"The rent's too high"

[Mark Kohut]

Also, all civilizations are also built by cooperation. Anarchically to
start, usually.


On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 2:38 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Mark Kohut <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
>>> >
>>> > 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>
>>> 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> 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>
>>> >> >>>> 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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