Gentrification

[steev]

Living in Oakland, I'm on the cutting edge of gentrification; SF is becoming Manhatten and we're New Jersey; houses in my neighborhood that sold for $100K thirty years ago, are now going for $1M+, largely due to freeway/transit access to SF/Silicon Valley. People, largely of color, whose grandparents came from the South during WWII for work, who didn't want to live in then-depressed areas of the East Bay, went to the Central Valley, selling their inheritances for cheesy mortgages, which went belly-up in 2008, costing them the houses they'd thought they'd bought; clearly, they'd have done well to keep those properties, but who knew what Wall Street had in store for those not on the financial establishment teat?

Commercial properties that have been vacant the past 20/30 years are being razed and rebuilt as "market-rate housing" in a great hurry; in the past two years, five of these developments have been torched; somebody feels they're being pushed out and they don't like it. I don't condone arson, but I get where it's coming from.

To return this thread to agricultural matters, I would reference the conversion of Cali produce farmland to exportable nut crops (China loves that; the land itself being owned/leased by whom?); perhaps my posts about Saudi/Emirate alfalfa farming in SoCal/Arizona are germane to this issue; would they like to get their water from NorCal, in the event they drain the aquifer they're pumping to irrigate alfalfa for export to Saudi Arabia/Emirates?

I've posted it before: what about the people living in areas ripe to be strip-mined of minerals, oil, water, produce, whatever? Are they really going to just fade away, like the "losers" (thanks, Donald) they "are"? I doubt it; looks like a bumpy ride ahead. I predict that as this SHTF, more of those getting screwed will wake up and smell the lack of bacon.

[prairiegardens]

I've been surprised the summer is so relatively quiet, sorta expected SHTF stuff happening as summer is usually when restlessness and dissatisfaction tend to be expressed.

[steev]

I expect more "lone-wolf" action, as I suspect the East Bay arson is, rather than organized protest, which I think people are starting to realize is given neither media coverage nor governmental attention; our "representatives" are doing their corporate sponsors' bidding, not the wishes of 70-80% of their constituents; these chickens are coming home to roost; it's gonna be hard times in the hen-house; the chickens are getting pissed-off, and there's lots of them.

While I don't approve of arson (liable to result in unintended consequences; the occasional fatality, for instance), I understand the impulse to act, in the face of apparent civil irrelevance. These are questions I wrestled with when I claimed Conscientious Objector status during the Congressionally-undeclared war in Viet Nam.

When Government attempts to rule, not govern. citizens are justified in rebellion. We don't need no stinkin' kings!

[prairiegardens]

Hard to tell the difference really except that possibly some royal families have a sense of history and it's been a VERY long time since I've seen a politician show any signs of that, it's all short term gain and who cares about the future. I've long thought that anyone who thought they were qualified and justified to tell everyone else what when and how they must do/live should be automatically disqualified from any sort of public office.

A lottery perhaps, like jury duty, everyone takes a turn at being part of running the country for a year or two. It would be interesting to say the least, and probly at the least no worse than the present system.

[steev]

The thing is, everybody has a turn at running the country every election; many don't step up to the plate then nor any time in between, which is how those who feel "qualified and justified, etc" get to do their thing, regardless of the will of the people.