Posted on 12/16/2010 9:48:35 AM PST by FromLori
Really.
Thompson faces eviction from his 38 acres in Madison County. The county lawyer tells 24-Hour News 8 it's because Thompson is breaking too many rules, laws and ordinances; Thompson has no water, no sewer and no electricity in his recreational trailer that he calls home.
So?
It's against the law to live simply? The Amish have no electrical service - by choice. You can tell an Amish home in the areas where they're common by the lack of an electrical service wire coming into the house.
Never mind that the picture in the article shows a clear window AC unit. It is reasonable to presume he has a generator of some sort.
No running water? Well, ok, that's a pain in the butt. But man lived with cisterns for a good long time. And presuming he has some money (and it appears he's not lacking clothes) he could be drinking bottled water. This much is certain - he's still alive, so he has a water source.
No sewer? That's damn inconvenient. Nonetheless, 38 acres will more than support one man in this regard. A hole in the ground may not be great, but it works.
First the liberals whine about how we're all living "unsustainably", but then when someone lives in an utterly sustainable matter, refusing to buy and consume $100 or more a month in "services" they do not want, the jack-booted government comes in and demands they get out.
I'm sure that on that 38 acres there are more deer and other wildlife that whizzes and craps a larger volume (by far) than one man. There's no public safety issue here - this is one man, on his own property, with no evidence that he's polluting anything around him, who simply wants to be left alone - and who clearly isn't interested in "improving" his land and thus paying ten times as much in property taxes and "mandatory" services.
That's really the rub here, isn't it? The county wants to evict him not due to any sort of danger, but rather because he refuses to build a big fat McMansion on that land and then suck down the kilowatts and pay for every gallon of water twice - one to deliver it, again to cart it away even if he chooses to do things with the water that don't require those gallons to be carted away.
Show me where this individual is actually harming the public's safety and I'll agree with the jackboot of government coming in to tell him how he has to live.
Until then the government has no right to get involved.
At all.
Control. The leftists want control. Leftists don’t want us to have choices. This man made a choice that the leftists don’t approve of. Instead of leaving him alone they chose to interfere with his harmless lifestyle.
Speaking of lifestyle, we all know of one very risky lifestyle that the left likes, approves of, and promotes.
Apparently, the property is not zoned as a trailer park. He can keep the land, he can keep the RV on the land, he simply is not allowed to live IN the RV on the land. Presumably, he could build a small home to live in on the land.
There isn’t a lot on the web that isn’t 2nd-hand, but it appears the proximate problem is that the land is not zoned for RVs, so he isn’t allowed to establish a permanent residence in an RV on the property.
I couldn’t find anything official suggesting the problem was lack of sewer or power; theoretically, if he could meet zoning, I presume he could build an off-grid home on the property.
But I have no idea what the zoning regulations are in Alexandria, Indiana.
I read that he agreed to move out of the RV, and now he is selling the property.
Excellent piece, and from the look of it, a long list of other excellent commentary.
He describes the dynamic correctly; this is exactly what happens. It doesn’t have to happen, in theory, if people retain a good understanding of private property rights, but that understanding is easily outvoted.
My observation is that people in general will always trade freedom for the right to mind their neighbor’s business. The idea of a neighbor doing something on his property that you wouldn’t do on yours, drives people wild. They won’t have it.
cheers
>>My observation is that people in general will always trade freedom for the right to mind their neighbor’s business.<<
In this is why my wife likes covenant neighborhoods but I hate them. She really doesn’t like motorhomes parked on residential lots, and would like to remove the neighbor’s right to do so. But When I’ve lived in neighborhoods where people do park them, I am reminded that I can do pretty much whatever I want on my property without worrying about my neighbors complaining.
I see it this way: A person that lives in the Bronx and never moves or goes more than a few miles from their home is happier and freer than a person living in Moscow who does the same thing. The reason is that the guy in the Bronx “can” leave if he wants. That is known as “freedom”.
Someone with a little influence in the County Courthouse wants his land! Ergo... he has to leave!
That could be more true than false.
Read later
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