in case some idiot hasn’t yet found a village....
Would any of that exist without the welfare state?
Slackers utopia
a friend who is lifelong Portlander always said that Portland is where the yuppies who are too stoned to find Eugene end up.
People in Portland who have actual businesses are getting concerned, as the rest of the world increasingly thinks of them as a bunch of weird hippie slackers.
Is someone not noticing that with their urban planning they will eventually have a city where no one can afford housing within the city limit? Step over the city limit and land is cheap. That will be where the middle class will move.
Hope they enjoy their coffee and kombucha because they will eventually join the ranks of every other old decaying city.
If these "graphic designers", and other "creative" types actually had skills, they could get jobs where they worked remotely, or if there was such a pool of "creative" talent in Portland, companies would be building design studios there.
Neither is happening.
Conclusion: These "creative" people are actually undertalented and deluded. See the Dunning–Kruger effect.
Portland is where the city council outlawed the use of “brown bag” because it could also mean black person and “citizen” because it hurts illegals feelings.
Portland is a clear example of Survival of the Unfit.
Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (often referred to as The Theory of Survival of the Fittest) describes the positive effects resulting from any “pressure” on an animal species that removes the least fit among the species and allows only the most fit of the species to reproduce. Many of us are well aware of this “Survival of the Fittest” theory, but few are aware that Darwin also makes mention of the negative effects resulting from unlimited reproduction of a species’ least fit when the weak, the lazy, and the stupid are left unchecked.
We like to think otherwise, but our species, Homo sapiens, isn’t that long “out of the trees” and the same laws of nature that affect all of God’s creatures apply equally to us. If we were to observe any other species that had been allowed to reproduce without limitations, we would know immediately what the consequences will be.
Whenever the weak; lazy; and stupid of a species are allowed to reproduce unimpeded by predators that feed off the weak; lazy; and stupid, they soon outnumber the strong, productive, and intelligent. When the weak/lazy/stupid dominate the gene pool, the entire population becomes weak/ lazy/stupid, and then the population collapses.
In the past, when these collapses occurred within human populations, they have been referred to as a “Malthusian Collapse.” Thomas Malthus, a Nineteenth Century Economist, thought these collapses were caused simply because past civilizations had reached a point where human populations could no longer produce sufficient food supplies to feed themselves, but he never pinned down the exact reason for the food shortages.
We now think some of these collapses of past human civilizations may have occurred when the unproductive weak/lazy/stupid greatly outnumbered the strong/productive/intelligent of the population. In other words, the majority of the population became too lazy to perform the work necessary to provide for themselves and what was left of the strong/productive/intelligent refused to continue to do it for them.
These collapses have occurred at frequent intervals throughout human history, and Western Civilization is, in my humble opinion, currently on the cusp of one of these collapses.
D.J. Taylor
The main reason to not have a car in NW Portland is because finding a parking space is just about impossible. So much for that urban planning.
Another love letter to Portland appears in the pages of the New York Slimes.
How many is that? I mean, just this week?
Young people move into a city. Some slack some don’t. They get older. They get married and have children. They move out to the suburbs and buy a car. Their children get older and move into a city. Some slack, some don’t. Repeat...
A retirement community? Sorry, that’s not what I found there, I found a bucketful of the dregs of society, queers, addicts, beggars, mental deficients and mentally disturbed of all flavors. The only thing my visit to Portland instilled in me was a strong desire to never visit again and awe at how such beautiful country could be spoiled by lunatics and fanatics.
I was born in Portland and - in the more recent past - have traveled around much of the world. Alaska, Philippine Islands, Japan, various rocks masquerading as islands around the Pacific. I lived in California for a number of years. Three years in the Puget Sound area and four years in central Alaska. I keep coming back to Portland.
I see all those professional students attending the multitude of colleges and universities. Every major intersection has at least one “homeless” beggar with the usual cardboard sign. More and more small businesses are being replaced by “For Lease” signs while the bigger businesses are quietly packing their bags and looking for a quick way out of town.
Liberals have so poisoned the economy that the few good, hard-working, conservative people who do live here survive as anomalies remembering what Portland used to be and wanting to return it to those happier days. But then, Conservatives (note the capital “C”) all around America suffer from the same problems.
We remember what America once was, not what the rewritten history books say it was. We look to the future with a sort of fatalistic foreboding, knowing that what has happened will never be reversed without some sort of violent confrontation. We dread what we see in the future - not because we will be in danger, but because our grandchildren will have to repurchase with their blood the freedom we selfishly squandered for our own creature comfort.
I can no longer face my grandchildren without feeling a mixture of love, fear and shame.
"Young" and "retire" are oxymorons.
-PJ