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Posted by David Sherman on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 19:36:59 :
In Reply to: what else is new posted by copey on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 17:48:38 :
At least with food, if we wanted to, most of us could grow some. With fuel, we're stuck with whatever the oil monopolies want to charge us. I was just reading that until the sanitation ladies got a hold of the government, it was common in all the big cities for people to let pigs run loose in the streets, where they'd eat the garbage that everybody threw out in the streets. This pork was a big source of food to working-class families, and when the sanitary cleanup people banned swine in the cities, a lot of people considered it a direct attack on the working men. Similarly, it used to be common for cities to lease grazing rights at the city dumps to pig farmers. The city would get some money, the amount of garbage would get reduced, farmers would get some cheap pig food, and everybody would get locally-grown pork. The modern sanitary landfill put a stop to that, but now the garbage has to be hauled a long way in trucks, dirt has to be bulldozed over the garbage every day, pigs have to be fed food that's grown on farms just for them, and all of it involves lots of petroleum. All told, I wonder how many gallons of oil are in a modern ham.
I wonder how expensive food is going to have to get before city people start defying the laws and start planting vegetable gardens, keeping chickens, and eventually even keeping a cow and some pigs. If one tried it now, their yuppie neighbors would run screaming to the code compliance department, but if the yuppies were unemployed and hungry, they might think a little better of a neighbor offering them some butter and eggs and potatoes and maybe even a chicken for Sunday dinner.
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