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This argument makes no sense to me - I didn’t live in a home with municipal water or sewer until I was 18 and living on my own. For that matter, my current hom
by Ancapistani 3y ago
This argument makes no sense to me - I didn’t live in a home with municipal water or sewer until I was 18 and living on my own.
For that matter, my current home is inside city limits. While we have municipal water, we are not connected to the city sewer system and instead rely on a septic tank.
It annoys me to no end that I’m not legally able to make major repairs to my septic system, as it’s only allowable under a grandfather clause in the city code. If, say, a utility truck ever drives into my back yard and over my septic tank, I’ll be on the hook for ~$10k to reverse the plumbing in my home, bury a sewer line to the connection at the street, and backfill the old septic tank.
“Best” of all is that in the six years I’ve owned this home, city workers have twice parked bucket trucks in my back yard without even speaking to me. One of those times resulted in my having to dig up and replace a portion of my septic system’s drain field. The city laughed at me when I asked that they pay for the damages. I could have taken them to small claims court over it, but the actual material cost wasn’t enough to justify it.
Of course there are utility easements encumbering the property, so I’m not upset about those being used. The easements are a defined area along the edges of the property, though - not carte blanche to drive all over my yard with heavy equipment. I spoke with the workers on both occasions, and they didn’t even know how to look up where the easements were.
NB: I see I went off on a tangent there, but I’m going to leave it. That sort of dispute is exactly the kind of thing that people who want to “just live” are trying to avoid. It’s one thing to voluntarily submit to rules in exchange for some benefit - it’s another to have rules imposed on you from the outside without consent, and then to have the “authorities” in the arrangement ignore the rules without consequence while simultaneously requiring you to carefully adhere to them.
- pixl97 3y agoThis argument makes no sense to you because you refuse to accept pollution at scale exists... Already you're bitching about "omg its so easy for other people to practically end my life by messing up the tenuous balance I have between getting fresh water and the flow of untreated shit I produce" Yea, this is easy when there is a few people working with plentiful water resources then it all works fine. When lots of people show up, you are shitting in each others mouths and dying of cholera and begging these "authorities" to save you. Think for 5 minutes about the argument you typed out and you'll figure out why these other complex systems exist.
- Ancapistani 3y agoHave you lived in these situation? I have, and I don’t share your view.
- pixl97 3y agoNot to be too snippy here, but I'm not sure you could possibly imagine anyone elses view but your own at this point... Start iterating over dozens of possible positions and you'll see yours is really a more extreme outlier. And while not Amish myself, I was born in the middle of Amish country and have quite a bit of experience with populations that choose to analyze technologies before they accept them into their lives, and rejecting those they do not like. But the Amish have the same issue, they live in very low density populations. As their populations increase their members tend to leave for modern lives. Trying to live in cities without modern conveniences has lots of issues.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI dont think that anyone denies the difficulty of self sufficiency in the middle of a dense urban city. I think the Ancapistani was providing context that this is not a universal truth. There are plenty of areas, outside of cities, where people live much more self reliant lives, and they are not third world hellscapes.
- Ancapistani 3y agoExactly my point. I’m definitely not saying municipal utilities are a bad thing - I’m sharing my experiences that show that they aren’t always necessary. The comment I originally replied to said: > Maybe people prefer having pressurized clean tap water and sewer systems due to something other than marketing and social pressure I’ve lived in rural areas, small towns, and the “big city”. It’s not as binary a proposition as the original commenter was making it out to be. That’s all I’m trying to share.