What do you think of this controversial idea? While it probably wouldn’t work as he proposes, the general idea of starting another homesteading program is just what this country needs in my opinion. It would transition people off government dependency and get them back on the land and living more self sufficiently.
YouTube
McCook Mr. Bill’s (donze52) channel has lots of other interesting and folksy videos such as this one about homestead rootcellars.
Basement Homes (safer in storms)
Dam Busting and Free Fishing Poles
Nebraska Rain Barrel Wars
Oldest Sod Home in SW Nebraska (original cost = $25, lived in for most of its 120 year history)
Jay, thanks for delineating your thoughts on this. Very helpful.
The question, then, is how much would it cost to bribe local official/s to allow one to do whatever versus the cost of a fully code compliant standard build. There may well be a way to bribe local officials legally, depending on your local laws. For instance, in the state of Virginia, it is only a conflict of interest if it is concealed. So if, for instance, your local code official is also a contractor or engineer, you could hire them as engineer to prove to them as code official that your system will work at least as well as a standard build. How much that would cost would largely depend on the greed and level of oversight of the inspector, but it would probably cost less than doing it to code.
No doubt there are some who would take the payoff. But in general this probably wouldn’t be very effective. There are larger forces at work. They don’t want to set a precedent and they don’t want to upset the role of the larger players — banks, insurance companies, realtors, building supply companies, big industry. It seems way easier to move to a rural area with few or no codes.
Step 1: Get some honesty back in government. Replace Congress entirely. Since it all seems to come down to who can buy the most votes, let them do that directly. Make it so that any citizen can propose a law, those that manage to get some fairly large number of signatures gets put on the table. Then any citizen can send money to the ‘for’ or ‘against’ funds. Whichever side has the most money in it before some reasonable deadline, wins. Set the minimum bar for the ‘for’ side to the estimated start up cost of whatever. If you don’t win, you get your money back. That way, instead of Company X spending a few hundred thousand dollars into party coffers every few years and getting to basically regulate itself, it can spend millions of dollars and get any law it wants, once. Balance this against 50 million Americans spending $1 apiece for things they actually care about, and suddenly you might have a functioning democracy. You might call it plutocracy, but then, what do we have now?
This entire argument is missing the point.
It isn’t Federal Regulations that are keeping people from affording land to build houses on.
IT’S LOCAL ZONING LAWS AND BUILDING CODES.
I have never EVER encountered a federal official when attempting to acquire land, or trying to get a building permit.
However, I have encountered countless dimwitted self serving local pencil pushers that expect me to jump through hoops and genuflect whenever they walk past.
I don’t give two craps about the Fed.
What matters are local governments that claim to be “protecting property values” when in fact they are promoting class warfare. They don’t allow tracts of land to be divided into smaller plots that average people can afford. They force people to buy more land than needed as a way to assure that only the richest people can afford to buy land in that area.
Then they force draconian building codes on everyone to prevent people from DIY building. This is another money grab. It forces people to spend way more money than necessary on things they don’t need or want. Not to mention minimum house sizes that are so large that you need a Mortgage that lasts for your entire life in order to pay everything off.
This isn’t a Federal Problem.
It’s local.
It’s the wealthy forcing the rest of us to pay up, and rob us all blind.
If the Fed opened up more Federal land… it wouldn’t solve the problem. Once that land got opened up, it would get zoned and divided up among a select few people that would make everyone else pay through the nose.
The solution is educating the public such that local governments do what is in the best interests of their own people, not just a select few.
If a wealthy person wants to build a huge mansion… I say let them. I have no problem with that. Just don’t let them force me to build the same wasteful overpriced toxic whale of a house that I don’t want or need. I want REAL freedom. Freedom to build what I want, the way I want it, without someone else forcing me to build it differently. As long as my actions don’t pollute my neighbors land, or kill his animals, etc, just leave me alone to live my life in peace.
The problem is LOCAL… not Federal. Focusing on the Fed is a complete waste of time in my opinion.
I’m not saying the Fed is without fault. What I’m saying is that they are a Red Herring in this instance.
