining national attention on NPR and in the New York Times.  Since I heard about these guys on the radio I have been tracking their efforts and applaud them tremendously.

This is exactly the sort of creative and bold community growing effort we need in Detroit and throughout the U.S.A.  Detroit residents may have no choice but to take rehabilitation into its own hands on a local level, but this sort of thing is never a bad decision.  And with the growing socialist insanity at a national level this is the perfect time to take your community into your own hands.  Viva el Pioneer Spirit! and gumption that made America great.  Viva Power House!  Viva repairing racial tragedies of the past.

First they are built from earthen materials, the outer walls being essentially rammed earth with wooden structures sometimes internally.  I am fascinated with earthen building materials because you just can’t get more sustainable.  Literally the whole world’s population could build their homes with dirt and the earth would be no worse for wear.

Secondly, they have stood the test of time.  Not only in the sense that the buildings have lasted for hundreds of years, but also people in China have continued to actively live in them and construct them up until the last 100 years.  Practically, they must have worked.  Not only did they succeed in providing defense from other warring clans, but there must have been more.

Lastly, the tulou were built to house entire clans.  Some of the ones still in use today house up to 600 people.  Yet in Western culture it is rare to even find a handful of extended family members under the same roof.  I myself live in an urban bungalow with my wife and child, but we have often sought ways to shake this formula up.  International students have lived under our roof, friends who needed a place to go, and students who I have worked with and shared life with.  But these arrangements have been temporary.  Should we be so ardent about our values for individualism and personal space?  Are these things the earned privilege of a wealthy and affluent culture?  Or are they blights on what would otherwise be a more meaningful and sustainable life?

What other residential models like the tulou are out there but withering in the brutal heat of modernity?  Can we take some lessons from the dying clan lifestyle of China?  Or at least build homes that we expect our children’s children to be able to come home to some day, if only for a visit.