Competitis

I originally typed this out in an email response to a friend who sent me this link:

Woman Faces Jail Time For Growing Veggies In Front Yard

I have to say this is pretty deplorable. The idea that the only thing you should grow in your front yard is water-insatiable grass is so wrong-minded. I'm glad that people are making a big stink about this, because codes should not keep people from growing food in their yards.

But, I would argue that people going to jail over vegetable gardens are just a symptom of a deeper problem. And you can blame The Government if you want, but bad government is yet another symptom of the real problem, which is lack of community.

In the above case, the city planning code just says the front lawn must be "suitable" which can be interpreted in lots of ways. If worse comes to worst and people are starving then vegetables are going to be pretty damned suitable. So the problem is less about the code and more about what some busy body neighbour found "suitable." So either the arrested gardener didn't know that neighbour, or they didn't like one another very well. Both problems could be easily solved by more community spirit.

But everyone is too busy trying to trade their time in front of a computer screen or behind a steering wheel for numbers in a spreadsheet somewhere that represent the memory of little pieces of paper and metal that they can then trade for food and electronics and fossil fuels so that they can hunker down harder and outcompete their neighbours. Because every number in your neighbour's column is one that isn't in your column.

So,we can change the code so it's okay to grow a garden in your front lawn but then people will be complaining about some other godamned ridiculous thing, or the code will be set down to include tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers but not arugala or zucchini. Or countless other things that are always wrong with that sort of solution.

Or, we can spend less time hating each other and "competing" with each other. And then people will want to let their neighbours grow gardens because they get to share in the produce sometimes and because who gives a rat's ass if it takes a few hundred dollars off the average property value on the street, is being able to sell your house for a slightly-higher profit more important than enjoying your life while you're in it?

Start'em Young

I had a strange experience today at my community garden plot.

I was digging a hole which, while for asparagus, was suspiciously about the size and shape of hole one might dig for disposing of, say, a human body. But never mind that.

The important thing is that I had a shovel. The other important thing is that my plot is very near the children's playground at my community centre. As I was digging, a child of maybe 4 or 5 years came over to the fence and said something about my shovel. I told her I was using it to dig. She asked if she and her friends could have it. I said no, I needed it to dig. She said I could have it back afterwards. I said that I couldn't lend it to her. She then said something I found very strange: we need the shovel to make money.

Capitalism and I are on the outs right now. I mean, insofar as I need capitalism to survive, I guess I have no choice but to transact commerce. The problem with capitalism is that the main justification for it relies on the premise that people will do what is best for themselves. This is demonstrably false. People are easily fooled. Information is easily withheld (think Goldman Sachs).

If a small child came up to you and asked to borrow your shovel because she needed it to put the means of production in the hands of the workers, you would probably call child services and tell them that her parents were communists.

I didn't call child services and tell them that there was a little capitalist child on the playground. I did tell her that she probably wouldn't be able to make much money with the shovel. But she probably didn't believe me.

After all, they've already gotten to her.