No offense intended to those all riled up about the Fed. Feel free to tilt at that windmill all you want. You won’t accomplish anything about affordable housing, but that’s your choice. Tilt away.
It may be that the most important factor in building your own home is not the location of the land, but the local government. If the local government will allow you to build, then most any plot of land under their jurisdiction will be paradise compared to anywhere the local government is belligerent to DIY building, no matter how beautiful that plot of land might be or what resources are available on that land.
Oh yeah, local government is hugely important to consider when buying land. They’ll shut you down/destroy your DIY dream real quick.
You made some sound points. Rand Paul had a sign up page that with enough signatures would demand that the Federal Reserve be opened for inspection. I truly hope this happens because it’s going to be huge can of worms. The other thing is; we are living in different times than the times you referred to. Today, it WOULD work because Americans ARE much wiser and are extremely fed up with Washington and the bankers. America seems to be falling and we all need something to try and save it. This would be one way of doing just that. First, we have to again have faith in government. This might be a way if they were to open up millions of acres and deprive those that steal from all Americans as was mentioned in his video.
Clearly, something needs to be done. I’m interested in hearing other realistic ideas.
Nice idea and expressed well but Homesteading has been tried and failed, so why should it work a 2nd time around when the economic system is intentionally being collapsed?
Homesteading is the very same control / distract concept that was replicated by generating an increase in the fiat money game that inflated, thereby generating the ability/need to build build build (improve) property by individuals (with richness in their gleam), only to then devaluate the currency, which allowed the bankster-gangsters to reposes that same improved property once taxes had been increased. Always making their sliver of silver off each and every transaction.
The very same thing happened in the early 80s. Then again in the mid 00s. Does anyone in the USA pay attention to the snare that they’re caught up in is a valid question in my mind. The only reason the USA is mentioned is because the world political body has agreed to allowed the USD to become the world currency. Translated that means the usd is the control mechanism of the planet. God. I wonder how that happened?
Solutions have to be found outside the current economic box that all systems currently operate within. It’s important to understand the simple truth that has allowed all that we detest within this box to manifest and flourish in the first place. The US citizens lost their control over their own collative destiny in 1913 with he passage of the Federal Reserve Act. Since that time all politicians have been bought outright by the Bankster-Gangster’s system of control, or, they’ve been elected to office ignorant of that fact and soon self-centeredly go along with the collective political agenda. The few that actually thought they could use their political power for the people soon were eliminated by a lone gunmen of one personality or another.
Natural Building Blog and similar sites that educate the importance of practical bioregional independence are marvelous and important preparation for the approaching survival drama that the near future holds for us. Also the core message of Russell Brand is a focused demand and cry for complete transitional shift in the planetary organizational model. The desire for planetary improvement mounts daily as the insanity of our political leader’s actions expose their real agenda. The only lack of the moment is the economic system that will provide the tool of how to transition from the old to the new.
I watched a few of his videos and found him pretty interesting. I agree that many of us would be better off if we still knew how to work the land, build our homes, etc. The “land of the dollar bill” as he said in one of his videos can be a hard place to make a living. What you put in versus what you get out, after the government and the creditors take their cut, is less than what it would be if you just produced the things yourself, instead of trying to earn money to purchase them. Of course to many this is an outdated and backwards ideology.
Yeah Owen I bet it is the only time you would hear the truth coming from a politician. That’s just another example of our dysfunctional broken government. The have and the haves not. You’d think America would be bigger than that. Here tax payers paid for 28 million in free medical for illegal aliens. Do they deport them and use that money for true Americans? Nope. As I said, dysfunctional and broken government.
He made sound points and I agree with him. Greed is the rule of the land today. In the 1800’s that would have got you shot. New government, Constitutional government and get rid of the carpet beggars. America shouldn’t be a nation of us against them.
In another video he said he asked a legislator why the government passes laws against small farmers. These unjust laws make it nearly impossible to make a living in some places. The legislator said something like, “How many of those small farmers would donate to my political campaign and help get me elected? None. If I pass laws to help consolidate the land so one farmer can buy out 100 farmers then that rich farmer will probably help me get elected.” McCook Bill said that’s probably the only time he heard a legislator tell the truth.