"The rent's too high"

[David Morris]

Didn't Nietzsche say something like all civilization is built on cruelty?
But what's the alternative?

David Morris

On Saturday, January 7, 2017, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I didn't see this mentioned here so I'll insert it.
>
> Property taxes are another form of rent. Even when the property is owned
> 'free and clear' and the landlord or banker is vanquished, property taxes
> come due regularly with an unsentimental threat to pay or face confiscation.
>
> I digress...
>
> I used to spend a lot of time  checking out "homesteader" holdings when I
> was younger. I was always impressed by how thoroughly they were reducing
> the actual cash needed for survival. Most back-to-the-landers (better
> description) were well aware that they had to pull together enough cash
> each year to pay their taxes or they'd lose their holdings. Usually this
> meant some sort of  off-the-land seasonal employment (fruit picking or
> Christmas retail) but often it meant planting fine lumber trees which would
>  be sold off to lumber companies a tree at a time to make ends meet when
> the land holder got too old or too crotchety to bring in the cash. The new
> plagues of boring beetles in the US must be upsetting a lot of
> best-laid-plans coast-to-coast nowadays.(Didja know that when I started
> non-toxic farming 30 years ago that there were locust fence posts in some
> fence lines that had been standing for nearly a hundred
> years?Traditionally, locust was so innately rot-proof that it outlasted
> other hardwood fence posts at a ratio of about 4 to 1 (If your posts were
> oak you'd replace them 4 times before you would have had to replace a
> locust post.) Now, thanks to chaos in the natural order (here in WV most
> likely caused by precipitation of toxic discharges of smoke stacks
> somewhere in the mid-West acidifying the soils enough to disrupt the
> primordial soil foodweb even on 'virgin soils' enough that entropy of a
> system that had maintained itself through millennia ensued) In the past
> dozen years more and more locusts are infected with a 'heartwood fungus'
> that causes the locust to produce a wood that is essentially not rot
> resistant at all and certainly doesn't hold in the soil any longer than a
> good oak post.
>
> -Allan in WV
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:18 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
>> :-)
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mark.kohut at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>> > Except for yours which is being raised.
>> >
>> > On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:33 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com');>>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Every time I see this goddamn discussion thread re-appear in my inbox,
>> >> I get nervous all over again.
>> >>
>> >> Jeez with the RENT crap already!
>> >>
>> >> ;-)
>> >>
>> >> YOPJ
>> >>
>> >> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 6:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mark.kohut at gmail.com');>> wrote:
>> >> > Or even, thinking of the lifelong power/ domination theme, all about
>> "
>> >> > structured subjugation", a phrase I like learned in an essay on
>> >> > globalization, which is not, or not just, " everything solid melting
>> into
>> >> > air" these days, something Pynchon also knew in his (only)
>> pre-modernity
>> >> > novel, Mason& Dixon.
>> >> >
>> >> > Sent from my iPad
>> >> >
>> >> >> On Jan 7, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','brook7 at sover.net');>> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Isn’t the relationship of landlord to renter a rather obvious
>> mirror of
>> >> >> the more universal Pyncon theme of colonizer and colonized?
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> Can the relationship between renters and landlords be extrapolated
>> >> >>> into a broader existential dynamic? It's worth a thought.
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>>> On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Chase Carnot <
>> chase.carnot at gmail.com
>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','chase.carnot at gmail.com');>>
>> >> >>>> wrote:
>> >> >>>> "[...] Crocker Fenway chuckled without mirth. ‘A bit late for
>> that,
>> >> >>>> Mr.
>> >> >>>> Sportello. People like you lose all claim to respect the first
>> time
>> >> >>>> they pay
>> >> >>>> anybody rent.’"
>> >> >>>>
>> >> >>>> When I saw PT Anderson's IV, this line jumped at me for the first
>> >> >>>> time. In
>> >> >>>> the novel, it must have just washed over me. Anyway, I've been
>> >> >>>> thinking
>> >> >>>> about diving back into the novel sometime soon with an eye toward
>> >> >>>> rent as a
>> >> >>>> central theme. I felt vindicated when a reading app I use cropped
>> the
>> >> >>>> IV
>> >> >>>> 'Last Supper' poster... it left the center...
>> >> >>>>
>> >> >>>> https://goo.gl/photos/zaJops8hNHUrju2u6
>> >> >>> -
>> >> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>> >> >>
>> >> >> -
>> >> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >> > -
>> >> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> >
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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